THE U.S. TO SELL ALASKA BACK TO RUSSIA(Joke About Sale of Alaska Hits a Nerve in Russia)

It may have been a joke, but some media organizations and politicians in Moscow appear to have taken half-seriously a satirical suggestion that the United States should sell Alaska back to Russia for $1 trillion. The tongue-in-cheek proposal published in a U.S. newspaper raised the vague notion still present here that Russia could one day retrieve the territory it sold to the U.S.

The fate of Alaska, nicknamed Russian America, has long been an affront to Russian national pride.Vitus Bering, a Danish sea captain serving in the Russian Fleet, and captain Alexey Chirikov claimed Alaska after discovering it in 1741. The Russians established a commercial entity, the Russian-American Company, to capitalize on their new possession. During the Crimean War, British and French fleets attacked and burned Petropavlovsk, the Alaska colony's supply point. As Russia's hold on the territory was threatened, Russian diplomats opted to sell it to friendly Americans than risk having it seized by British foes. Another reason for the sale was that in the 1860s the Russian-American Company was making significant financial losses, thus becoming a burden for the Russian state coffers. After Alaska was sold to the U.S., the company holdings were liquidated. The U.S. bought Alaska in 1867 for $7.2 million -- or two cents an acre. The move drew criticism in Russia over the loss of territory, and also in the United States, where the wisdom of public spending on an "ice box" was questioned. During the Soviet era, rumor persisted here that Alaska had not been sold at all, but was instead leased to the U.S. for a 99- or 150-year period -- a theory not backed up by any historical evidence.The speculation was partly based on the fact that following the 1917 Russian Revolution, the communist government renounced all previous laws and international treaties concluded by the Czarist government, including the Alaska sale.

The sale of Alaska to the United States triggered a good deal of editorializing on the part of newspaper writers in America and elsewhere. Following are extracts from five publications that show a range of response to the purchase.

New York World, April 1, 1867"Russia has sold us a sucked orange. Whatever may be the value of that territory and its outlying islands to us, it has ceased to be of any to Russia. The only way she ever did, or ever could, utilize the northwest coast was in prosecution of the fur trade. But that trade has declined and nearly run out by the destruction of the animals (particularly the otter), which have been hunted so industriously that not enough were left to breed and keep up the race. What remains of the Russian fur trade is not of sufficient importance to justify the expense of the naval protection required by the establishments. Russia has therefore done wisely in selling the territory and islands which to her had become useless."

Chicago Evening Journal, April 1, 1867"The paltry sum of $7,000,000 for a country nearly eight times as large as this state [Illinois] and 400 miles of coast, shows Russia has some ulterior object to gain.....[It] more than doubles our Pacific Coast, yet adds but little to the productive territory of the nation. Russian America is a dreary waste of snow and ice. ...Its military importance is its chief value, although its commercial significance may become, eventually, very great. The commerce of the Pacific has not been developed to any considerable extent, but it is destined to pass and perhaps rival, and probably surpass, that of the Atlantic. This cession of Russian America will probably help us materially in controlling that commerce."

New York Daily Tribune, April 11, 1867"We simply obtain by the treaty the nominal possession of impassable deserts of snow, vast tracts of dwarf timbers, frozen rivers, inaccessible mountain ranges, with a few islands where the climate is more moderate, and a scanty population supported by fishing and trading with the Indians. Virtually we get,

by an expenditure of seven millions in gold, Sitka and the Prince of Wales Islands. All the rest is waste territory, and no energy of the American people will be sufficient to make mining speculations in the 60th degree north latitude profitable, or to reclaim wilderness which border on the Arctic Ocean. We may make a treaty with Russia but we can not make a treaty with the North Wind, or the Snow King."

Portland Daily Oregonian, April 2, 1867"The purchase by our Government of the Russian North American Possessions is the most valuable acquisition of territory obtained by the United States since the cession of California. The negotiation was entirely unexpected, as no hint of it had escaped from any quarter. Considering the great value of this acquisition the sum paid for it-seven millions of dollars must be allowed to be small indeed. We paid ten million for Arizona, a piece of unproductive territory that can never be as great a value to the United States as this new purchase."

The London Times, April 2, 1867"Our policy is clear. Since we have no right whatever to protest against an act entirely within the discretion of the Russian and United States Governments, let us not place ourselves in a false position by vain remonstrance. It is said that British Columbia is almost cut off from the Pacific by the occupation by what ought to be a portion of its seaboard. The sufficient answer is that it was effectually cut off before, for America has only bought what belonged to Russia, and no Englishman ever dreamt that Russia would part with it to us. We are materially no worse off than before, while our moral right to our own possessions remains absolutely untouched."

THE STORY BEHIND THE SALE

By the 1850s, Russian interest in Alaska began to wane as a consequence of changing economic prospects and geopolitical concerns. The fur trade in sea otter pelts, which had been profitable in Russian America for more than a century, slumped for both ecological and commercial reasons. Russia’s contemporaneous acquisition of new lands from China lessened further the importance of Alaska. Emperor Aleksandr II (1818-1881) added the northern portion of the Amur region to the Russian Empire under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858, and the Maritime region east of the Ussuri River under the Treaty of Peking in 1860. These acquisitions shifted the focus of Russia’s eastern attentions from Alaska to the area around Khabarovsk and Vladivostok, which provided better access to the Pacific Ocean and the markets of East Asia. After weighing all its options, the tsarist government concluded that it had little choice but to sell its American colony. Great Britain had shown sustained interest in obtaining Alaska as an addition to its territory in British North America (Canada), and had potentially threatened it during the Crimean War (1853-56) after attacking the Kamchatka Peninsula. Russia in particular recognized that the long-standing economic ambition of the Hudson’s Bay Company to tap Alaskan resources made the region vulnerable to British designs. But, after losing the Crimean War to Britain, France, and Turkey in 1856, the tsar was in no mood to negotiate with Great Britain or to see Alaska absorbed by a recent enemy. Russia thus turned to the only other potential buyer, the United States. In the mid-nineteenth century, Russia and the United States were drawn together by a common hostility toward Great Britain and a basic agreement on most foreign policy issues. Of the major European powers, Russia was the only one to support the Union in the American Civil War of 1861-65. The United States had already become aware of the possible Russian interest in selling Alaska in the mid-1850s, during the term of President Franklin Pierce. Faced with the breakup of the nation, however, the administrations of Presidents James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln were in no position to respond positively to Russian offers. Ardent expansionists such as William H. Seward, secretary of state under both Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, nonetheless retained an abiding interest in obtaining Alaska, which they saw as an integral component of Manifest Destiny and the American drive to the Pacific. In 1867, Seward reached an agreement with the Russian ambassador in Washington to purchase the territory for $7.2 million.