Paramushir's geology reads like a catalog of volcanic ambition. Chikurachki has erupted repeatedly since 1690, its most recent outburst in 2008 sending a plume of ash trailing for hundreds of kilometers over the Sea of Okhotsk. Fuss Peak, a near-perfect conical stratovolcano, last erupted in 1934. Ebeko's central crater holds a caldera lake, and fumaroles still steam along its flanks. The Karpinsky Group last stirred in 1957. Between these peaks, the sub-arctic climate -- shaped by the chilling Oyashio Current flowing down from the North Pacific -- keeps vegetation low and stunted. Siberian dwarf pine and shrubby alder form dense copses in the valleys, while alpine tundra dominates the higher ground, producing lingonberry, Arctic raspberry, and crowberry in the brief summers.

The narrow strait between Paramushir and neighboring Shumshu supports one of the densest populations of sea otters in the northwest Pacific. Brown bears roam the island's interior. Red foxes, Arctic hares, and ermine are abundant enough that the island's few human inhabitants still hunt them. In spring, crested auklets nest along the rocky coasts, and harbor seals haul out on the beaches. Most remarkably, North Pacific right whales -- among the rarest whale species on Earth -- have been spotted in the surrounding waters. Several species of charr and Pacific salmon spawn in Paramushir's rivers, particularly the Tukharka, the island's longest, threading its way through the volcanic landscape to the sea.

When Russian fur traders first arrived in 1711, the Ainu had long inhabited Paramushir. The island had appeared on Japanese maps as early as 1644, part of the Matsumae Domain's claimed territories during the Edo period. Russian Orthodox missionaries built a church here in 1747, and the Treaty of Shimoda in 1855 initially confirmed Russian sovereignty. Twenty years later, the 1875 Treaty of Saint Petersburg handed the entire Kuril chain to Japan. The Japanese established Kashiwabara on the site of the largest Ainu village, transforming it into a commercial fishing port. During World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army's 91st Infantry Division headquartered there, and the military constructed four airfields across the island. American bombers flying from the Aleutians struck at these bases sporadically from 1943 onward.

On August 18, 1945 -- three days after Emperor Hirohito's surrender announcement -- Soviet troops landed on Paramushir as part of the invasion of the Kuril Islands. Fighting continued through August 23 before the surviving Japanese garrison surrendered. What followed was swift and final: the Soviets forcibly deported the remaining Japanese civilians and sent prisoners of war to labor camps. Kashiwabara was renamed Severo-Kurilsk, and the island was annexed in 1946. Japan formally relinquished sovereignty under the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951. Then, in November 1952, a massive tsunami obliterated Severo-Kurilsk entirely. The town was rebuilt at a different location, but the catastrophe accelerated a decline that the collapse of the herring fishery and the fall of the Soviet Union would deepen. By the 2002 census, only 2,592 people remained -- half the 1989 figure. Villages that once lined the coast stand empty, their buildings slowly claimed by wind and tundra.