3 days ago
When US bought Alaska for $7.2 million and why Trump and Putin's meeting revives the story
When Donald Trump said on Monday that he would meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin 'in Russia' this Friday, it sounded like another of the US President's verbal slips. But 158 years ago, he would have been right.
Alaska, with its onion-domed churches, fur trade legacy and once Russian-named capital Novo-Arkhangelsk, was part of the Tsar's empire until 1867, when it was sold to the United States for just $7.2 million. The deal was mocked by Washington and mourned in St Petersburg, only to become one of history's most spectacular bargains.
As Putin prepares to land in Alaska this week, traces of Russia's past are still visible. From the wild, rugged shores of Baranof Island to Anchorage's Orthodox churches, the legacy endures. In Sitka, the green dome of St Michael's Cathedral rises against a backdrop of glaciers, still standing on the same spot where it was built more than 150 years ago.
Russia's presence in Alaska began with fur traders, not armies. In the mid-18th century, merchants and adventurers pushed east across Siberia in search of lucrative sea otter pelts. By the 1780s, Catherine the Great had authorised the creation of the Russian-American Company, granting it a monopoly over trade and governance in the territory.
Alexander Baranov, a merchant, tightened Russia's grip in the late 18th century, expanding settlements and crushing native resistance, most famously from the Tlingit, who called him 'No Heart.' Russian Orthodox priests soon followed, building missions and churches.
By the mid-19th century, the Russian empire saw Alaska as more liability than prize. The Crimean war had weakened the empire financially, and the growing reach of Britain's navy in the Pacific heightened fears that Alaska could be seized in a future conflict.
As per a report by The Guardian, in July 1867, Eduard de Stoeckl, Russia's envoy in Washington and chief negotiator of the sale, confided to a friend: 'My treaty has met with strong opposition … but this stems from the fact that no one at home has any idea of the true condition of our colonies. It was simply a matter of selling them, or watching them being taken from.'
The sale was intended as a diplomatic win for both sides. Russia gained much-needed cash and a potential ally across the Atlantic while avoiding a clash with Britain. The US acquired new territory that would push back European influence and extend its reach into the Pacific.
At the time, neither country celebrated the deal as a triumph. In St Petersburg, many believed the price was insultingly low. As per a report by The Guardian, the liberal newspaper Golos condemned it as 'deeply angering all true Russians' and asked, 'Is the nation's sense of pride truly so unworthy of attention that it can be sacrificed for a mere six or seven million dollar[s]?'
In the US, Secretary of State William H Seward, who negotiated the treaty, was ridiculed for spending what critics considered a fortune on an icy wilderness. The New-York Daily Tribune as per The Guardian, dismissed Alaska as 'the nominal possession of impassable deserts of snow' and wrote, 'We may make a treaty with Russia … but we cannot make a treaty with the North Wind or the Snow King.'
Some suspected Russia had sold land of little value. '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 New York World wrote on 1 April 1867.
Within decades, those doubts vanished. Gold rushes in the late 19th century and the discovery of vast oilfields in the 20th century turned Alaska into one of America's most resource-rich territories. What critics once called Seward's folly became a symbol of strategic foresight.
Yet the sale price remained a sore point in Russian memory. In 1974, during American protests over the low price the USSR paid for wheat, Soviet trade official Vladimir Alkimov drily noted that Alaska had been sold for only $7 million.
In 1867, the deal briefly opened a period of warmth between Russia and the United States. The New York Herald wrote that 'the cession of Russian Alaska becomes a matter of great importance. It indicates the extent to which Russia is ready to carry out her entente cordiale with the United States.' That goodwill reached its peak in 1871 when Grand Duke Alexei Alexandrovich visited New York with a naval squadron, receiving parades, receptions and civic honours.
When Trump and Putin meet in Alaska this week, the historical parallels will be hard to ignore. For Ukraine, the hope is that any renewed warmth between Washington and Moscow will not come at the expense of another nation's territory, and that the days of trading land like currency in great power deals remain firmly in the past.
(With inputs from The Guardian)
