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| - Analysis: Russian decree on its assets overseas (no, Alaska was not mentioned)
Soon after the Russian government issued a decree on Jan. 18, 2024, pertaining to Russian properties abroad, multiple social media users claimed that this document declared the Russian Empire’s sale of Alaska in 1867 illegal.
The Decree of the President of Russia No. 21 says the government will “financially support” efforts to search for overseas real estate owned by the Russian Federation and the predecessor regimes.
It was misinterpreted by many.
For example, this post on X on Jan. 21 included the original decree in Russian and its English translation. It said, “Putin signed an order insinuating the sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 was illegitimate.” It has over 5,800 likes and 1,700 reposts at the time of writing.
On the same day, a website called Essa News released an article titled, “Putin stokes tensions with U.S., declares 1867 sale of Alaska ‘illegal’.” We could not find much information about the website’s owner because the page only states that it shares “curated news from around the world.”
Nevertheless, this article gained traction online and was shared on X by several users, including this post that amassed over 6,300 likes and 1,000 reposts.
The same claim also appeared on a popular Hong Kong forum, LIHKG, with over 200 replies.
However, our investigation found no evidence that the recent Russian government decree said anything about Alaska’s sale to the U.S. being illegal.
The U.S. State Department on Jan. 22 responded to these claims and said Putin was “not getting [Alaska] back.”
What is the Decree for?
By keyword search, Annie Lab verified that the source of the screenshot showing the document was an official appointment of the President of the Russian Federation published on Jan. 18 by the Russian Official Portal of Regulatory Acts.
We looked at the Decree, and it does not mention Alaska. It reads, when translated to English:
“In accordance with subparagraph 1 of paragraph 2 of Article 785 of the Budget Code of the Russian Federation, designate the federal state unitary enterprise ‘Enterprise for Property Management Abroad’ of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation as the recipient of a subsidy provided from the federal budget for financial support of costs associated with the search for real estate of the Russian Federation, the former Russian Empire, the former USSR, the proper registration of the rights of the Russian Federation in relation to the existing federal real estate and the found real estate of the Russian Federation, the former Russian Empire, the former USSR and the legal protection of this property.”
According to the document, the Russian government is trying to reclaim objects of cultural heritage, property of the former Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and real estate whose ownership was not transferred to the Russian Federation.
It names the Enterprise for the Management of Property Abroad of the Presidential Administration and its Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Goszagranproperty” as the recipient of funds for this task.
Goszagranproperty is a government entity responsible for the “management of residential and non-residential Russian real estate abroad, provision of property for rent; construction, reconstruction, repair and operation of administrative, public, residential, industrial, and non-industrial buildings; tourism services.”
Other fact-checking organizations such as Snopes and the Paper also debunked the same claim.
Properties owned by foreign governments
It is not uncommon for countries to own properties abroad. Many countries purchase real estate to house their diplomatic staff and families.
For example, the lot of 26 Garden Road in Hong Kong, where the U.S. Consulate General’s office is located, was leased to the U.S. government in 1999 for 999 years. The U.S. government used to own some other properties, such as 37 Shouson Hill Road for staff accommodation.
Similarly, the Winfield House – an English townhouse in Regent’s Park, central London — has been in official ownership of the U.S. government since 1946. Then U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom, Winthrop Aldrich, was the first to reside in the property in 1955, and it has served as the ambassador’s residence since.
On Jan. 22, Alexander Krushelnitsky, a modern Russian history professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities, told the local business news outlet RBC that in the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia owned a significant part of the coast of Nice, a city in France, and the primary real estate located there, which was purchased as the property of the imperial family.
“This real estate consisted not only of mansions, castles and land plots directly adjacent to them. Forest hunting grounds, areas with beautiful panoramic views, and even a city square in Paris, in an isolated case, were also acquired,” Krushelnitsky said in the interview (translation by Annie Lab).
Krushelnitsky also mentioned buildings and the production facilities in Jerusalem could fall under the search “in whole or in part,” such as “mines, plants, factories, workshops, shipyards.”
A researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Dyukov, also told RBC that “[the property in question] could be a building, it could be plots of land.” Additionally, “there is a huge number of objects [whose ownership is] being discussed in Jerusalem,” he said.
There are also properties purchased during Soviet times, including apartments for official business trips, of which the ownership status became unclear after the collapse. “All this is being sought [by the Decree],” Dyukov told RBC.
Russia has already reclaimed some of the property of the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire abroad, Dyukov added.
A prominent example is the transfer of the St. Nicholas Cathedral in Nice, France, in 2010, which was built in honor of the heir of Emperor Alexander II, into Russian ownership.
Dyukov estimated that, since 2000, about 4,000 different objects of property of varying value have been transferred into Russian ownership, including those located in Europe, the Middle East, and South Africa.
The historians interviewed by RBC speculate that the initiation of this search is due to the “general international situation” that has recently developed around Russia.
Alaska Purchase
According to an article published by a project funded by the U.S. Congress, the Alaska Purchase took almost 15 years.
Due to shifting economic prospects and geopolitical concerns, Russian interest in their Alaskan region began to decline by the 1850s. The tsarist government turned to the American colony – its only viable buyer under the political climate at the time.
In 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from Russia for US$ 7.2 million, which marked the end of Russian efforts to expand trade and settlements to the Pacific coast of North America.
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