Russians arrived on the western shores of North America after
crossing their Eastern Ocean in 1741. After an initial period of
exploration, they settled down for a full century until
relinquishing their colonies to the United States. From 1799 to
1867, the colonies were governed by the Russian-American
Company, a for-profit monopoly chartered under the deathbed
instructions of Catherine the Great. The Russian-American period
has been treated unkindly by historians from both sides. Soviet-
era accounts, though acknowledging the skill and courage of
Russian adventurers, saw this Tsarist experiment at building a
capitalist, American society as fundamentally flawed, casting
the native Aleuts as exploited serfs. American accounts,
glossing over our own subsequent exploitation of Alaska's
indigenous population and natural resources, sought to emphasize
that we liberated Alaska from Russian overseers who were worse,
and would never be coming back. Careful study of primary sources
has convinced me that these interpret