Why did Russia Sell Alaska? Replied by Dima Vorobiev Former Soviet propaganda executive though Quora Digest

At first, Alaska was a huge promise to Russia. And then it failed.

Russian Alaska experienced a pelt rush during the first two decades of the 19th century. The furs of sea otters from both sides of the northern Pacific at times could fetch in China 10–20 times the price of sable pelts.

As good as gold

There were reported prices of 300 rubles for one sea otter pelt. For comparison, during the Napoleonic era, in central Russia, this money could buy you:

• Two serf peasants
• One serf craftsman
• 1,500 kilograms of veal
• 1,200 kilograms of tea

The pay of navy officers who navigated the area was ten times their pay in St Petersburg. For one pelt you could equip and pay 5 soldiers for one year’s service. With another pelt, you could afford a colonel and a sergeant to boss them around for a few months of your private war.

Bust

By the early 1820s, sea otters had become almost extinct, exactly like what happened to them a few decades earlier in our Far East. Sea lions were not in much demand. Lean times came to Russian Alaska:

• Stiff resistance from the natives prevented Russians from going after pelts in the continental forests. Our presence in Alaska was forever confined to a long chain of islands and coastal forts.
• The system of taxing the locals by taking hostages (amanát) didn’t work on the continental tribes because they were migratory, had firearms and were more skilled in hit-and-run warfare than our Cossacks.
• Expeditionary raids in order to establish forts deep in the forests, the way we did for colonizing Siberia and the Far East, were impossible. We simply didn’t have the manpower. The total number of our colonists in the entire American Pacific never exceeded 1,000.
• Attempts to do business as traders and middlemen met stiff competition from the English and Americans. They had much shorter supply chains.
• Russians couldn’t offer to the natives the king of wares: brandy. The moonshine they were cooking in Sitka for themselves didn’t please the local palates, while vodka deliveries from continental Russia were rare and sparse.
• The government didn’t want to involve itself in territorial conquests that required an enormous build-up of our navy. The modest number of battle-ready ships we had at the time, was needed to take care of the Ottomans and the Straits. In addition, the Great Game was coming up on the continent, and the Czar had the sense not to open a second front in Canada.

As a result, Czar Alexander II sold the place to a friendly power for something that looked like very good money at the time.