Going From Future To Past


   While the war was slowly transforming into a technological terror, of the kind that we all take for granted in the modern world, in some places it had devolved into fighting that would look quite familiar to someone from a previous century. This was never more true than on the Canadian/Alaskan frontier where it could be argued that the war had begun. Despite being the source of the first crisis that led to the conflict, the Alaskan front had received almost no aid or resources once general hostilities were underway. The people who lived in either Russian Alaska or the Canadian Northwest territories had precious little to fight with but, they did so anyway and with a passion that was probably unequaled anywhere else. For these people, who lived in this untamed wilderness, the war had become extremely personal.
If anything, the war looked much like the Anglo-French conflicts, in North America, of a century past. There were regular troops stationed in the theater but, they were few and very ill equipped. There was nothing in the region as advanced a road, let alone a railroad, and large scale operations were impossible. Such academic military operations as moving and holding land were beyond the abilities of the forces in the region and the lack of military supplies made them incapable of attacking each other. This is why the most common form of warfare became the raid and it was largely carried out by people who were, at best, questionably under military authority. These people fought as much, if not more, for their own reasons as they did national interests. In fact, as later events would prove, most of these people had as little use for their own respective countries as they did for that of their enemy.
It must be pointed out that the Northwestern Front was not a unique example of the tragedy that played out there. Such things still go on in the modern world and the cause is a simple one, if not very obvious to most, and ironically this is at the very heart of the cause. When two or more sides have a reason to fight and are denied the means to do so, they almost never stop fighting. What happens, more times than not, is that people simply adjust their plans to fit their means. When they are no longer capable of attacking each others armies they tend to go after each other’s civilians instead. This is exactly what happened during the Anglo-French conflict of a century earlier and it would repeat itself on the Alaskan frontier.
This front would become one of many sensitive issues between Canada and Great Britain. It would lead to a significant change inside of Canada and forever alter the relations between the two peoples, although, this change would pale in comparison to what happened on the other side of the border. Alaska was already a powder keg, waiting to explode, before the war even began. This was even true before the discovery of gold in the Yukon valley. Once you added the factor of untold riches, it was like lighting a match to that powder keg. When you consider this fact, it is of no great surprise that the first great crisis of the war began here. What is surprising is that it did not start even sooner.
To say that Alaska was a unique place was an understatement. It was both wilderness with it’s rouged conditions and lack of infrastructure. It was also very cosmopolitan and managed both at the same time. One could easily say that this was where the world ended because it was here that all of the peoples, migrating both to the east and the west, finally met each other and had nowhere left to go. This was not a metaphor. In Alaska, of the late 19th century, it was literally the truth. Much like South Africa, Alaska had become the most unlikely of crossroads with a very diverse population of people and most of them had great reason to mistrust the other. Once they had a real reason to fight, over the gold, it was only a matter of time before leaders and factions would begin to emerge. Not surprisingly, most of these would run down ethnic lines.
One of the most vigorous policies that Czar Nicholas had pursued, upon the death of his father, was squashing the growing dissent within his empire. Of course, dissent was how Nicholas saw it even if it is quite apparent that his father, Alexander, had understood what it really was, growing pains. Russia was slowly modernizing and, like most states of the time, she was experiencing the social discourse that came with such needed change. Alexander was relatively tolerant of this because he seems to have understood that if Russia were too compete with the other powers then it needed that change and you could not have one without the other. Nicholas never seems to have linked one issue with the other and he set about dealing with the social unrest in a more traditional and autocratic way.
The method that Nicholas favored, to deal with his dissatisfied subjects, was simply to get them as far away from him as was possible. Russia had vast tracks of unsettled lands to the east but, even Siberia did not seem to be far enough for him. He also had that worthless peninsula in the New World, called Alaska, and if sending rabble rousers to another continent had worked for the British then why should it not work for him too?
This policy was very successful in the beginning but, it also demonstrated how Nicholas paid very little attention to the details of his own edicts. Ultimately it would cause more problems than it would solve. This was never more apparent than to his secret police. After the discovery of gold in Alaska, the jails became filled with men who went out of their way to get arrested and deported. The policy was suddenly causing crimes, as opposed to deterring them, and Nicholas never seems to have noticed.
One early deportee was a man that would participate in the Earp Raid of 1898. His name was Vladimir Llyich Ulyanov and both he and his wife, Nadya, were two people who had dedicated their lives to sowing dissent and causing problems for the powers that be. In that respect he seems to have been very similar to Earp with one distinction. Earp was interested in causing problems for pay while Ulyanov seemed to just like it for emotional gratification. Eventually these differences would drive these allies (and by some reports even personal friends) apart. It is true that their actual motivations were vague and this subject is still hotly debated. What is not debated is that these motivations were equally intense for each man.
We can form something of an educated guess in regards to Ulyanov because, unlike with Earp, his past is not as murky. He was born to a family that was relatively comfortable in both finances and social standing. He was the most unlikely of dissidents but, a very good case study in the failure of the policies of Nicholas. Ulyanov’s older brother was arrested and executed by the Russian secret police. This was obviously the turning point in the life of young Vladimir. He would eventually find himself in St Petersburg where he came to be a prominent member of a dissident group that was one of only many in the Russian seat of power. It would be here that he met Nadya and it would also be here that they were both eventually arrested and deported.
Deportation sounds very harsh and, to the Victorian world at least, it was an unimaginable atrocity. To the modern reader it makes one think of death camps with armed guards, barbed wire fences, and little huts that provide no real shelter against and unforgiving artic winter. In fact, this was not the case at all and if Nadya’s writings and letters can be believed, one almost has to wonder what kind of punishment this was. They were not only provided with a home but, two of them on separate occasions. The trip to Alaska took over a year and they would actually live near Irkutsk for most of the time in transit. They were never under guard and the entire exile seems to have been handled via correspondence. They were also, obviously comfortable, since they spent a great deal of their time writing. As this infers, they also never worked while under sentence. The government was actually paying them a salary to be prisoners.
When the Ulyanov’s reached Alaska they were settled in near the port of Sitka. Once again they were given a home and seem to have been free to do as they pleased. This is most obviously the case since Nadya, quite openly, corresponded with her family and often spoke of leaving Alaska for Europe. She did not indicate that this would have been any problem and, the way she wrote of it, it sounds as if it would be quite easy. This was before the war, the Ulyanov’s had adequate finances, and the shipping around Alaska was both international and plentiful. In fact, as records indicate, a good number of Russian dissidents did leave. Most of them would wind up in the United States, Canada, and even Mexico.
That much is ironic, because of what happened next, and it should have been a clue to Nicholas that his policy was failing. More people were trying to get in to Alaska than those who were trying to leave. The reason was simple and, once again, it was the Yukon gold strike. While Vladimir Ulyanov would later write that his reasons for remaining were because, “the proletariat of the world were coming to me,” I have my doubts that this was the real reason he stayed. Both he and Nadya would make not one but, three expeditions to the Yukon gold fields. None of these attempts seem to have been very successful but, in the process, Ulyanov would learn how Alaska worked. He would eventually wind up in Ketchikan and put this knowledge to use.
The fact that he chose to settle in Ketchikan is somewhat of a clue as to his motivations and plans. At the time that he and Nadya moved there it was a boom town and a treaty port. This is where most of the “temporary workers” from the United States were allowed to officially enter the Russian Empire. The town boasted a naval coaling station, a garrison of Cossacks, a customs house, and while it was not the official capital of Alaska it might as well have been. It had long since eclipsed Sitka as the real focal point of power and wealth in the colony and this is most obviously what drew in Ulyanov.  
Since the gold rush, Ketchikan, had also spawned a thriving industry of saloons, billiard houses, gambling dens, and brothels. Most of these new businesses were owned by Americans. This is where Ulyanov would first meet Wyatt Earp. Vladimir seems to have had only one distraction from his otherwise monolithic purpose in life and this was billiards. Earp owned a Billiard hall. It is likely that whatever plans and motivations that these two formed were done so with pool cues in hand. It can also be easily supposed that the real politic of Alaska was going on in the saloons of Ketchikan as opposed to the government buildings of Sitka. It would be in places like this that both Earp and Ulyanov would build the networks that would carry them through the war and beyond.
Interestingly enough, it would be here that both men would also have some contact with another man who would later become their most ferocious nemesis. His name was Seth Bulloch and he was neither Russian nor American. Bulloch was from Canada and his presence in Ketchikan, in the prewar days, greatly illustrates how disorganized this wilderness was. Not only did you have an influx of Russian dissidents and waves of Americans (most of whom were German, Polish, Hungarian, Italian, and Irish who had only just recently immigrated the US) but, there was a fairly sizable community of Canadians who were settling the area. In many ways, Bulloch was quite typical of this group. Before the gold strike they were drawn in by the booming logging industry or what remained of the fur trade. Many of them, much like Bulloch, seems to have just been fleeing civilization in general.
Before the gold, no one in the area cared much about where the border was. The Russian authorities did little to curve immigration and, in reality, could not have done much even if they had chosen too. The Russian colonial authorities, in the personage of a private company that was not unlike the one in Mozambique, had enough to deal with in their on going war with the Tlingit tribe that had never submitted to Russian rule. In fact, we do know that all three men, Ulyanov, Earp, and Bulloch participated in at least one campaign against the Tlingit. While some suggest that they did so as comrades in arms we have no information. Ulyanov was the only source of writing on the matter and, after the war, he destroyed his papers on that subject. All we have now are recollections of others that did note their presence but, did not elaborate.
The one thing that all of this demonstrates is why the war took the shape that it did on this front. The mix of personalities, the lack of any real authority, the scarce nature of resources, and finally the fact that all of the key players knew each other was a volatile mix. People in this area did not choose their sides due to anything as trivial as flags. In fact, Jack London would later note an anonymous comment about nationality and it seems to echo the sentiment of the people in this region. Someone called a certain flag a, “fancy bed sheet.” Who said it and about which flag is irrelevant. What it tells us is these people were not fighting for king and country, for some far off emperor, and not even for some vague notion or political ideal. These people would fight each other for themselves and, as a result, they would do so in the most bloodthirsty of ways.