The Ethnic and Linguistic Identity of the Descendants of Alaskan Creoles in Our Days

Russian has been spoken on the North American continent since the middle of the 18th century, when Russia began active trade and fishing, gradually moving eastward along the islands of the Aleutian Ridge to the Alaska peninsula. At first, Russian voyages for marine and fur-bearing animals were irregular, the main idea of industrialists was to gain profit from the resources of New Land. They treated the indigenous people rather harsh, exploiting their hunting and fishing skills. Decades passed before the most ideologically thinking and visionary Russians came up with the idea that they could be hosts here, not guests. Together, they created the Russian-American Company (RAK) in 1799, which solely ruled Alaska until it was ceded to the United States of America. Having left its only overseas colony in 1867, Russia left behind one important thing: the Russian language, which, resulting from contacts with the languages of indigenous peoples, formed a special Russian variety that has survived to date, as well as the Russian Orthodox tradition, followed by many residents of many Alaskan territories. The research is devoted to the preservation of the ethnic and linguistic identity of the descendants of the Russian colonists. It is based on a corpus of sociolinguistic and ethnographic interviews (1980s - 2020s) with residents of areas with a strong Russian presence, supported by archival records. Adhering to the approaches of linguistic and historical anthropology, the author uses both universal scientific methods and special methods of historical research determined by the unique nature of the problem: chronological problem method, comparative analysis method, systematic method, and content analysis.