especially for the valuable sea otter skins (for exchange with China for tea), and Russian hunting camps soon appeared on the Aleutian Islands and along the Alaskan coast and would result in direct relations with American colonies settled by Europeans from across the North Atlantic.
A mutually advantageous and friendly distant friendship between Russia and the American colonies began in the 1760s and was based on Russian hostility toward British supremacy. At the time, Britain dominated oceanic trade and a huge empire that included India near the Russian southern borderland, Britain’s American colonies, and most of the world’s open water. Both Russia and the colonies were deeply involved economically in an Atlantic trade system that brought cargoes of rice,
1615
tobacco, sugar, and other products to Russia from the Americas in exchange for iron products (anchors, chains, and nails), coarse linen (sailcloth), and processed hemp (rope). This direct trade benefited the growing American economy considerably, especially since it avoided the restrictions of the British Navigation Acts. Inspired by Catherine the Great, Russia continued to explore the waters of the North Pacific, through the voyages of Vitus Bering and Ivan Chirikov, to discover not only that America and Asia were separated by water, but that there existed a large continental land mass just east of the Russian Empire. Moreover, Russia was rich in fur-bearing animals that would advance Russia’s lucrative Siberian fur industry. The British-Spanish imperial rivalry along the western North American coast (the Nootka Sound controversy of 1788) instigated a more clearly defined Russian presence in what would become known as Russian America, later Alaska. General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan greet the White House press corps. WHITE HOUSE PHOTOS/ ARCHIVE PHOTOS.
1616
During the American Revolutionary War, Russia intervened against Britain with Catherine the Great’s declaration of Armed Neutrality (1780), a treaty signed by several European countries that attempted to protect neutral shipping from Britain’s high-handed policies at sea, to the benefit of those North Americans seeking independence. Moreover, several Russians, most notably Fyodor Karzhavin, directly assisted the American cause and inspired an American effort to consolidate a diplomatic union with Russia with the mission of Francis Dana (1781). Though nothing came of this, the notion of a community of interests remained, both politically and commercially. Direct commerce steadily increased in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War, reaching a zenith during the Napoleonic period of continental blockade and embargo between Britain and France (1807-1812). During this time full diplomatic relations were established, with John Quincy Adams serving as the first American minister in St. Petersburg. This period of diplomatic relations also provided a precedent for a quasi-alliance between Russia and the United States that would prevail until late in the nineteenth century. The alliance was confirmed by a Treaty of Commerce in 1832 that assured each country of reciprocity in economic and political relations, and indicated the importance that each country attached to their mutual interests.
In 1797 the Russian government chartered the Russian America Company, under the capable management of Alexander Baranov, to oversee and develop its barely occupied territories in North America from headquarters first at Kodiak, then at Sitka. The main goal was economic: to preserve access to the rich sea otter fur sources along the coast as far south as California. Russia’s fur trade depended especially on New England ship captains, such as John D’Wolfe of Bristol, Rhode Island, but it also involved intense, and often hostile, relationships with Native Americans and the establishment of a costly, distant supply base in Northern California (Fort Ross) from 1812 to 1841. Russians and Americans thus very soon became the dominant on the West Coast of North America; this led Russians and Americans to refer to “their manifest destinies”-one eastern, the other western.
Mutual economic and political interests continued through the Crimean War (1854-1856) with large shipments of cotton, sugar, rice, weapons, and other American products to Russia. The American import of Russian products slackened, however, as new sources replaced Russian rope and iron, and cotton canvas replaced linen sailcloth. Nevertheless, trade between the United States and Russia in the Pacific expanded through the middle of the nineteenth century, with American shippers providing essential services for the distant Russian
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
bases in Alaska. During the Russian conflict with France and Britain, the United States provided valuable military and other supplies, and more than thirty Americans served as physicians to the Russian Army, thus reducing the isolation of Russia and augmenting the sense of a common interest.
The coincidence of a liberal, reformist government in Russia under Alexander II (1856-1881) and the U.S. Civil War formed an even closer bond, resulting in Russian naval squadrons visiting New York and San Francisco in 1863 to demonstrate support for the North. Their presence may have been influential in restraining France and Britain from more overt support of the Confederacy, thus ensuring Union victory. The aftermath witnessed several much-publicized exchange visits that included that of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gus-tavus Fox to Russia in 1866 and Grand Duke Alexis hunting buffalo in Nebraska and Colorado with George Armstrong Custer and William (Buffalo Bill) Cody in early 1872. These visits may have marked the peak of the unlikely friendship of autocratic Russia with republican America.
In the cultural arena there were at first relatively few direct contacts, despite a Russian fascination with the works of James Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Later in the century, Americans reciprocated with an appreciation of Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dos-toyevsky, and especially Leo Tolstoy, whose works produced in America a veritable craze for things Russian. This was accompanied by renewed Russian interest in American life as portrayed in stories of Mark Twain and the art of Frederic Remington, among others. Russia’s amerikanizm (obsession with American models for society and technological advance) was demonstrated especially by the adoption of Hiram Berdan’s rifle design for the Russian army and the considerable Russian presence at the Chicago World’s Fair (Columbian Exposition) in 1893.
American companies, primarily Singer and International Harvester, served the Russian quest for modernization in exchange for monopolistic rights and independent factories. By 1914 they numbered among the very largest private concerns in Russia, employing more than thirty thousand each. New York Life Insurance Company, dominating that sector in Russia, was reported to be the largest holder of Russian stocks. Westinghouse and the Crane (plumbing) businesses partnered to produce air brakes for the Trans-Siberian Railroad, launched in 1892. A result was that the manager of the RussENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY
Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev confer during a walkabout in Red Square, near St. Basil’s Cathedral, May 31,
1998. ASSOCIATED PRESS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.
ian enterprise, Charles R. Crane, became devoted to Russian culture and religion and promoted its appreciation in America by sponsoring lectures by the liberal historian Pavel Milyukov, endowing a chair at the University of Chicago, and financing tours of Russian choirs and other artistic groups through the United States. His advocacy of preserving the true Russian culture would continue through the Russian Revolution, civil war, and purges.
By the 1880s two major issues clouded the earlier harmony in relations. One was the Russian arrest and prosecution of political dissenters after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and the resulting Siberian exile system that George Kennan so eloquently depicted in a series of articles for American Mercury in the 1880s. This elicited considerable American sympathy for those Russians
1617
who were challenging the autocratic regime for their democratic and socialist causes and suffering at the hand of a police state. The other was Russian policy toward its Jewish population, which required the Jews to abide by strict limitations on activities, to emigrate, or to convert to another, more acceptable religion. Encouraged by American immigrant Jewish aid societies, many Russian Jews departed for the United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These factors not only produced a generally negative opinion of religious and political rights in Russia, but also resulted in the abrogation of the Commercial Treaty of 1832. The agreement had
