ALASKA IN MODERN RUSSIAN GEOPOLITICAL RHETORIC

The article explores the issue of Russian America and its sale to the United States as represented in Russian popular historical fiction that uncovers not so much the history of the Russian presence in North America but rather constitutes a window into the symbolic geography and history constructed by current Russian nationalist media. It seeks to identify the source of keen attention to the Russian presence in northwestern North America through the analysis of the print media that shape Russian understanding of Alaska. The major argument of the article is that the rhetorical outbursts around such marginal and obscure topic as Russian America originated from the very nature of current Russian nationalism, which is still heavily entangled with the idea of empire. Although the imperial component has been increasingly undermined by dissent nationalists, who assail geopolitical and foreign policy schemes of their empire-oriented colleagues, it remains the dominant trend in current Russian nationalism. It is also argued that the disproportional attention to the history of Russian presence in northwestern North America compared, say, to the nineteenth-century Russian expansion to Central Asia and the Far East clearly points to the large role anti-Americanism plays in the development of current Russian nationalism.