Alaska\’s Russian Roots: Trump and Putin Set for Historic Encounter

Alaska’s Bering Shore: A Tale of Two Continents

The Bering Strait is a narrow body of water that separates the eastern tip of Russia from the westernmost point of Alaska. It is the place where the United States once bought territory from the Russian Empire more than 150 years ago.

1. The Dawn of Russian Exploration

• In 1728, the Danish explorer Vitus Bering sailed through the strait on an expedition for Tsarist Russia, revealing the existence of what is now Alaska to the West.
• Alaska had been inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years long before Bering’s arrival.
• Bering’s expedition started a century of Russian seal hunting. The first Russian colony was established on southern Kodiak Island.
• In 1799, Tsar Paul I created the Russian-American Company, which exploited the lucrative fur trade and clashed with the Indigenous inhabitants.
• Overhunting of seals and sea otters collapsed the populations, undermining the settlers’ economy.
• The Russian Empire sold the territory to Washington for $7.2 million in 1867.
• Washington’s purchase of an area twice the size of Texas was ridiculed in the United States and dubbed “Seward’s folly” after the deal’s mastermind, Secretary of State William Seward.

2. Russian Language and Orthodox Faith in Alaska

• After the Russian-American Company was created, the Russian Orthodox Church settled in Alaska and remains the most significant Russian influence in the state.
• More than 35 churches, some with onion-shaped domes, decorate the Alaskan coast.
• The Orthodox diocese of Alaska is the oldest in North America and maintains a seminary on Kodiak Island.
• A local dialect derived from Russian mixed with Indigenous languages survived for decades in various communities, especially near Anchorage. The dialect has now essentially vanished.
• Near the massive glaciers on the southern Kenai Peninsula, Russian is still taught in a small rural school of the “Old Believers.” A community that started in the 1960s teaches Russian to about a hundred students.

3. Neighbors in the Bering Strait

• In 2008, Sarah Palin, the then-governor of Alaska and Republican vice‑presidential pick for John McCain, famously declared, “They’re our next‑door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.”
• While the Alaskan mainland does not have a view of Russia, two islands in the Bering Strait are separated by just 2.5 miles (four kilometers). Big Diomede Island of Russia lies west of Little Diomede Island of the United States, where only a few dozen people live.
• Further south, in October 2022, two Russians landed on the remote St. Lawrence Island, which is a few dozen miles from the Russian coast, to seek asylum. They fled weeks after Putin ordered an unpopular mobilization of citizens to boost his invasion of Ukraine.
• For years, the United States military has said it regularly intercepts Russian aircraft that venture too close to American airspace in the region.
• Russia, however, is not interested in reclaiming the territory it once held. In 2014, President Putin said Alaska is “too cold.”

4. Present‑Day Context

Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin will hold a high‑stakes meeting about the Ukraine war on Friday in Alaska. This site, purchased by the United States from Russia over 150 years ago, sits at the narrow intersection of history and contemporary geopolitics.