Alaska was once a full-fledged Russian colony. Now it’s hosting a U.S.-Russia summit

A Russian Orthodox Church in the Alaska village of Tatitlek. Alaska was a Russian colony from 1799 until it was sold to the U.S. in 1867 for $7.2 million. President Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin are holding a summit in Alaska on Friday. David McNew/Getty Images hide caption

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David McNew/Getty Images

Russia lost a war in Crimea in the 1850s, leaving the country deep in debt. To ease that burden, Russia cut a real estate deal with the U.S. government, selling its colony of Alaska to the Americans.

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The decision to meet in Alaska appears mostly practical — it’s where the U.S. and Russia almost touch, separated by just 55 miles of the Bering Strait. Yet beyond geography, there’s also symbolism and a fascinating shared history.

Alaska was a full-fledged Russian colony from 1799 to 1867. Some Russians, including Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev, are pointing to that period on social media, posting photos of Russian Orthodox churches, with their onion domes, that were built in Alaska in the 19th century and still stand.

“Some Americans might know that we bought Alaska from Russia, but they don’t know necessarily that it was a real colony there,” said Lee Farrow, a history professor at Auburn University at Montgomery and author of Seward’s Folly: A New Look at the Alaska Purchase.

“It wasn’t just a piece of territory that [the Russians] stuck a flag in. They had a strong presence in California as well.”

Farrow was referring to Fort Ross, an outpost the Russians established in what’s now part of Sonoma County in Northern California.

Sold for a pittance

Russia’s decision to sell Alaska was motivated by its need to pay off war debts accumulated during the 1853-’56 Crimean War, which Russia lost to the combined forces of Britain, France and the Ottoman Empire.

By this time, Russian hunters in Alaska had killed off most of the accessible bears, wolves, otters and other animals with valuable furs and pelts, and therefore the Russians saw little economic reason to stay.

Alaska seemed more a liability than an asset and was extremely remote even by the standards of the Russian Empire. It was sometimes called “Siberia’s Siberia.”

After brief negotiations in the spring of 1867, the U.S. agreed to pay $7.2 million, which works out to 2 cents per acre. Alaska covers more than a half-million square miles and is by far the largest U.S. state.

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The agreement came to be known as “Seward’s Folly,” a reference to Secretary of State William Seward, who negotiated the deal under President Andrew Johnson.

Critics called Alaska a frozen wasteland, though Farrow said that description was inaccurate, then and now.

The deal attracted relatively little attention in the U.S. even though the country was rapidly expanding westward. The purchase provoked a bit of squabbling in Washington, and some newspapers argued against it, but it was never a major political issue, she said.

Little U.S. government investment

In its early days as a U.S. territory, Alaska and its Indigenous people were mostly ignored. The U.S. government invested little, and the few Americans who ventured there tended to be missionaries or adventurers who were largely on their own.

Only decades later did Alaska begin to develop. Gold was discovered in 1896, Alaska became a state in 1959, and large oil reserves were found in the 1950s and ’60s.

There are some Russians today who think Alaska should be theirs. When Farrow went to Russia in 2017 after her book was published and spoke to groups, she could always count on a predictable question.

“In every audience there was at least one person who asked whether or not the United States had legitimately purchased Alaska,” she said. “There has been a very strong narrative in Russia that we either did not pay for it or it was a lease, and we should have returned it already.”

The Crimea link

While Alaska changed hands peacefully, Crimea is a territory that’s often been in conflict due to its strategic location as a peninsula jutting into the Black Sea.

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Russia wanted greater influence in the Black sea and the surrounding region when it launched a war against the Ottoman Empire in 1853. The Russians expected a quick and easy victory and did not expect Western powers to intervene.

But Britain and France joined the war against Russia, and the Russian army proved far less capable than Czar Nicholas I anticipated. Russia suffered a humiliating defeat.

In the 20th century, Crimea was part of the Soviet Union. But when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Crimea became part of newly independent Ukraine.

Fast-forward to 2014. Putin sent Russian troops into Crimea as he launched his invasion of Ukraine, seizing the territory without any serious fighting.

Ukraine is demanding Crimea back and regularly carries out airstrikes with drones and missiles at the Russian forces there. Crimea will have to be part of any serious peace negotiations and could feature in the Trump-Putin summit this Friday.