RussiaandAND⤬THE JUNCTION
3 SHARED EVENTSUnited States

Entangled histories

3 events in which either nation’s sourced chronicle names the other — including under earlier names of the same state. Each is the same record, with the same sources, as on its own chronicle; nothing here was written for this page.

ONE SPINE OF YEARS · TWO WALLS OF EVENTS · RUS LEFT · USA RIGHT

1. 30 March 1867

   Russia sells Alaska to the United States

   Lacking the money to settle or defend its North American colony, and with its interest in the region reduced by defeat in the Crimean War, Russia sold Russian America to the United States for $7.2 million. Its minister in Washington, Eduard de Stoeckl, proposed the sale to Secretary of State William H. Seward and the treaty was signed on 30 March 1867; Alexander II ratified it on 20 June and the territory was handed over at Sitka on 18 October. The United States paid with a Treasury warrant for seven million two hundred thousand dollars on 1 August 1868.

   Politics & Power · from the Russia chronicle · The Russian Empire: Peter, Catherine, and the Romanov Zenith · REFS 3 — Purchase of Alaska, 1867, Czar's Ratification of the Alaska Purchase Treaty, 20 June 1867, Check for the Purchase of Alaska (1868)

2. 30 March 1867

   The Alaska Purchase

   Secretary of State William H. Seward agreed to buy Russian America — the colony Russia had run from Sitka through the Russian-American Company since 1799 — for $7.2 million, proposed by the Russian minister in Washington, Eduard de Stoeckl: less than two cents an acre for nearly 600,000 square miles. Russia lacked the money to settle or defend the territory and its defeat in the Crimean War had further reduced its interest. The Senate approved the treaty on 9 April, Tsar Alexander II ratified it on 20 June, and Alaska was formally transferred at Sitka on 18 October 1867. Skeptics dubbed the purchase 'Seward's Folly' or 'Seward's Icebox'; the Treasury warrant for seven million two hundred thousand dollars was issued on 1 August 1868.

   Politics & Power · from the United States chronicle · Reconstruction, industrial rise, and the World Wars · REFS 4 — Purchase of Alaska, 1867, Check for the Purchase of Alaska (1868), Czar's Ratification of the Alaska Purchase Treaty, 20 June 1867, Alaska

3. 1991

   End of the Cold War

   The dissolution of the Soviet Union left the United States as the world's sole superpower and reshaped the international order.

   Politics & Power · from the United States chronicle · Superpower, civil rights, and the modern era · REFS 1 — Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation; U.S. History Collections