Russian Alaska eventually consolidated under a vast trading corporation, reaching to Hawaii and California before receding. It was sold to the U.S. in 1867, for $7.2 million (about $125 million today).

But it enjoys an afterlife: in the Russian dialect spoken in the village of Ninilchik; in the name (“Alaska” is a Russian adaptation of an Aleut word meaning “the object toward which the action of the sea is directed”); in the thousands of adherents to the Russian Orthodox faith and an onion-domed church in Unalaska, above; and in the expansionist imaginations of some Russians who still grumble about the sale.

Penn Bullock contributed reporting.

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