The planned naming of a disputed Kuril island after Richard Sorge is the latest example of Russia strengthening its control over the features. It is part of a decade-long effort by Moscow to use commemoration to reinforce its claim regardless of Tokyo’s protest. 

On July 28, the Sakhalin branch of the Russian Geographical Society announced the future placement of a plaque for Sorge, a Soviet intelligence officer, on an uninhabited island in the Lesser Kurils. Moscow is expected to rename the island after Sorge soon.

The announcement drew attention in Japan given the island’s location and Sorge’s legacy.

The island is part of the disputed Southern Kurils, which Japan calls the Northern Territories. The Kuril Islands stretch from Hokkaido to the Kamchatka Peninsula and provide Russia with protected access from the Sea of Okhotsk to the Pacific. Soviet forces occupied the islands in 1945, just before Japan’s surrender ended World War II. Japan still claims the southernmost four features: Etorofu, Kunashiri, Shikotan, and the Habomai Islands. More than 80 years later, the dispute remains unresolved.

Richard Sorge remains a consequential figure in Japan and Russia.

Disguised as a German journalist, Sorge led a successful espionage network for Moscow in Tokyo from 1933 until his arrest in October 1941. A close friendship with German Ambassador Eugen Ott and partnership with Japanese journalist Ozaki Hotsumi gave Sorge unmatched access. Ott’s confidence gave him insights into the German-Japan alliance. Ozaki’s ties to Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro’s inner circle gave Sorge access to information from the highest levels of the Japanese government. The network layered political information with military activity to validate details, increasing the reliability of their reporting.

During the summer of 1941, Sorge’s network provided Moscow with information on Japan’s internal debate over whether to widen World War II in the Pacific. Their reports confirmed Tokyo would advance south into Southeast Asia in late 1941 rather than invade the Soviet Union.  

The actual events were more nuanced than the popular narrative. The July 2 Imperial Conference produced an intentionally ambiguous policy that preserved both northern and southern options while masking unresolved Army-Navy rivalry. Sorge’s reporting mixed Ozaki’s accurate assessment with less reliable information from a German military attaché. The result was a message that was broadly correct, if less clear-cut than later accounts suggest. 

Over the next three months, Sorge’s network steadily strengthened the case that Japan had adopted a southern-facing strategy by tracking halted railway conversion orders, stalled troop concentrations, and a decline in Kwantung Army mobilization pressure. Their intelligence, combined with signals intelligence and information from other networks, aided Moscow in moving forces from Siberia to defend the capital.

Russia celebrates Sorge as a hero and master intelligence officer. In Japan, he represents a costly intelligence failure and a reminder of the environment surrounding the decision to expand the war in 1941. 

Sorge wasn’t always feted in Moscow, however. Soviet authorities denied Sorge for two decades; Josef Stalin even refused to intervene before Sorge’s execution in 1944. But in 1964, Nikita Khrushchev named the late Sorge a Hero of the Soviet Union. The decision followed renewed interest sparked by mass culture during an era of de-Stalinization. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly cited Sorge as an influence on his decision to join the KGB.

Naming the island after Sorge links Russia’s territorial claim to a Soviet wartime achievement. It also invokes a period that remains sensitive in Japan.

Russia has previously sought to tie Sorge to the disputed Kurils. In January 2022, Moscow proposed exhuming Sorge’s remains in Tokyo and reburying them on one of the disputed Kuril Islands.

Rather than moving remains, the current proposal attaches Sorge’s name directly to the island, creating another marker of Russia’s claim.

Moscow previously named various features in the Kurils in 2012 and 2017. Many of the chosen names honor Soviet intelligence officers, military commanders, and officials connected to the Soviet seizure of the islands in 1945. Those commemorated include Pavel Fitin, who led Soviet foreign intelligence from 1939 to 1946; General Kuzma Derevyanko, who signed Japan’s Instrument of Surrender for the Soviet Union aboard the USS Missouri; and General Alexei Gnechko, who commanded the Soviet operation that seized the Kurils in 1945.

Japan has consistently protested Russian symbolic activities on the disputed islands. Tokyo considers Russia’s control of the Southern Kurils an illegal occupation, as the Soviet Union seized the islands in 1945 while the Soviet-Japanese Neutrality Pact remained intact. Japan renounced its claim to the Kuril Islands under the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty, but Tokyo claims the disputed islands are not part of the Kuril group.

Russia rejects Japan’s interpretation and maintains that its sovereignty over the islands is not open for discussion.