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| English | Russian | Английский | Русский |
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Exploration Исследование |
Colonization Колонизация |
Development Развитие |
Alaska Аляска |
National Identity Национальное самосознание |
Mutual Perceptions Взаимное восприятие |
America, Russia, and the Meeting of Frontiers
Meeting of Frontiers explores the comparative history of the Russian expansion across Siberia to the Russian Far East and the Pacific, the American expansion westward, and the meeting of the Russian-America frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Russia and the United States were very different countries: Russia an autocracy ruled by the tsar, and America a democratic republic. But the histories of their frontiers have many parallels, both in the freedom and opportunity that they offered and in the conflict and hardship they produced--for settlers and for native peoples.
Americans tend to see their expansion westward as a process of free settlement. In contrast, Russians readily use the phrase “the conquest of Siberia” and have in their language no precise equivalent to the word “frontier” as used in American history, with its connotations of openness, freedom, and opportunity. Nonetheless, both countries share an experience of continent-wide exploration, settlement, and development that was unrivaled elsewhere in the world. For both countries, much of their identity derives from their frontier experience.
Meeting of Frontiers--a multimedia digital library--provides a gateway to this experience and to much that remains important about the national identities of Russia and America in the twenty-first century.