-Welcome to the fourth in the series
of history lecture series,
"The Russian-American Encounter in Seattle."
I can hardly wait.
I am Eleanor Toews,
the retired archivist of Seattle Public Schools,
and a friend of tonight's speaker, Elena Campbell.
I'm going to do it like this.
I first became acquainted with Elena Campbell
shortly after she was hired by the University of Washington.
As I recall,
she was pulling her youngest child in a wagon
at the Woodland Park Zoo.
I believe that child might be here tonight.
No?
When I learned she was the new Russian historian at UW
from Russia, my ears perked up
because I'm ever mindful
that I am the child of parents who were born in imperial Russia
and ended up as émigrés in Manitoba, Canada.
So here was someone
I could talk to about my parents' childhood stories,
where they lived, when they left, why they left.
We could talk about our shared cuisine,
the Russian candy at Christmas,
which miraculously appeared at our doorstep one Christmas
during the pandemic, thanks to Elena,
and the many ways of making
some of our families' favorite dishes,
halupsi and borscht.
It wasn't until last year, the fall of 2023,
that she and I discovered we had another shared interest.
This time, a professional one.
You see,
about midway through my career as an archivist
for the Seattle School District,
I had one of the greatest experiences in the 32 years
I held that position.
As with other schools being closed
for demolition and renovation, as an archivist,
I was charged with providing an inventory of not only
important public records
but also of significant historical material and records
that required removal and protection
during the construction process.
Through a lot of searching, drama, and on-site inquiries,
I was able to find a lost WPA mural that an artist had painted
for West Seattle High School in 1937.
The three-paneled mural had originally been installed
in a wide entrance hallway at the school at eye level,
and over the years
had suffered from graphic embellishments by students,
as you can imagine.
After a few remodels of that entry and more graphic
embellishments, the mural had been removed
and stored out of view and forgotten.
Doubtless, its value as an excellent example
of WPA pictorial art had been forgotten or overlooked.
The mural that I found
consists of three panels depicting settlers landing
in Seattle, bartering with Native Americans, and logging.
As I said, with much drama,
the mural was removed from its storage place behind a cupboard
in the art room, appropriately enough, in May 2000,
and subsequently turned over to an art conservator
for damage treatment.
The mural made headlines --
the mural discovery made headlines
with much attention paid to its significance
as a rare local example of WPA art.
But oddly enough, or maybe not surprising,
not much attention was paid to the artist, Jacob Elshin.
Well, that all changed
when I got a message from Professor Campbell last fall
asking if it was possible to see this mural.
And that's a good question, actually.
If it was in a school,
schools have very tight security these days.
So I pulled a few strings and made a few contacts
and arranged for us to go and see it.
One could say, and I really felt this that afternoon,
the stars were aligned for me and Elena Campbell
and resulted in part of tonight's presentation.
To say much more of what followed
would be to give away part of her presentation.
So, for those of you
who are not familiar with Professor Campbell's work,
let me highlight some of it for you.
Professor Elena Campbell currently teaches
undergraduate courses on the History of Imperial Russia
from 1700 to 1917,
the history of St. Petersburg/Leningrad
from 1703 to the present,
Russian history through biography, empire,
and nationalism in Tsarist Russia, Arctic histories,
and history and memory.
Professor Campbell also offers graduate seminars
on the historiography
and primary sources of imperial Russia
and on empire and nationalism in Russian history.
Her first book is "The Muslim Question and Russian
Imperial Governance."
Her next book will take a new direction
by linking histories of politics, economics,
environment, science,
and culture to explore the creation
of the modern Russian north during the late imperial period.
Currently, Professor Elena Campbell serves --
now get this -- as a co-representative
of the University of Washington in the UArctic.
This is an international cooperative network --
I hope I can say this right --
based in the Circumpolar Arctic region.
Her talk tonight, "Russian- American Encounters in Seattle,"
explores the multifaceted history of Seattle's
engagement with peoples from the Romanov Empire
and the Soviet Union,
which included trade relations and commerce,
Russian immigration,
the Red Scare, Russian studies, and citizen diplomacy.
Please join me in warmly welcoming
Professor Elena Campbell.
[ Applause ]
-Well, thank you so much, Eleanor,
and thank you also for showing me Elshin's art
and I will share with you some of his art today in this talk,
during this talk.
So, as the previous lectures in this series have reminded us,
racial, ethnic, cultural diversity
is a distinguishing factor of Seattle's history.
Today, we will explore
the Russian dimension of this history.
However, instead of just focusing on the history
of Russian emigration,
I have decided to highlight different aspects
of Russian-American encounters in Seattle
which involved various historical actors
such as performers, laborers, sailors, refugees,
diplomats from the Russian Empire,
as well as government officials and citizen diplomats
from the Soviet Union.
When and why did they come to Seattle?
Why did some of them choose to stay?
How did they view and shape Seattle?
I will uncover visible and invisible traces
of Russian presence in Seattle.
In Seattle's physical landscape,
as well as the city's cultural, academic, economic,
and political life.
And we'll highlight the role of the University of Washington
in these encounters.
I would also like to suggest
that the Russian dimension is important
for understanding Seattle's evolving, multiple,
and at times contested identities.
Finally, unlike the distant Ottoman Empire,
the so-called "old country"
of the Sephardic Jewish immigrants to Seattle,
discussed by Devin Naar last week,
Tsarist and Soviet Russia and the United States,
as you can see, are and were Pacific neighbors.
Although nobody would claim
that Russia could be seen from one's home in Seattle,
the geographic proximity
or the geographic connection argument
mattered in Seattle's relations,
as we can see, for example, already in this excerpt,
in this quote from Novaya Zarya, The Russian Dawn,
a Russian language newspaper published in San Francisco,
which in 1933 wrote,
"The Russian language has long been heard in Seattle,
and immigrants from Russia, Jews, Poles, Latvians,
and other Russian nationalities,
had favored the city as a commercial
and industrial center,
which was directly connected on the one hand to Alaska,
with its gold and other natural riches,
and on the other, with Primorye of Russia."
Primorye of Russia is a coastal territory
in the far eastern region of Russia.
But the actual Russian,
or rather great Russian colony itself
has begun to take shape only at the end of the 19th century.
Another interesting aspect of this quote,
now highlighted in red,
is the author's description of different kinds of Russians,
or people from Russia, and his use of two distinct words,
"Russia", which is related also to "Rossiiskii" and "Russkii",
both of which are translated into English as "Russian".
So, before I take you on the historical exploration
of Russian-American encounters in Seattle
from the late 19th century to 1991,
I have to make a few remarks about the meanings
of Russianness and the imperial dimension of Russian history.
So both the Tsarist Empire and the Soviet Union
often associated with Russia were vast
and tremendously culturally diverse polities,
whose ruling elites aspired to achieve a great power status
for their country.
The modern Russian Federation is a product of imperial history,
which included territorial expansion,
state-driven modernization, revolutions,
interactions between various cultures,
as well as the competition of different nationalistic projects
within the empire's borders and into imperial rivalry.
By the end of the Tsarist period,
the ruling the Romanov family
claimed political domination over a huge realm
in northern Eurasia, as you can see on this map.
Religion was an important marker of the identity
of the Tsar's subjects and an instrument of imperial rule.
The Orthodox Church was officially
the predominant confession,
while non-Orthodox confessions were tolerated by the state.
The official course of religious toleration didn't imply
equality of different confessional communities
or freedom of conscience.
The Russian Empire was a corporate society
with different laws for different social groups.
Imperial patriotism was based on loyalty to the dynasty,
to the ruling dynasty.
Although Russian Orthodoxy was the dominant confession
and the government tried to promote Russian
as the state language during the late imperial period,
the policy of Russification was not consistent.
While Orthodox Russians were not the ruling nation
and had to compete with the state
for participation in politics.
The imperial elite was ethnically
and confessionally diverse.
The ethnically Russian Orthodox population was socially
and culturally divided into Europeanized elite and peasants,
many of whom were serfs, not liberated until 1861,
and thus not integrated into the larger structure
of imperial society.
In the 19th century,
nationalism presented a challenge
to the officially Orthodox,
but multi-confessional, state-based,
and autocratic empire of Romanovs
who were suspicious of any nationalism,
Russian or non-Russian.
While the Tsarist regime embarked on a program
of modernization to be on par with other European powers,
it was hesitant in introducing political liberties
and allowing a wider society to participate in politics.
The maintenance of a vast empire
justified the perpetuation of an autocratic,
centralized autocratic government.
During the late Tsarist period,
class tensions became no less important
than religious divisions or rising nationalisms.
The Russian Empire and the Tsarist regime
fell apart during World War I,
and the February Revolution of 1917,
which actually took place in March,
but known as the February Revolution
because of Russia's use of the Julian calendar until 1918.
In November of the same year, leftist revolutionaries
led by Bolshevik party leader Vladimir Lenin
launched another revolution, often referred to
as the October Revolution,
again because of the use of the Julian calendar,
which plunged Russia into a civil war
which lasted until 1923.
So guided by internationalists
and socialist ideas Bolsheviks recreated most
of the Russian Empire,
as you can see on this map, in the form of the USSR,
and even further expanded the country's borders
within the geopolitical context of World War II.
At the same time faced with the national movements
during the Revolution and Civil War,
the Soviet government utilized nationalism to govern
and modernize the multi-ethnic Soviet state.
The Soviet state made nationality an important marker
of citizens' identity
and created a socialist unitary,
federative state composed of territory-based nationalities.
And on this map,
you can see the main units with the Russian Federation
as the largest unit republic, the Soviet Republic.
So thus, the national identities of the people
of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union
developed in response to
and sometimes resistance to the Tsarist and Soviet rule,
as well as in connection to the multiple worlds of Eurasia.
And for centuries Russia was at the center of both empires,
Tsarist and Soviet,
but unlike Western European overseas empires,
it had never formed a distinct metropole
and became interconnected with the Empire's peripheries.
And this situation can be illustrated
by the Russian language,
which indicates that there are two kinds of Russians.
There are two distinct words,
both of which are translated into English as Russian.
"Russkii" for people, language,
and "Rossiiskii" for the empire, state, territory.
The usage, however, was not consistent, as the quote from
Novaya Zarya which I read earlier demonstrated.
But there is an important difference in association
between the two words.
So, this complex imperial legacy is important
for understanding the nature of Russian-American encounters,
the diversity of people
who were often perceived outside of their homeland as Russians,
as well as the interactions of these people
with each other and with local communities in Seattle
and their sentiments concerning the old and new countries.
So before Russians and Americans
claimed the North Pacific coast and waters,
this region had been already populated
by various indigenous people.
Physical proximity between the two countries
enabled connections across the ocean
among the indigenous people and the newcomers
who colonized the North Pacific coast
of Eurasia and North America.
At the same time, historically, for both Russians and Americans,
this region was a frontier,
geographically remote from the political
and economic centers of their respective countries.
Thus, depending on the changing political,
ideological, economic context,
the geographic proximity
that enabled the so-called meeting of frontiers
was viewed by Americans and Russians
sometimes as a potential opportunity or a problem.
So Russians came to the northwest coast of America
in the early 18th century as colonizers.
The geographic proximity between North America and Eurasia
was among several factors that enabled Russia's
eastward expansion,
driven by a desire for geographic discoveries,
imperial ambition, and furs, a valuable commodity.
Russians advanced eastward along the Aleutian island chain
and claimed the North Pacific coast territories
in the Americas for the Tsars.
The Russian American Company, formed in 1799,
governed Russian possessions
which included present-day Alaska
and the outpost of Fort Russ in California.
Known as Russian America,
it was the only overseas colony of the vast Eurasian Empire
ruled by the Romanov dynasty from the capital
of St. Petersburg on the Baltic Sea.
The colony never drew many settlers from Russia
and in 1867,
without discussing this issue
with the indigenous people and residents of Alaska,
the Tsarist government sold its Russian America
to the United States.
The Russian imperial legacy in Alaska
included the Orthodox Church,
which later played an important role
in supporting the Russian diaspora,
which later emerged in other parts of the United States,
including Seattle, as we will see.
Seattle.
Seattle was a village town
at the time when Alaska was purchased.
And it experienced its urban growth,
urban revolution during the late 19th, early 20th century.
In 1910, Seattle had a population of 237,194.
The development of new means of transportation
contributed to Seattle's growth,
including the development of its connections
with the outside world by steamships across the Pacific
and via railroads with the US Interior Regions.
New transportation links together with a gold rush
in Yukon and Alaska boosted commerce in Seattle.
The development of the lumber industry
was another important factor in the growth of Seattle
and of the state of Washington.
And these economic opportunities in Seattle
and the Pacific Northwest,
together with the so-called push factors such as
Russian religious and political persecution,
as well as the demands of military conscription
in Tsarist Russia contributed to the flow of labor migrants,
deserters, religious and political dissenters
from Russia to the Pacific Northwest.
At the end of the 19th century,
a local Orthodox priest reported,
"Up to 100 pure Russian people live in Seattle,
including quite a few fugitives from Siberia
engaged in menial work.
There are also up to 150 Ossetians
from the Caucasus, also laborers.
There are up to 1,500 Russian Jews in Seattle.
The latter are engaged in trade.
They have homes and shops dealing in dry goods,
recyclables, et cetera on the main street.
Many of them are well-off people who run grocery stores.
They're also the leaders of the Russians
because the latter do not know English."
So in 1905, and you can see the image here,
the local Russian Jewish community was featured
in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
which wrote that some of the Jewish immigrants
fled persecution in Tsarist Russia.
At about the same time
when Seattle was experiencing its urban growth,
the Russian Tsars launched rapid industrialization
and expanded the Empire's railroad network,
which reached the far eastern port of Vladivostok.
And you can see here the Trans-Siberian Railroad.
So this was the main project
during this time in late Imperial Russia.
However, Americans leaped ahead of Russians
in developing their Pacific coast and Seattle,
thus inspiring Russia's hopes for economic potential,
but also anxieties about the sovereignty
of the Tsar's possessions on the Pacific.
So the Trans-Siberian Railroad, launched in 1891,
was not completed until 1904.
Vladivostok, founded in 1860,
was the only sizable and growing
Russian city on the Pacific coast.
While Russia claimed the Eurasian North Pacific coast
over 100 years ago,
in some distant parts of this vast region,
Russia's power was only nominal.
Between 1896 and 1900,
when prospectors rushed through Seattle to the Yukon and Alaska,
some started looking even further west at their neighbor
across the Bering Strait
for possibilities of gold deposits
on Russia's Chukotka Peninsula, so this part.
And you can see from Nome, so it was very close.
And reports like, for example, this one,
and other reports about possibly finding gold
in Alaska provoked fears among Russians
that Americans would seize Chukotka,
but also led to Russian-American cooperation,
resulting, for example,
in a 1900 expedition to find gold on the Chukotka Peninsula.
This expedition was supported by the Russian government
and included Russians, Americans as well as Englishmen,
Norwegians, Chinese, Poles, Mexicans, Finns, and Ossetians.
For our purposes here,
the expedition's route and logistics
are especially interesting.
To reach the Chukotka Peninsula,
so we are looking here, this area.
So to reach the Chukotka Peninsula,
Russian participants actually went west.
They went west from St. Petersburg to London
across the Atlantic Ocean,
then across North America, to San Francisco,
and then to Chukotka.
So as Ivan Akif'ev,
one of the Russian participants of the expedition, explained,
"It's more convenient to go from Russia
to Russia through America."
Akif'ev also wrote about local Chukchi
when they finally reached Chukotka,
who, according to him, spoke English,
though poorly, and none spoke Russian.
"Americans evidently," he wrote, "visit them frequently
since they had whale boats and Winchester rifles
in sufficient quantity."
And Akif'ev cited one Chukchi, the village headman, saying,
"We know there is the same Tsar for us,
Chukchi, and for you Russians, but you don't visit us.
And Americans bring us flour, guns, and tobacco.
We know Americans better and understand their language,
but Russians we absolutely don't know."
So Akif'ev was not the only one at that time
who raised public and government attention in Russia
to what he called Russia's forgotten territory.
In the meantime,
Americans continued trading with indigenous people
on the Russian shores, some of whom also visited Seattle.
So in 1908,
Captain Amos Milton Bieber from the North Star Trading Company,
who had traded with Yupik villages along the coast
of the Chukchi Peninsula for several years,
brought six Yupik families from this area to Seattle
to perform at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition,
which opened on the grounds of the University of Washington
in June of the following year, so in 1909.
Seasonal hunting expeditions and family trips
across the Bering Strait were common
among the Yupik-Siberian Yupik.
However, their travel to Seattle
and across the US was a different kind of experience.
Before the exposition's opening,
the group undertook a tour of Western and Midwestern fares,
where they posed for photographs,
sang, danced, and demonstrated their skills,
everyday activities, and traditions.
The performance was advertised in the newspapers
as "The Big Arctic Show."
In Seattle,
the Siberian performers were joined by the Inuit,
Yupik, and Tlingit of Alaska,
and Labrador Inuit from Canada
to perform in the so-called Eskimo Village.
So the 34 Siberian performers
who came from the three different villages
in the coastal and interior of Russia, regions northeast,
were the largest group.
The framing of the Arctic show,
as you can see here, and of the Eskimo Village was colonial.
The newspapers often lumped the performers together
in one category of Eskimo
and portrayed them as children of nature
and exotic curiosities.
At the same time, as Josh Reid, Lisa Bligh,
other scholars have suggested the indigenous performers were
also participants in the fair
and not simply the objects of the spectator's gaze.
But why did indigenous people from Siberia travel to Seattle
for the exposition?
While the records are limited,
Lisa Bligh has suggested that traveling
and performing in the US
presented both dangers and opportunities
and that different indigenous performers attached
different meanings and goals to their participation,
viewing their experiences
as potentially profitable endeavor,
an opportunity to learn, and for some,
educate the visitors or even influence public discourse.
The Russian officials, however,
didn't see this experience the same way.
I don't know what the Canadian reaction was,
especially given the frustration in Canada
regarding its loss of the 1903 Alaska Boundary Dispute,
but the Russians issued a complaint
that Bieber had not secured official permission
to remove the Siberian natives to the US
and had kidnapped them. In response to this complaint,
US immigration officials interviewed Bieber
and some members of the Siberian group.
Bieber claimed that he had known
some members of the group for a long time,
hoped to continue trading with the villagers.
The three Yupik performers who were interviewed
told about their business deal with Bieber,
and one of the performers said,
"I came voluntarily to work, sing, and dance."
So the history of American trade on the Chukotka Peninsula
at the beginning of the 20th century is very interesting.
I would only add
that the so-called American traders included
a very diverse group of people,
some of whom came from other countries including Norway,
Australia, and the Russian Empire,
to Alaska during the Gold Rush,
and then engaged in trade relations
with the native people of Chukotka Peninsula.
And some of them married local women,
thus establishing relationships
which contributed to the success of their trade activities.
What's important for us here
is that the World Exposition of 1909,
operated by Seattle's business and civic elites,
as John Finley has demonstrated,
elevated the status of Seattle from a pioneer town
to a city with imperial links to Alaska and regions
beyond US borders.
And the Siberian indigenous people,
subjects of the Russian Tsar,
even though they had their own motives,
were included to reassert this vision.
Seattle's growing economic role and ambition
didn't remain unnoticed in St. Petersburg,
and the Russian government's turn to the North
during the late Tsarist period
had also implications for Seattle.
In 1906,
a special intergovernmental mining commission
at the Russian Ministry of Trade and Industry
paid special attention to Nome and Seattle
as the centers that spread American influence
along the Russian coast of the Bering Strait.
And in 1913,
the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
submitted a proposal to the State Duma,
which was an elective legislative body
created in 1906,
to establish an imperial consulate in Nome and Seattle,
which was justified
by the growing Russian interest in this region.
Russian officials planned the establishment of the consulate
in connection with the government plans for
the economic development of the Russian Far East.
Tsarist officials and Duma deputies claimed
that because all commercial
and industrial activity on the Seward Peninsula
depended on Seattle, the closest US city to Alaska,
the creation of a new consulate would provide an opportunity
for the Russian government to study measures taken
by the United States to develop Alaska.
They also envisioned that the consul residing in Seattle
and visiting Nome during the summer months
would monitor American activities
in the Russian Far East
while also protecting the interests
of the increasing numbers of Russian subjects
who arrived in Seattle in search of job opportunities.
Thus in 1914, Nicholas II appointed Nikolai Bogoiavlensky,
who had previous diplomatic experience
in the Russian Far East and China,
as the first Imperial Consul of Seattle and Nome.
The following year, Bogoiavlensky's wife,
as this newspaper announced here,
arrived with her three children.
As the local newspaper reported the two sons would enter
Broadway High School while the daughter planned
to enter the University Washington,
when she had mastered enough English to carry her studies.
So the beginning of Bogoiavlensky's term
coincided with the beginning of World War I.
And in this conflict,
the Russian Empire found itself in the same camp
with Great Britain and France,
while the US at first proclaimed its neutrality.
The war opened an opportunity for the direct expansion
of Russian-US trade and financial contacts.
Russia needed American loans, military supplies,
while US entrepreneurs saw the opportunity
to take Germany's place on the Russian market.
The Russian Procurement Committee was established
in New York to make direct purchases
of US railroad equipment, weapons, ammunition,
medical products,
and Seattle's port became an important hub
for delivering the war supplies to Russia.
In early October of 1914,
Bogoiavlensky announced
that the Russian volunteer fleet would soon begin
the operation of a line of steamers
between the Puget Sound and Vladivostok,
Siberia and that American agents for the line had been appointed.
World War I expanded the agenda of Russian-US relations
by adding humanitarian issues,
including American aid for refugees and prisoners of war,
and providing impetus to develop Russian studies in the US
and, conversely, American studies in Russia.
During the 1915-16 academic year,
Russian language instruction was offered
at the University of Washington.
And Nikolai Bogoiavlensky, the consul of Nome and Seattle,
saw this interest in the Russian language
as Russia's peaceful victory.
That was important for developing Russia-US relations
since Seattle, and this is a quote,
"the gateway for the American trade" with Eastern Siberia.
The Russia-US rapprochement was given new meaning
after the February Revolution of 1917,
which led to the collapse of the monarchy in Russia.
And after the US joined the war in April of 1917,
it seemed that renewed Russia and US
found themselves on the same side
of the military struggle for democracy.
The February Revolution also encouraged many Russians,
especially former political exiles and religious émigrés
who fled the oppression of the Tsarist regime early,
to return to Russia from the US,
and many of them chose the Pacific route.
The February Revolution didn't change the position
of Bogoiavlensky, who now represented
the Russian Provisional Government
and was busy assisting the increased circulation
of people and goods
between Russia and the US through Seattle.
However, while Russia was quickly moving
toward another revolution,
Seattle became the hub of the turbulent labor movement.
In 1917, the Central Labor Council
and Industrial Workers of the World, or "Wobblies,"
had a strong influence among Seattle area workers.
Labor groups opposed the US entrance
into the First World War.
And during the summer, Wobblies organized strikes
in the Pacific Northwest,
while the government initiated a nationwide crackdown
on the Wobblies' offices.
As one historian put it, Seattle was a powder keg.
In the meantime, as a result of the 1917 October Revolution,
Bolsheviks came to power in Petrograd,
formerly St. Petersburg,
and embarked on the project of creating the world's
first socialist state with a messianic mission
for world revolution.
Bolsheviks in Vladivostok proclaimed Soviet power
on the Pacific coast.
However, in Russia's Far East,
which was remote from Russia's revolutionary centers,
industrially underdeveloped, and sparsely populated,
the Bolsheviks' position was rather precarious.
The Russian port of Vladivostok almost was as close to Seattle
as it was close to Petrograd. So more importantly,
Seattle during that time was more accessible.
Moreover, after the downfall of the Tsar,
the increased flow of people between Seattle and Vladivostok
also allowed the circulation of ideas and information.
Thus, it's not surprising
that the Russian-American Trans-Pacific Commercial
contacts, facilitated by Bogoiavlensky,
the Russian consul, and American business
and Russian business elites,
could also serve to create a common cause
between Vladivostok Bolsheviks and Seattle radicals.
So on December 21st of 1917, the Russian vessel Shilka,
which was part of the Russian volunteer fleet,
arrived from Vladivostok to Seattle
with cargo contracted by a local company
for final delivery to Baltimore.
The arrival of the first Soviet ship
to the US shore sparked diverse reactions in the city.
The conservative press and local establishments
were anxious about the Bolshevik ship's
supposed mission to aid the enemies of the United States,
while labor's press actively saw the Shilka's arrival
as an opportunity to learn about the Russian Revolution
and advance their cause.
Armed Navy cadets patrolled the pier,
prevented unauthorized persons
from getting on and off the ship,
while anxious authorities were inspecting the ship.
In the meantime, newspapers across the country
made the Shilka's arrival a national sensation
and drew Americans' attention to the port of Seattle,
where according to the reports,
the Russian vessel brought propagandists gold worth
as much as $100,000,
arms, ammunition to help the Wobbly revolutionaries.
The inspectors had not found the alleged $100,000 in gold
but discovered a cargo of licorice, root, beans, and peas,
as well as a small collection of rusty old Japanese rifles
and Swedish pistols.
This, however, sparked a new conspiracy theory
that the proceeds of the cargo sale would be given
to Wobblies to finance the defense
of its members standing trial in Chicago.
Other stories connected the Shilka
to a vast German-inspired worldwide revolt
that included Bolsheviks, Industrial workers of the world,
anarchists, and even Irish nationalists.
Even the mustache of the captain,
which appeared to be German, caused a reason for suspicion.
Soon though, some local newspapers,
and I added some titles here on the slide,
concluded that the Seattle-Bolshevik mystery was
a joke and that next time Seattle should not make a fool
of herself,
yet other publications were still concerned
that the ship's very ability to reach the American port
meant that the country was not safe.
From the revolutionary poison,
spreading abroad,
and Germany now had an open spy road across the Pacific.
As historians have suggested,
this episode was a prologue to the Red Scare
in the United States.
The local labor activists did manage to interact
with Shilka's crewmen.
For example,
when one of them addressed the crowd
at the Industrial Workers of the World Hall,
Anna-Louise Strong, an activist and reporter
for the Seattle Daily Caller,
a weekly socialist newspaper, interviewed a Russian sailor.
And on January 8th,
when the Shilka sailed out of Elliot Bay,
carrying a cargo of pig iron to Japan,
an enthusiastic crowd of well-wishers
attended the send-off.
When reaching Vladivostok in March,
the Shilka delivered a letter
from the Central Executive Committee
of the Industrial Workers of the World of the Port of Seattle
to Vladimir Lenin,
with the representatives of the Bolshevik government,
and through them the workers of Russia,
which the local soviet decided to publish.
The letter expressed solidarity with Bolsheviks
in their noble battle for liberation from the yoke
of the capitalists and landlords
and recounted the details of the Shilka incident in Seattle
and of recent repressions.
In January of 1918,
Sukhanov, the chairman of the Executive Committee
of the Vladivostok Council of Workers and Soldiers' Deputies,
in his article published in a local newspaper
emphasized the difference in attitudes
toward the Shilka's crewmen, and by extension,
to Soviet Russia,
the American government on the one hand
and American proletariat on the other.
And in August of 1918,
Pravda, the Moscow-based official newspaper
of the Russian Communist Party,
published Lenin's letter to American workers,
which was later delivered to the United States.
In the Russian Far East, however,
the Bolsheviks' position had become even more precarious.
In the summer of 1918,
Soviet power in Vladivostok was overthrown.
In November, Admiral Kolchak -- Kolchak's White,
so anti-Bolshevik government,
took over Vladivostok, and the foreign armies,
including American as well as Japanese
and British invaded the region.
In Seattle, on February 6th of 1919,
a general strike had been called in sympathy
with the shipyard workers who sought to improve their lot.
And a city of 315,000 people
stopped working for several days.
Most of the local and national press denounced the strike.
There were also arrests.
Federal agents also closed the Union Record,
the labor-owned daily newspaper,
arrested some members of its staff.
Federal officials who managed the shipyards
refused to negotiate.
And as the workers went back to work,
the newspapers across the country declared
that Seattle had been saved,
that the revolution had been defeated.
The Russian consul, Bogoiavlensky,
who was in Seattle, he reported to the Russian ambassador,
"This is not a strike, but a revolution."
Bolshevism in Russia is developing extremely --
oh, sorry.
Bolshevism in America is developing extremely quickly
and will continue to develop.
One can assume that unless something extraordinary happens,
some kind of miracle,
Bolsheviks in America will perform no worse than in Russia.
So the solidarity between American
and Soviet workers was particularly disturbing
for American officials.
In 1927, in her article published in the Soviet Union,
Anna-Louise Strong recalled how during World War I,
Seattle was the center
of revolutionary sympathies toward the USSR.
In September of 1919,
Seattle's longshoreman refused to load arms destined
for the Kolchak anti-Bolshevik forces in Russia.
Eventually, the arms were loaded with the help of strikebreakers.
Seattle acquired a reputation as a dangerous city,
while Seattle workers had to travel
to other cities to find work. Thus, Strong concluded,
that the labor movement in Seattle was weakened
and reminded the Soviet readers of her article
"The Sacrifices Made by Seattle Dock Workers
for the Russian Revolution."
In late 1922,
Bolsheviks reestablished Soviet power in the Far East.
Kolchak was executed in 1920.
And the retreating White Army fled to Northern China,
the region then known to Europeans as Manchuria.
By the mid-1920s,
this region became home to one of the largest
Russian diaspora communities in the world,
with 120,000 people living in Harbin.
Russian was the language,
even as you can see on this photograph,
so was the language spoken on the streets
and was seen on the signs and shops.
The city drew people from different corners of the empire
and walks of life.
For many who came in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution,
civil war, and the defeat of the White Army,
Harbin served as a transit point to other countries.
So the American coast, including Seattle,
became one of the destinations for the so-called
Harbin Russians, or Russian Harbincy.
Before their arrival,
some American conservatives quickly saw Russian refugees
as an opportunity for Seattle to rebrand its national image.
In April of 1923,
Frank Pease, an American anti-communist propagandist,
contacted the City Council of Seattle
urging them to extend help to the Russian refugees
from the Far East.
He wrote that these refugees were all conservative people
with numerous women and children,
persons of business, technical and cultural accomplishments,
and thus not likely to be or but temporarily a burden
upon either the city or national community.
He especially emphasized by routing these refuges
through Seattle
and developing a plan for their welfare
would present an excellent opportunity
for Seattle to offset, what he said,
the erroneous opinions existing elsewhere
that Seattle is notoriously a red center.
And notify the nation
that Seattle is not one step behind any other city
in its adherence to the principles of law, order,
and conservatism.
So the first group of Russian refugees from China
were students who came in 1921 to Seattle to study.
And here is an excerpt from the newspaper, it was much longer,
but introducing some of those students.
The next large group of refugees from the Far East,
which included many educated Russians --
former Tsarist officers, professionals, their families --
arrived in July of 1923.
By 1925,
there were approximately 5,000 Russians in the city.
Not all of them who arrived stayed in Seattle.
Some moved to San Francisco, other cities in the US.
The Depression of the 1930s hit Seattle's economy
and forced many to leave.
According to Calvin Schmid,
and you saw these images earlier in John Finlay's presentation,
and I just wanted to remind you that in 1940,
of the 63,470 Seattleites who were foreign-born,
2,371 were from Russia.
As a result of the influx of refugees in the 1920s and '30s,
and again after World War II,
a Russian diaspora emerged in Seattle.
The former Imperial Consul, Bogoiavlensky,
and St. Spiridon Orthodox Church
became the first points of contact
for many Russian refugees who arrived in Seattle in the 1920s.
The US government didn't recognize the Soviet Union
until 1933, thus Bogoiavlensky continued to perform his duties.
After the closing of the consulate,
the Russian consulate in San Francisco in 1924,
Bogoiavlensky remained the only diplomat representing old Russia
and her now stateless émigré.
So in 1923 or '33,
he and other consuls in Seattle
were invited to the University of Washington campus
to mark the bicentennial birthday of George Washington
by planting trees
and creating what came to be known
as the Consuls or International Grove on the UW campus,
between Suzzallo Library and Smith Hall.
So Bogoiavlensky -- this is Bogoiavlensky, Russian consul,
but as you can see here, there is now --
there is Latvian, Finnish, and Lithuanian.
So representing now newly-independent countries,
former parts of the Russian Empire.
But Bogoiavlensky was still there,
representing so-called old Russia
before the Soviet Union was recognized.
And Bogoiavlensky did make Seattle his home.
That's where he buried his wife in 1918.
And the following year he buried his daughter,
remember who was mentioned in the newspaper,
who died from Spanish flu.
And he died in Seattle too and was buried here
at the St. Nicholas Orthodox Cemetery in 1945.
The St. Spiridon Orthodox Church was established in 1895
and originally drew many Greeks, Serbs, Syrians,
Galicians, and some other Russians --
and some Russians, whose proportion grew
at the beginning of the 20th century
as a result of the increased labor migration and emigration
from Tsarist Russia to Seattle.
While Greeks in 1918 formed a separate congregation,
the St. Spiridon Church served as the first refuge
for the Russian arrivals from the Far East in the 1920s.
The divisions and tensions
that originated in Tsarist Russia
played out in the émigré circles in Seattle
and elsewhere in the US and Europe.
The arrival of a large group of refugees
in the 1920s brought them into conflict
with some Russian old-timers' attention,
which was sometimes described in political terms
of the Civil War divisions,
a divide in the community in Seattle
into the so-called Whites and Bolsheviks.
New Russians, the so-called white émigrés,
began forming societies and formal groups,
organizing cultural events.
In 1925, for example,
the Society of Veterans of the Great War
and the Union of Russian Invalids in North America
were founded in Seattle.
Former naval officers also formed their circle.
Not all members of the societies were Russian Orthodox.
They also included Lutherans and Catholics
from the Russian Empire,
thus reflecting the multi-confessional,
multi-ethnic nature of the two important imperial institutions,
the army and the navy.
Yet the Orthodox religion, along with monarchist ideals,
became an important organizing principle
and a marker of the Russian colony in Seattle
during these early years.
In 1936, the Church of St. Nicholas
was established in Seattle,
designed in old Russian style,
and it was dedicated to the memory of Russia's lost Tsar,
Nicholas II, and his family, murdered by Bolsheviks.
The attempts to unite two parishes did materialize,
and in 1938, the new building in old Russian style
was also built to house the St. Spiridon Church.
Around the same time, another temple was built here,
a temple monument also to memory of Nicholas II
and Imperial Russian soldiers who died during World War I.
It was erected in traditional Russian style,
modeled after a church in Sevastopol
at the Military Brotherly Cemetery there.
And it was located
at the Russian Orthodox Brotherly Cemetery
of St. Nicholas established in 1928.
And a former Tsarist officer
and one of the most active members of the Russian colony,
Alexander Elshin, was the founder of this project.
In 1936, he wrote in Novaya Zarya
that, "The construction of temples and monuments
in memory of the legitimate monarch
and his dynasty in Seattle and elsewhere in the world
would eventually lead to the establishment
of a legitimate regime in Russia
and decent respect for us,
the Russian people, throughout the world."
Elshin hoped that, "One day,
the imperial all-Russian banner will unfurl
over the Winter Palace on the glorious banks of the Neva."
So this was 1936.
Elshin died in 1951, and his prophecy didn't come true,
even though after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
in 1991, the Russian leadership adopted a curious combination
of imperial and Soviet symbols to represent new Russia.
In Seattle, the two Orthodox churches and the cemetery,
which is a part of Washelli Cemetery,
which reminds us of Elshin and other émigrés
who formed Seattle's Little Russia,
are still visible today.
After World War II,
with the help of a new wave of immigrants,
the Russian Community Center was established.
And I will show you just two images representing
some publications, again, with religious symbolism and,
of course, the family of Nicholas II.
And I will show you some other sites, visible and invisible,
associated with the community of Russian émigrés.
Another site that for more than 35 years
was a fixture of the Russian community
was the Moscow Restaurant, which opened in 1923
and served borscht, beef Stroganoff, kholodets --
I don't know how you would translate kholodets.
Jellied meat, jellied pigs' legs, pig legs --
Turkish coffee, and pancakes.
Russian refugee Prince Reza Qoli Mirza decorated
the walls of the restaurant
while another Russian artist, Jacob or Yakov Elshin,
so the son of Alexander Elshin,
whom I mentioned earlier, designed the exterior.
Eventually, the restaurant was lost to a highway,
constructed in the early 1960s.
There was another Russian restaurant
that was decorated with painted murals.
Apparently, there were several artists
who lived here in Seattle of Russian origin.
And another restaurant was called
Russian Samovar on Capitol Hill.
So the restaurant has changed its name.
It's now, I think, it's called Cook Weaver.
It no longer serves Russian food,
but one can still see the murals designed
by Russian artist émigrés.
So if you're interested, you can go to Capitol Hill
and see the murals.
Among the artists of Russian origin in Seattle,
Jacob or Yakov Elshin, perhaps became the most well-known.
He opened a studio and produced hand-painted greeting cards,
stage scenery, religious art.
And actually,
when I showed you newspapers announcing the arrival
of Russian émigrés,
there were a few sketches by Elshin in this newspaper.
And in the late 1930s, Elshin painted murals
which were commissioned by the Depression-era
Works Progress Administration
and installed in public institutions such as schools,
libraries, post offices in Seattle and larger area.
And one of his murals was placed,
as Eleanor told us earlier,
in the main hallway of the West Seattle High School.
But during the school remodeling in the 1950s and '70s,
the murals were taken down, went missing,
and the mystery of the missing murals was resolved in 2001
by Eleanor Toews, the school system archivist.
So the murals she uncovered were restored
and returned to the West Seattle High School in 2002.
And I'm very thankful to Eleanor for showing these murals for me.
So after Elshin's death, his wife, in her interview,
answered the question,
why Yeltsin chose -- oh, Yeltsin.
I will talk about Yeltsin later.
Why Elshin chose to stay in Seattle?
And she said, although many singers and artists
preferred to move to San Francisco or New York,
Elshin loved Siberia.
Seattle was like Siberia, the pioneering place.
He liked the evergreen trees, water, and salmon fishing.
He had a pioneering spirit. That's why he stayed.
Of course, it was her interpretation.
Another immigrant, Ivan Novikoff,
who, like many others,
first fled to China because of the 1917 Russian Revolution,
came to Seattle, where he founded
the Novikoff School of Russian American Ballet,
and eventually opened more than 20 schools
in Washington and Oregon.
However, the Red Scare in Seattle
did not end with the departure of Shilka.
American society in the 1920s and '30s,
and again after World War II,
while also -- experienced this Red Scare,
while also affecting some émigrés of Russian origin
in Seattle and one of them was Natalie Brodskaya-Notkin.
She was born in 1900 and her son immigrated in 1921,
and seven years later with her husband, James Notkin,
she became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
She began working at the Seattle Public Library in 1925.
And two years later, after graduating from
the University of Washington's Library School,
she became the head of the Library's
Foreign Books Division.
In 1932, she was dismissed
after being accused of selecting obscene
and communist books in the Russian language,
and of being a communist.
Notkin's case was not just a local matter.
The impulse came from Washington, DC,
where a special committee of the House of Representatives,
chaired by Representative Hamilton Fish Jr.,
was formed to investigate communist activities
in the United States.
The committee held hearings around the country,
including Seattle, and it was that visit
that prompted Seattle Police Chief Louise Forbes,
who also provided testimony earlier,
to pursue his investigation of communists in Seattle.
So on November 4th of 1930,
he submitted the results of his investigation
in a letter to Congressman Fish. The letter accused Notkin
and 17 other Seattle residents of being communists.
Notkin, though, was the only public employee on this list.
The letter was included in the published official report
of the hearing in 1931.
This information reached Seattle.
Notkin declared that she was not a communist.
Nevertheless, the Seattle City Council cut
her position and salary from the library budget.
And on February 2nd of 1932,
the library board agreed to dismiss her.
Notkin had purchased Russian books as a part
of the library's collection,
and in part, and actually for the most part,
in response to the growing post-revolutionary
Russian émigré community,
thus creating one of the largest collections
of foreign language books at the Seattle Public Library.
A few years before her dismissal, Notkin,
in her annual report,
noted that the Russian collection
presented the greatest problem
and mentioned the political struggles over the content
of the Russian collection.
In particular, she pointed out the role
of a vocal minority of Russian patrons
who objected to any Russian language books
coming from the Soviet Union
and favored Russian language books
written and published by anti-communist Russian refugees.
So the controversy over Russian books
was just one manifestation of the divisions
and tensions within the Russian community.
Notkin and the head of the library, Jennings,
who earlier stated
that the books should represent different points of use,
refused to take sides in these controversial questions.
Yet the library board, aware of these complaints,
early complaints coming apparently from the members
of the Russian community,
while also looking for a solution
to the budget cut issue, decided to sacrifice Notkin.
And the Fish's Commission helped making this decision.
So the legal efforts of Notkin and her attorneys failed.
This sad chapter in the history of Seattle Public Library
has been reconstructed
by Seattle Post Intelligencer Journalist,
John Douglas Marshall,
who in 2004, published a history of the Seattle Public Library.
Later, Natalie Notkin was hired by the University of Washington,
where she was a Russian language instructor and a librarian.
And her husband, James Notkin, also a Russian émigré,
founded an engineering firm, James Notkin and Associates,
which was involved in many, many local construction projects,
including, by the way,
the public library's Magnolia branch.
So I guess Notkins didn't hold a grudge
against the public library.
Well, the University of Washington
played an important role in Seattle's engagement
with Russia and Russians
by making the Northwest region conscious of Russia's
and the Soviet Union's role in international affairs,
especially in the Pacific,
and stimulating interest in Russian culture.
Seattle's geographic proximity to Russia and Siberia
was often one of the main arguments employed
by the advocates for developing Russian studies
at the University of Washington.
And one of these promoters was Ivar Spector,
another Russian émigré
and an instructor in the so-called Oriental Studies
who played an important role in expanding the offerings
in Russian literature, history, culture
during the 1930s and '40s at the University of Washington.
He was the author of many publications,
some of which I listed here.
He's credited with contribution to the creation
of the Slavic department,
the building of the University of Washington's
prominence in the field of Russian
and East European studies.
But the figure of Spector,
however, is interesting also for other reasons.
His connections to multiple cultural worlds
and the challenges he encountered
when trying to take an objective approach to highly politicized
and divisive matters.
And here I would like to read for you
an excerpt from the only novel that Spector published.
The novel is titled "Through the Fog"
and was published in Tacoma in 1930.
"One autumn day a man stood on the third class deck
of a steamer bound for New York.
He had heard fellow passengers
who understood English say
that the boat would dock within a few hours.
He looked back over the restless waters
that separated him from his native land --
a land veiled in obscurity and mystery for the rest of the world --
a land concerning which
there was so great misunderstanding
and misrepresentation --
a land from which came such conflicting reports
that the world knew not what to believe.
In that far land, all of whom he had loved were dead.
Nothing remained for him there.
But America was before him, the land of promise,
the land of hope,
the land wherein the oppressed might find justice."
In this excerpt, Spector described
the final destination of the novel's main character,
Joseph Morozov.
The novel begins in 1908
and tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Joseph,
whose mother was a descendant of Sephardic Jews
and whose father belonged to the Greek Orthodox Church.
Spector follows his character's life
through the turbulent times of World War I,
revolution, civil war,
and that brought devastation to his Jewish
and Christian family and friends.
The question of religious tolerance
is one of the main themes that preoccupied Spector in his book,
which he dedicated to the Russian intelligentsia
regardless of nationality and race,
rank, and station who died in the revolution.
Like Joseph,
Spector was born in the region of the Russian Empire,
which is now a part of modern Ukraine.
He acquired Russian education and the knowledge of Hebrew
and was an aspiring writer.
In 1920, he immigrated to the United States via New York,
where the immigration authorities registered his name
as Itzhak Spector.
Under this name, Spector applied for citizenship,
attended first Northwestern University,
then the University of Chicago,
where he wrote a dissertation about Jewish ethics in 1928,
later published with the aid of the Jewish community of Tacoma.
It was also in Tacoma where Spector taught Hebrew,
and this is an advertisement of his courses,
which included not only the language
but also history and politics.
And he's mentioned here as the director
of the Board of Hebrew Education.
And all of this happened before he assumed
the position of a Russian language instructor
at the University of Washington in 1931.
Probably around the same time,
he changed his first Jewish name, Itzhak,
to Scandinavian Ivar.
In Seattle, he also joined the University Gathering
United Methodist Church in New District.
While further research is needed to understand
the details of Spector's background
and the circumstances of this transformation,
perhaps the New World in Seattle was not a perfect place,
as his novel's main character imagined,
and especially in light of the activities of fascist groups
in the Northwest during the 1920s and '30s.
Like Joseph,
Spector strove to explain what he said the true affairs
in Russia to the outside world,
as he wrote, "Either we'll get along with Russia,
or we won't, but either way, we must be able to understand her."
But how to promote an unbiased view of Soviet Russia
without being labeled as a Bolshevik,
and thus the enemy in the country
torn by fear of communism?
Unlike Natalie Notkin earlier,
Spector received support from his colleagues.
For example, in 1944, Lee Paul Zeke, UDAP President,
in response -- in his response
to a letter written by a concerned citizen
who accused Spector of carrying on a propaganda campaign
in his articles about Soviet policy published
in the Tacoma News Tribune, wrote,
"Dr. Spector is a loyal American citizen
and a serious-minded educator.
As a scholar, he doesn't cater to anyone
but seeks to analyze
and diagnose conditions relative to his own field,
Russian studies, to the best of his ability."
Well, World War II stimulated an increased interest
in the Russian field,
for example, UDAP offered during this time
radio course in the Russian language,
some high schools were offering Russian
in their evening programs,
and the Soviet-American alliance was critical
for the defeat of Nazi Germany,
and the Pacific Northwest, again,
played an important role in the Allied operations
of transporting land-lease shipments to the Soviet Union.
In 1944, Spector's colleagues
published a collection of articles titled
"Soviet Far East and Pacific Northwest,"
published by the University of Washington Press.
And they argued that the war led to the emergence
of Soviet Russia as a great power
and provided a common ground
upon which Americans and Soviets could build on.
Again, the geographic proximity argument played
an important role.
The authors hoped for a new post-war period
of Soviet-American cooperation on the basis of equality,
not American leadership.
Especially in the development of communication lines,
and you can see it's not a very good image,
but all the lines that were also projected,
on land, air, and on water. Projects in which
they emphasized the Pacific Northwest and Seattle
would play a special role.
But shortly after the end of the war,
the former allies became rivals
and started to see each other as a threat.
So labor migration, emigration, commercial relations,
diplomacy, development of Russian studies,
wartime allied operation,
as well as fraternizing efforts and suspicions
during the Red Scare era, which I have discussed so far,
certainly do not embrace the richness
of Russian-American encounters in Seattle.
And in conclusion,
I just want to touch on another important facet,
which involves citizen diplomacy
and many people-to-people connections
with the Soviet Union during the Cold War period.
And again, the Pacific Northwest and Seattle
played an important role in these relations.
And, in some cases, struck first.
So I just want to remind you
about a few important episodes in this history.
The vision of Seattle as the gateway to the Soviet Union
and the emphasis on Seattle's special ties with Russia
were mobilized by city business and civic elites
during the so-called détente period of 1970 through '79,
and again during Gorbachev's Perestroika and Glasnost,
the restructuring and openness of the late 1980s.
And Seattle's and Pacific Northwest
people-to-people connections
that developed during this time
involved sister city connections.
The first sister city relationship between an American
and Soviet city was established between Seattle and Tashkent,
the capital city of the Soviet Republic of Uzbekistan, in 1973.
And in 1987, Seattle hosted
the US-Soviet Sister City Conference.
In 1985, perhaps some of you remember,
the so-called spacebridges,
which linked via satellite the live audiences
in Seattle and Leningrad,
the so-called Citizen Summit,
was organized with Phil Donahue and Vladimir Posner as hosts.
And many other scientific collaborations,
cultural-educational exchanges, joint business ventures,
Alaska Airlines flights, parish-to-parish connections,
and so on, culminating in the largest US-Soviet exchange,
the Goodwill Games,
which took place in Seattle in the summer of 1990,
when Russians, or better to say, Soviets, were really coming.
But not all Seattleites supported what they saw
as the unconditional rapprochement
between the two superpowers,
and felt that the Soviets had to be confronted, not appeased.
For example, the Seattle Action for Soviet Jewry,
which was formed in 1974,
to stop the discrimination of Jews in the USSR
and help the so-called "refusniki",
Soviet Jews who were not permitted by the Soviet state
to immigrate to Israel from the USSR,
raised the Soviet Jewish issue
at various citizen diplomacy events hosted in Seattle
and tried to influence national foreign policy.
For some Seattle activists, the Jewish issue,
as well as the issues of religious freedom
and human rights more broadly,
were closely related to the future of US-Soviet relations.
The so-called Jackson-Vanik Amendment to the 1974 Trade Act,
which affected US trade relations with countries
restricting Jewish immigration and violating human rights,
including the Soviet Union,
was co-sponsored by Henry Jackson,
US Senator from the state of Washington.
At the same time,
some of the formal citizen diplomacy ties,
such as the Seattle-Tashkent connection,
were utilized by local activists
to reach out to the Soviet citizens
concerning the matters of nuclear arms control
and visit Soviet refusniki in the USSR.
So, this period of intensified,
direct, personal connections and tensions
they produced presents a remarkable period
in the history of Russian-American relations
in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest
which deserves a book-length study.
And my colleague Eric Johnson,
who will come here in a few minutes
to manage the questions and answers portion, and I,
we have started collecting materials related
to this very rich chapter of Russian American encounters.
And I just want to invite you,
if you have any materials related to these
or other chapters of Russian-American encounters
in Seattle, please --
and would like to donate these materials
to the UW Library Special Collection,
please let me and Eric later know.
But again, a notion of special ties between Russian,
especially Russia's Far East,
or as some termed it American Near East,
and the Pacific Northwest,
motivated and justified US-Soviet encounters in Seattle,
which increased after the collapse of the Soviet Union,
in 1991.
The following year, the Russian Consulate was opened in Seattle.
Two years later, in 1994,
President Boris Yeltsin of Russia
visited Seattle at the end of his American tour,
which also included New York and Washington, DC.
So the development of trade relations
between the United States and Russia
and American investment into the Russian economy
were of particular concern.
And these are some headlines
from different newspapers describing the upcoming
or already describing the happening,
visit of Yeltsin to Seattle.
So in his pitch for investment, Yeltsin said,
"The Pacific Northwest and the Russian East Asia
have a special link."
Covering his visit, the New York Times article noted,
"Mr. Yeltsin's visit recalled the historic links
between Russia and the Northwest via the Pacific Ocean,
links that are starting to pay off in trade.
Seattle is a mainland American city closest
to Russian territory, excluding those in Alaska."
But was the geographic proximity enough
for developing US-Russian cooperation across the Pacific?
Yeltsin probably understood the importance of other factors
and said to the West Coast business leaders in 1994,
"Yes, you were afraid of political instability,
but today, let me assure you,
we have achieved political stability."
Well, unfortunately, his promise proved to be too optimistic.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]