St. Petersburg

After Peter the Great, the tsars that followed him showed little interest in Alaska. 9,000 miles from the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, Russian America was a backwater of a few hundred men at the extreme edge of the Russian Empire. 

In 1766, Tsarina Catherine the Great wrote to the governor of Siberia, declaring the Natives of the Aleutian Islands and the Alaska Peninsula to be Russian subjects. As such, they were protected by Russian laws, and she instructed the Russian fur traders to treat their new fellow citizens well. After this, the government licensed fur-hunting expeditions, and tax collectors accompanied Russian fur hunters on their voyages to Alaska. Officials who accompanied the fur hunters tried to prevent the hunters from mistreating the Natives they met. 

Often, however, orders sent by government officials in St. Petersburg or Siberia were largely ignored. The reality is there was often no one to enforce them. Fur hunters mistreated and enslaved the Natives they were able to overpower. Competing Russian hunting parties fought with each other and with Natives who resisted them. Russians have a saying: "God is high and the tsar far away." Orders from halfway around the world in St. Petersburg often meant little on the ground in Alaska.