{"id":28853,"date":"2025-08-14T15:31:15","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T09:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/?p=28853"},"modified":"2025-08-14T15:31:15","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T09:46:15","slug":"alaska-a-source-of-russian-imperial-nostalgia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/alaska-a-source-of-russian-imperial-nostalgia\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska: a source of Russian imperial nostalgia"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Alaska, the US state that will host the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on Friday, is a source of imperial nostalgia and often less-than-serious territorial claims in Russia.<\/p>\n

The territory that Russia sold to the United States in 1867 is now a symbol of the entwined history of the countries, whose relations have been severely damaged since Russia launched its offensive in Ukraine in 2022.<\/p>\n

To some experts, the summit in Alaska evoked memories of the thaw between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War.<\/p>\n

“It’s a classically orchestrated summit, like in the era of detente,” Russian political scientist Fyodor Lukyanov said on Telegram.<\/p>\n

“Its symbolic significance is the absence of intermediaries: the powers, so to speak, decide for themselves,” he added, saying that China is “not close” to Alaska and that Europe is “as far away as possible”.<\/p>\n

– Fur trading hub –<\/strong><\/p>\n

But beyond being a unique meeting place, Alaska also fuels Russian memories of the Tsarist empire, the historic predecessor of the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

“For Russia, Alaska symbolises the peak of an expansion,” Alexander Baunov, senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said on the centre’s website.<\/p>\n

It was “when the Russian continental empire had, for the only time, succeeded in crossing an ocean like the European empires”, Baunov said.<\/p>\n

A Russian colony since the 18th century, Alaska was eventually sold to the United States for $7.2 million in 1867 by Tsar Alexander II.<\/p>\n

The remote territory was economically very difficult for the Russians to exploit and at the time its sale was welcomed by the Imperial Court as the country was struggling economically.<\/p>\n

But the transaction later came to be seen as a regrettable bargain after what formerly was a fur trading hub turned out to house crucial natural resources: gold and oil.<\/p>\n

– ‘Our bears’ –<\/strong><\/p>\n

In recent years, the price at which Alaska was sold, considered by some to be ridiculously low, and the legal validity of the transaction have become regularly recurring debates in Russia.<\/p>\n

In July 2022, in the midst of patriotic fervour in Russia and as tensions soared between Moscow and Washington following the offensive against Ukraine, the Alaska issue resurfaced.<\/p>\n

The speaker of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, spoke of “lands to be returned”, describing Alaska as a “disputed territory”.<\/p>\n

Russia’s authorities are apparently not interested in reclaiming it.<\/p>\n

In 2014, Vladimir Putin, asked by a pensioner about the possibility, replied: “My dear, why do you need Alaska?” adding the territory was “too cold”.<\/p>\n

Still, the idea of reclaiming Alaska is an endless source of memes widely circulating on Russian social media.<\/p>\n

One of the most famous claims that “our soul” suffered from the loss of Alaska because “it’s where our bears live”.<\/p>\n

The recapture of Alaska is even mentioned in a 1990s hit by a rock band Putin likes, Lyube, with the lyrics: “Stop messing around, America… And give back our Alaskan lands.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alaska, the US state that will host the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump on Friday, is a source of imperial nostalgia and often less-than-serious territorial claims in Russia. The territory that Russia sold to the United States in 1867 is now a symbol of the entwined history of the countries, whose relations have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28853"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28853"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28854,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28853\/revisions\/28854"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nepalsamaj.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}