Russian speaking American Alaska? Is this possible?

The problem is if you find gold or have too large a Russian population the odds of Alaska being sold in 1867 go way down. The US is really not going to "take" Alaska from the Russians, the British via Canada were in a position to do that if they came to it. Basically you'd need a large enough Russian population to keep some identity with Russian spoken at home at least, and among other Russian descended folks in stores etc. See signs in Latin and Cyrillic alphabets. Basically you'd end up with something like parts of the southwest where for a long time had towns that more Spanish used than English, if any, and a lot of families where Spanish was first language at home. In the southwest had an infusion of Spanish speakers from south of the border to help keep it alive, if Alaska gets a bunch of refugees after the revolution, that might keep the Russian tradition alive. In any case the majority of the population needs to be OK in english before statehood.
What if ATL Alaska has a relativly small Russian speaking population, that is soon after the American aquisition reduced to minority status. Later due to demographic trends russophones re-emerge as the majority.
 
Top