By Alexander Dolitsky
The most important aspect of the high north’s ethnohistory was the exploration and colonization of Siberia and Alaska by Russian empire officials. The process of exploration of the northern territories in the seventeenth century caused a significant transformation of population, strengthened conflicts between local ethnic groups, and changed modes of production and material culture of the aboriginal population, among other effects. Russian officials did not wish to exterminate the aboriginal northern population, but rather, in cooperation with local native leaders, to reform them into meticulous suppliers of valuable furs.
From the point of view of Russian officialdom, the process of exploring the North American territories presumably had the same rationale as in Siberia; the Russians viewed North America as a geographical continuation of their politics (Alekseev, [Explorations of the Far East and Russian America by the Russian People]. Moscow: Nauka, 1982, p. 86). The Russians used a socioeconomic and political strategy in North America like that used in Siberia, imposing the local head tax (yasak) and strengthening their influence.
The process of colonization of the eastern territories was quite elaborate. One of the peculiarities of Siberia’s aboriginal populations, the Far East, and northwestern North America was the absence of any State organization. Lacking an institutional defense against the sophisticated social organization and military superiority of Russia, the native population had to accept Russian dominion and consequently agreed to pay yasak. Another peculiarity in the Russian population of the eastern territories was the absence of serfdom. Oppressed Russian peasants who had escaped from their landlords in the European part of Russia often fled to Siberia, the Far East, or North America to attain freedom. The Russian authorities, instead of having them prosecuted, surprisingly promoted them to government jobs.
Thus, when the government had established its control over the northeastern territories, the commercial people (promyshlenniki and kuptsy) began organizing commercial companies (artels) and markets (yarmarkas and bazaars), and the Russian Orthodox Church began sending missionaries to the East. Thus, in contrast to peasant movements, which had a spontaneous character, the organized government expeditions to the East already had in place a colonial system, i.e. the imposition of regular yasak and the extension of State territories.
After discovery of the Aleutian Islands and southern Alaska, series of commercial expeditions to North America from Siberian and Far Eastern Pacific ports (Okhotsk and Nizhne-Kamchatsk) took place. Between 1743 and 1786, the Russian Government Treasury received from North America commercial products (primarily fur and sea mammals) worth 193,798 rubbles. In addition, they collected products worth 42,394 rubbles in yasak (Makarova, [Russians in the Pacific Ocean in the middle of the eighteenth century]. Moscow: Nauka, 1968, pp. 55, 81). One effect of these enterprises was a significant increase in the Russian population in North America. In 1794, the Russian population in Alaska was over 800, compared to 500 in 1788 (Alekseev 1982: 38-39). In 1799, the population in Russian America controlled by Russians was about 8,000, which included only 225 Russians (Fedorova, [Russian Population of Alaska and California]. Moscow: Nauka, 1971, pp. 140-141).
Russians in North America hunted sea mammals, fished, built ships, and attempted to cultivate crops. Several Russian settlements were established on the Aleutian Islands, Kodiak Island, the Kenai Peninsula, and southeastern Alaska. By the end of the eighteenth century the Russian-American Company was founded in Alaska. The company monopolized all commercial enterprises in Russian North America and held almost all political power in the region. Until the U.S. government purchased Alaska in 1867, Siberian-North American contact was very close. The Russians’ management of Alaska always represented the interests of the tsarist government and was carried out in cooperation with their Siberian partners and supporters.
It is important to stress that many historic material and textbooks published prior to the 1990s describe the Russian period of Alaska’s history as a bloody and ruthless colonization of northern territories. Russia’s Eastward expansion into Siberia, the Far East, and Alaska was motivated by exploration of new hunting territories (James R. Gibson, Feeding the Russian Fur Trade. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969). Often, Russian explorers were ruthless toward aboriginal populations, but overall, this movement was much more humane than the colonization of Australia or the colonization of North American territories in the Lower 48. The aboriginal population in Siberia and Alaska had not been placed on reservations or dislocated from their homeland as they were in the Lower 48.
The writer was raised in the former Soviet Union before settling in the U.S. in 1978. He moved to Juneau in 1986 where he taught Russian studies and Archeology at the University of Alaska, Southeast, and Social Studies at the Alyeska Central School of the Alaska Department of Education and Children Development. From 1990 to 2022, he served as director and president of the Alaska-Siberian Research Center, publishing extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography.
Please don’t publish such dribble w/out doing unbiased research. You may desire to reed Cook’s Journal of his third trip around the world and his interaction w/Russians in Ak and how they witnessed their treatment of Alaskan Natives.. Quite different story than what the author attempts to project.
Great article. Always good content and true. I miss the pre Olympic hockey games of the young teams from Sweden, Norway and Russia competing here at the Sullivan Arena as they did in the past late 1980’s. My family knew we would watch some exciting matches. A person gets a lot of ground information and the spirit of the countries involved in those contact ice sports. Norway, Sweden and the USA tried their best to follow the rules. Russia always threw the rules out the door and played the way they wanted. Sometimes it was really brutal with the Russians in the lead for brutal plays. But the games for three days were an absolute, planned events for my family. We loved hockey. I’m sorry we don’t see those games here in Alaska anymore. They were good attention getters and tension relievers.
Thank you for sharing the history.
There were and still are a lot of Aleuts that would disagree with the word “exploration”. Maybe they weren’t moved to reservations but many were made slaves.
My thoughts; ‘exploration’? Exploitation, more likely.
I would not glorify the treatment of the Natives by the Russians – even compared to European immigrant treatment of eastern North American tribes. Russians wanted fur, money, and slaves – but there were never that many Russians in Alaska. Lower 48 had many times more immigrants, and friction ensued.
The Russians did exploit furs for money, but were not seeking slaves during their eastward expansion, nor did they genocide the Native peoples they encountered.
West of the Ural Mountains Imperial Russia had a serf class whose members belonged to each estate they lived on, essentially a slave class of the same racial and ethnic people as the higher classes.
The serfs were freed by decree by an Imperialistic government in Moscow during the same period African purchased slaves were freed by what called itself an enlightened Constitutional Republic in Washington.
The abuses of Aleuts by the Russian-American Company was conducted contrary to Russian law for enhancing corporate profits/greed.
The distances involved precluded the Tsarist government from being able to enforce their laws. The same motivation our modern corporations use to operate overseas outside US jurisduction to exploit foreigners for their private profits by avoiding our labor laws.
Sorry Mr Dolitsky, but I’m not buying your narrative here. To make the Russian colonists out to be some type of altruistic ambassadors of goodwill doesn’t fly. To say the natives of Siberia did not suffer the fate of the American Indian or the Australian aborigines, is not believable. Alaskan natives are fortunate they became Americans before Stalin came to power. Same with Imperial Japan.
Typically Russian, they viewed the whole world as THEIRS, to exploit and enslave for the Greater Glory of their Leader, whoever that might be. Always a,strongman/ tyrant
Russian apologist article, pathetic
At least an abridged narrative of the Professor’s Vita is referenced. His over the top previous renderings were unnecessary.
Another excellent summary on pre-1867 exploration of the region we now know as Alaska by a real expert–Alexander Dolitsky. Besides the fur trade and agriculture, the Russians did attempt to mine gold on the Kenai Penionsula and traded with the Ahtna peiple for native copper, which they used in their metal foundaries both in Kodiak and later Sitka. The Russians also mined iron for construction of marine vessels south of Seward–the first shipyard to operate on the West Coast of North America (in the 1790s). The metal foudary in Sitka was well known to those operating on the west coast of North America. The foundary supplied plows, agricultrural tools, copper church bells and various implements for the Spanish ranchers and Roman Catholic missions in California. When the Califoirnia Gold Rush took off in 1849, entreprenuers from San Francisco sailed north to Sitka and purchased all available items manufactured at the Sitka foundary. When Russia sold Russian America to a then very friendly United States, the popultion was small and dominated by indigenous groups and the Creole Class of mixed Russian, Athabascan, Tlingit and other origins. The Creole class far outnumbered the Russians at the time. It was a classic case of ‘who exactly conquered who’.
Mr. Coleman, lighten up: it’s everyman to his fantasies.
There is some truth in all readers’ comments. Nevertheless, I have my reservation to believe, for example, that several dozen Russian hunters could apprehend and force several hundred Aleuts to travel long and dangerous distances by baidarkas from Aleutian Islands to Pribilof Islands. Pribilof Islands were discovered by Russians in 1786, and in 1788 a small group of Russians accompanied by Aleuts began an enterprise on the islands. I visited St. Paul and St George eight times in the capacity of a lecturer on cruise ships (e.g., World Discoverer, Cruise West, etc.) in the mid-1990s and early 2000s. In fact, St. Paul is the largest Aleut community outside the Aleutian chain.
In 1985, archaeologists Stan Davis, Karen Swanson and I excavated several sites in the Poison Cove, Southeast Alaska. In the early/mid 19th century, Russian promyshlenniki arrived at this location with several hundred Aleuts. Aleuts peddled baidarkas long distance from the Aleutian Islands; they were unfamiliar with the seasonal cycles and environment of Southeast Alaska. So, many Aleuts of Unalaska have died after eating toxin-laded shellfish from a local beach. As a result, this cove was named Poison.
In short, although many secondary sources suggest that Russian hunters forced some Natives’ relocation, there were some cases of mutual cooperation between Russian and Native groups.
banishment to Siberia, criminals conquered or took control of Siberia and then started on Alaska by force.
Russian America co took over after the discovery. the co made improvements but was poorly run and supported from the Russian side.
to say it was an improvement from the settling of north America is a fantasy.
forced taxes in the form of conscription was the method that was used.
a failed business plan, over harvest of sea otters and seals = reduced revenue.
sell out and move on.
sounds familiar maybe we should do the same
russia
History revisionists should be called out every time. They find evidence that is uncomfortable, decide they’re at least as reliable a resource as those that were actually there a couple hundred years ago, toss in a few assumptions, divide by the square root of roast beef and BOOM… publish manure as fact hoping no one notices. Russians were a scourge on the Alaska Native population as well as sea otter and other populations.
History professor Anne Hyde wrote that Russians would abduct the children of up to half of the male populations of a given community. Slavery was the Russian stock in trade and enslaving indigenous Alaska populations is not to be overlooked or revised by anyone, particularly a Russian that want’s to paint a romanticized version of his own heritage.
I wonder what current Ukrainians might think of Russian cultural ethics?
…and that’ their own brethren. Alaska Natives were viewed as an animalistic inconvenience. Enslaving them, raping them or bombing them from offshore was nothing.
Straight talk there, Dolitsky. No revisionist nonsense at all.
What would you expect from a Russian, liars each and every one I have ever met, why we let them I will never know. I guess they are white, so they do fill that right wing quota
I recommend MRAK readers to get acquainted with Lydia Black book “Russians in Alaska, 1732-1867” for an adequate understanding of this chapter of Alaska history. Below is my short description of her book.
Russians in Alaska, 1732-1867
Lydia Black
(Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2004) xv pp. 328 pp., photos, maps, illustrations, endnotes, bibliographic references, index, US$29.95 (pb.). ISBN 1-889963-04-6.
Lydia Black has produced a most valuable addition to our knowledge of the Russian period of Alaska’s history from economic and sociopolitical perspectives. The subject matter of this monograph constitutes a continuation and compilation of the Black’s numerous publications on the ethnohistory and anthropology of Russian population in Alaska. The focus of this monograph is on economic and sociopolitical developments of Russian population in Alaska from Mikhail Gvozdev’s discovery of Cape Prince of Wales and King Island in 1732 to the purchase of Alaska by the U.S. government in 1867.
Fifteen comprehensive chapters and extensive bibliography divide the introduction and the index. In investigating the history of the people of the Russian and North American North, the author examined: (1) the history of Russia’s eastward expansion into Siberia, Alaska, and California; (2) demographic fluctuations of native and Russian groups; (3) the development of geographic explorations of the Russian Far East, Alaska, and North America; (4) the changes in the ethnic structure of the Russian population during Russian-American period in Alaska and in California (1732-1867); (5) socioeconomic development of the Russian-American Company from the inception to its close in Alaska; and (6) interrelationships between Russian-American Company and neighboring populations, and rival countries. The author used primarily source materials from regional and local archives, church records, as well as extensive secondary sources.
Lydia Black, an authority on the Russian period of Alaska’s history, passed away in 2007. But her numerous publications, including this book, will remain an invaluable source of information and reference for students of history, ethnohistory, anthropology, and anyone interested in the subject for many generations to come.