Russia’s Forgotten Genocide in Alaska
In the mid-18th century, far from the battlefields of Europe, the Russian Empire carried out one of its earliest and least-remembered acts of mass destruction — the near-eradication of the Indigenous Aleut (Unangan) peoples of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
The 1764–65 Campaign of Stepan Glotov
In 1764–65, Russian colonial forces under navigator and fur trader Stepan Glotov descended on the Aleutian Islands under the pretext of avenging the deaths of Russian traders and punishing “disobedience” among the Aleut population. According to Russian historical accounts, Glotov “almost completely destroyed all the villages on the southern side of Umnak” and massacred the inhabitants of Samalga Island, the Islands of Four Mountains, and parts of the Fox Islands.
This was not warfare in the conventional sense — it was the systematic destruction of communities. Villages were burned, boats destroyed, food supplies seized or ruined. Thousands were killed, though no one counted the dead.
Collapse of a People
Before Russian colonization, the Aleut population is estimated to have been 12,000–15,000. Within decades of sustained Russian contact, numbers had fallen to just a few thousand. The causes were multiple and interconnected:
- Massacres, such as Glotov’s campaign, which wiped out entire settlements.
- Disease, introduced by Russian crews, to which the Aleuts had no immunity.
- Starvation, after the destruction of food stores and the seizure of hunting tools and kayaks.
- Forced labor and hostage-taking, in which Russian traders held families to compel men to hunt sea otters and seals for the fur trade.
By the end of the 18th century, Aleut society was fractured, its population reduced by as much as 80%. Entire dialects, traditions, and oral histories vanished along with the villages that carried them.
A Pattern That Repeats — Russian Mass Atrocities Through the Centuries
The Aleut genocide was not an isolated aberration — it foreshadowed a broader pattern in Russian and later Soviet expansion. Across Siberia, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe, Russia’s advance brought the same elements: massacres, deportations, the destruction of cultural and religious institutions, and demographic collapse of Indigenous or resistant populations.
Timeline of Russian Atrocities
1764–65 – Aleut Genocide, Alaska: Stepan Glotov’s forces destroy villages, kill thousands, and reduce the Aleut population by up to 80%.
1817–1864 – Circassian Genocide: Russian Empire expels and kills over 90% of the Circassian population from the Caucasus.
1860s–1890s – Conquest of Central Asia: Mass killings and forced assimilation of Kazakhs, Turkmens, and Uzbeks.
1932–33 – Holodomor in Ukraine: Stalin’s engineered famine kills millions.
1944 – Deportations of Crimean Tatars, Chechens, and Ingush: Entire populations loaded into cattle cars, thousands die in transit and exile.
1999–2009 – Second Chechen War: Widespread destruction of Grozny, mass killings, and “disappearances.”
2014–present – Ukraine: Annexation of Crimea, war in Donbas, full-scale invasion in 2022, and ongoing atrocities in occupied territories.
Remembering Alaska’s Tragedy
Today, Alaska’s Aleutian Islands are part of the United States, and Aleut communities survive — but their numbers, culture, and language bear the scars of that first Russian wave of conquest. The destruction unleashed by Stepan Glotov’s forces in 1764–65 is not simply a footnote to colonial history. It is part of a centuries-long continuum of Russian state violence — a continuum still visible in the war against Ukraine.
Russia’s forgotten genocide in Alaska deserves to be remembered not as a relic of the past, but as an early chapter in a pattern that has never truly ended.
