Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/59394

KEYWORDS : sovereignty;border culture;cultural programme;territory;national identity

This paper emphasizes the reliance Kuril islanders have felt towards Japan and discusses the challenge that cultural programmes have posed to Russian sovereignty over the territory of the Southern Kurils. The geographer David Kaplan has argued that on the border a unique set of forces affect the residents of these regions and whole new ways of thinking about the state, about the nation, and about the immediate surroundings are forged. He suggests that in extreme cases these perspectives may manifest themselves in new loyalties and hopes for a better future that contest dominant ideas of national identity. Using the example of this visa free programme and humanitarian aid, a striking example of borderlands being a "crucible" of new connections and relations between local inhabitants and the Russian and Japanese state can be observed. In the case of the Southern Kurils, the local "border culture" on the islands can be seen as sometimes being sharply at odds with the logic of Russian nation-statehood. These islands have emerged as a site of resistance, providing alternative definitions and challenges to the Russian state's attempts to order and control national space.