Some Russians Regret Selling Alaska to U.S.
The reassertion of Russia’s greatness has been a motif of Vladimir V. Putin’s presidency, and his projection of military might and cyberpower is in part why Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the Cold War.
So the 150th anniversary on March 30 of Russia’s sale of Alaska to the United States was a day of mourning for some Russian nationalists who see the transaction as a blunder by the czarist empire, one that reverberates as the major powers vie for influence over the Arctic and its natural riches.
“If Russia was in possession of Alaska today, the geopolitical situation in the world would have been different,” Sergey Aksyonov, the prime minister of Crimea, said in March.
Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, was asked about Alaska by a Russian newspaper. “It is a good occasion to refresh memories of Russians’ contribution to exploration of the American continent,” he said.
And at the International Arctic Forum in Arkhangelsk, Russia, on March 30, Mr. Putin said American activities in Alaska could destabilize world order. “What we do is contained locally, while what the U. S. does in Alaska, it does on the global level,” he said, calling the American development of a missile system there “one of the most pressing security issues.”
The differences in how the sale is remembered in Russia and the United States — and among Alaska’s indigenous communities — points to the state’s history as a cultural and religious crossroad.
Russians started to settle Alaska in 1784, setting up trading posts and Eastern Orthodox churches. By the 1860s, having lost the Crimean War to Britain, and fearful that Britain would seize Alaska, the czar decided to strike a deal.
The sea otters that were the heart of a thriving fur trade had almost been wiped out, and the Russians feared that if gold were discovered — as it would be, in the Klondike Gold Rush that started in 1896 — the Americans might overrun the territory, said Susan Smith-Peter, a historian at the College of Staten Island in New York.
For Russia, “the deal made a lot of sense,” she said. “They could irritate Britain, and they could have a closer relationship with the United States.”
The United States also thought the purchase would position it closer to trade with China, and fend off any British encroachment on the West Coast, said Gwenn A. Miller, a historian at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts.
The treaty — setting the price at $7.2 million, or about $125 million today — was negotiated by Eduard de Stoeckl, Russia’s minister to the United States, and William H. Seward, the American secretary of state. It was considered beneficial to both countries, but some critics derided it as “Seward’s Folly.”
Lieutenant Governor Byron Mallott, who is Tlingit, an indigenous group, called the anniversary “a commemoration, not a celebration.”
“There have been, both under Russian and U. S. dominion, issues for Alaska’s Native peoples that have not been so good,” Mr. Mallott said.
When Russia came, the people were forced to hunt otters. After the sale, the indigenous groups were freed, but America brought problems too, said Sergei A. Kan of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire.
“The Russian goal was not to transform life radically, but to harness the people for economic purposes,” Mr. Kan said. “With the Americans, it was accompanied with a much more forceful Westernization.”
Bob Sam, 63, a Tlingit, said not everybody was happy about the sesquicentennial. “But after 150 years, it’s time to heal and it’s time to find togetherness so that Alaska Natives can go on to be the human beings we were intended to be.”