March 1920. Many Alash leaders then joined the Communist Party and worked for Soviet Kazakhstan, only to perish during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. After 1990 the name “Alash” reappeared, but as the title of a small Kazakh pan-Turkic and Pan-Islamic party and its journal. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; KAZAKHSTAN AND KAZAKHS; NATIONALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jackson, George, and Devlin, Robert, eds. (1989). Dictionary of the Russian Revolution. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Olcott, Martha Brill. (1995). The Kazakhs, 2nd ed. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Wheeler, Geoffrey. (1964). The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Alaska is the largest state in the United States, equal to one-fifth of the country’s continental land mass. Situated in the extreme northwestern region of North America, it is separated from Russian Asia by the Bering Strait (51 miles; 82 kilometers). Commonly nicknamed “The Last Frontier” or “Land of the Midnight Sun,” the state’s official name derives from an Aleut word meaning “great land” or “that which the sea breaks against.” Alaska is replete with high-walled fjords and majestic mountains, with slow-moving glaciers and still-active volcanoes. The state is also home to Eskimos and the Aleut and Athabaskan Indians, as well as about fourteen thousand Tlingit, Tshimshian, and Haida
ALASKA
Cartoon ridiculing the U.S. decision to purchase Alaska from Russia. © BETTMANN/CORBIS people- comprising about 16 percent of the Alaskan population. (The term Eskimo is used for Alaskan natives, while Inuit is used for Eskimos living in Canada.) Inupiat and Yupik are the two main Eskimo groups. While the Inupiat speak Inupiaq and reside in the north and northwest parts of Alaska, the Yupik speak Yupik and live in the south and southwest. Juneau is the state’s capital, but Anchorage is the largest city.
The first Russians to come to the Alaskan mainland and the Aleutian Islands were Alexei Chirikov (a Russian naval captain) and Vitus Bering (a Dane working for the Russians), who arrived in 1741. Tsar Peter the Great (1672-1725) encouraged the explorers, eager to gain the fur trade of Alaska and the markets of China. Hence, for half a century thereafter, intrepid frontiersmen and fur traders (promyshlenniki) ranged from the Kurile Islands to southeastern Alaska, often exploiting native seafaring skills to mine the rich supply of sea otter and seal pelts for the lucrative China trade. In 1784, one of these brave adventurers, Grigory Shelekhov (1747-1795), established the first colony in Alaska, encouraged by Tsarina Catherine II (the Great) (1729-1796). Missionaries soon followed the traders, beginning in 1794, aiming to convert souls to Christianity. The beneficial role of the Russian missions in Alaska is only beginning to be fully appreciated. Undoubtedly, some Russian imperialists used the missionary enterprise as an instrument in their own endeavors. However, as recently discovered documents in the U.S. Library of Congress show, the selfless work of some Russian Orthodox priests, such as Metropolitan Innokenty Veni-aminov (1797-1879), not only promoted harmonious relations between Russians and Alaskans, but preserved the culture and languages of the Native Alaskans.
Diplomatic relations between Russia and the United States, which began in 1808, were relatively cordial in the early 1800s. They were unhampered by the Monroe Doctrine, which warned that the American continent was no territory for future European colonization. Tsar Alexander I admired the American republic, and agreed in April 1824 to restrict Russia’s claims on the America continent to Alaska. American statesmen had attempted several times between 1834 and 1867 to purchase Alaska from Russia. On March 23, 1867, the expansionALBANIANS, CAUCASIAN ist-minded Secretary of State William H. Seward met with Russian minister to Washington Baron Edouard de Stoeckl and agreed on a price of $7,200,000. This translated into about 2.5 cents per acre for 586,400 square miles of territory, twice the size of Texas. Overextended geographically, the Russians were happy at the time to release the burden. However, the discovery of gold in 1896 and of the largest oil field in North America (near Prud-hoe Bay) in 1968 may have caused second thoughts. See also: BERING, VITUS JONASSEN; DEZHNEV, SEMEN IVANOVICH; NORTHERN PEOPLES; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bolkhovitinov, N. N., and Pierce, Richard A. (1996). Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska, 1834 -1867. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press. Hoxie, Frederick E., and Mancall, Peter C. (2001). American Nations: Encounters in Indian Country, 1850 to the Present. New York: Routledge. Thomas, David Hurst. (200). Exploring Native North America. New York: Oxford University Press.
Albanians are an ancient people of southeastern Caucasia who originally inhabited the area of the modern republic of Azerbaijan north of the River Kur. In the late fourth century they acquired from Armenia the territory that now comprises the southern half of the republic. According to the Greek geographer Strabo (died c. 20 C.E.), the Albanians were a federation of twenty-six tribes, each originally having its own king, but by his time united under a single ruler. The people’s name for themselves is unknown, but the Greeks and Romans called their country Albania. The original capital of Albania was the city of Cabala or Cabal-aca, north of the River Kur. In the fifth century, however, the capital was transferred to Partaw (now Barda), located south of the river.
According to tradition, the Albanians converted to Christianity early in the fourth century. It is more likely, however, that this occurred in the early fifth century, when St. Mesrob Mashtots, inventor of the Armenian alphabet, devised one for the Albanians. Evidence of this alphabet was lost until 1938, when it was identified in an Armenian manuscript. All surviving Albanian literature was written in, not translated into, Armenian.
The Persians terminated the Albanian monarchy in about 510, after which the country was ruled by an oligarchy of local princes that was headed by the Mihranid prince of Gardman. In 624, the Byzantine emperor Heraclius appointed the head of the Mihrani family as presiding prince of Albania. When the country was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century and the last of the Mihranid presiding princes was assassinated in 822, the Albanian polity began to break up. Thereafter, the title “king of Albania” was claimed by one or another dynasty in Armenia or Georgia until well into the Mongol period. The city of Partaw was destroyed by Rus pirates in 944.
The Albanians had their own church and its own catholicos, or supreme patriarch, who was subordinate to the patriarch of Armenia. The Albanian church endured until 1830, when it was suppressed after the Russian conquest. The Albanian ethnic group appears to survive as the Udins, a people living in northwestern Azerbaijan. Their Northeast Caucasian language (laced with Armenian) is classified as a member of the Lesguian group. Some Udins are Muslim; the rest belong to the Armenian Church. See also: ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS; AZERBAIJAN AND AZERIS; CAUCASUS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bais, Marco. (2001). Albania Caucasica. Milan: Mimesis. Daskhurantsi, Moses. (1961).History of the Caucasian Albanians. London: Oxford University Press. Moses of Khoren. (1978). History of the Armenians, tr. Robert W. Thomson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Toumanoff, Cyrille. (1963). Studies in Christian Caucasian History. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Swedish researcher Magnus Huss first used the term “alcoholism” in 1849 to describe a variety of physical symptoms associated with drunkenness. By the 1860s, Russian medical experts built on
Huss’s theories, relying on models of alcoholism developed in French and German universities to conduct laboratory studies on the effects of alcohol on the body and mind. They adopted the term “alcoholism” (alkogolizm) as opposed to “drunkenness” (pyanstvo) to connote the phenomenon of disease, and determined that it mainly afflicted the lower classes.
In 1896, at the urging of the Swiss-born physician and temperance advocate E. F. Erisman, the Twelfth International Congress of Physicians in Moscow established a special division on alcoholism as a medical problem. Within a year the Kazan Temperance Society established the first hospital for alcoholics in Kazan. In 1897, physician and temperance advocate A. M. Korovin founded a private hospital for alcoholics in Moscow, and in 1898 the
