Since the mid-18th century, the Russian Empire began to explore the west coast of North America. In 1799, the "Russian-American Company," founded by Paul I, received a 20-year monopoly on the development of new territories in this region.

That same year, our colonists, led by the first governor of Russian America, Alexander Baranov, built the fortress of St. Michael the Archangel on Sitka Island off the southeastern coast of Alaska. Three years later, local Indians from the Tlingit tribe, whom the Russians called "Kolosh," violated the peace treaty and attacked the fortress. The settlement was destroyed, and most of the colonists perished.

In 1804, Baranov returned to Sitka with a well-armed flotilla. After unsuccessful negotiations with the Indians that lasted a month, the Russians began a siege. A few days later, the Tlingits surrendered and left the island.

Conflicts with the Russians continued until the sale of Alaska to the USA in 1867. The Tlingits were unhappy with the colonists, as they hunted sea otter fur either independently or with the help of hired Aleuts. The English, on the other hand, bought furs from the Indians, offering weapons, gunpowder, and alcohol, inciting them to conflict with the Russians. Only in 2004 did Tlingit elders make peace with the descendants of Baranov in accordance with Indian tradition in the presence of US authorities.

After the victory at Sitka in 1804, Baranov established a new fortress, New Archangel, on the shore of the bay. By 1808, when more than two hundred Russians and over a thousand natives lived here, the city became the capital of Russian America.

By the mid-19th century, New Archangel was little different from a provincial Russian town. By the time of the sale of Alaska, a cathedral of St. Michael the Archangel, a shipyard, an admiralty, a market, a theater, two hospitals, a pharmacy, a club, an observatory, a museum, a seminary, a music school, a nautical school, and industrial manufactories had already been built here.

Today, in this American city known as Sitka, on Baranov Island, more than 9,000 people live, of whom 10% are descendants of Russian colonists.