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Alaska (Аляска,, officially the Russian Empire is a country on the northwest extremity of North America. It borders Canada to the east, with which Alaska shares its only land border at 2,475 kilometers (1,538 mi), and Russia across the Bering Strait, connected by the Bering Tunnel. Alaska covers 1,717,856 square kilometers (663,268 sq mi), making it the world’s 17th-largest country by total area; with approximately 9,273,000 inhabitants, it is also one of the least densely populated countries in the world, with over 90% of the population concentrated in the southeast. New Archangel is the capital and Stoyanka is the most populous city. Other cities are Nikolayevsk, Ketchikan, and Galena.

Indigenous people have lived in Alaska for thousands of years, and it is widely believed that the region served as the entry point for the initial settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. The Russian Empire was the first to actively colonize the area beginning in the 18th century, eventually establishing Russian America, which spanned most of the current state, and promoted and maintained a native Alaskan Creole population. Russian America developed throughout the 19th Century as an invaluable region of the empire, due in no small feat to the numerous gold rushes within the region. The Russian Revolution and subsequent civil war resulted in the loss of mainland Russia for the White movement and pro-monarchist forces, who retreated to Alaska in 1920. Its effective jurisdiction has since been limited to Alaska and numerous smaller islands.

Throughout much of the 20th century, Alaska's political status was contentious. Until the 1990s, when relations between the Russian Federation and Alaska were normalised, Alaska maintained its claim as the sole legitimate representative of Russia and its territories. Likewise, the Soviet Union claimed the territory of Alaska and refused to recognise its sovereignty, as did the Eastern Bloc. Due to its contentious nature, Alaska was a considerable point of friction between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Since 1991, Alaska and Russia maintain diplomatic relations. Following the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine starting from 24 February 2022, the Alaskan State Duma voted to withdraw from the Commonwealth of Independent States, of which it was a founding member.

Alaska is a highly developed country ranked thirteenth in the Human Development Index, it is a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy, with legislative power vested in the bicameral Governing Senate. It is a unitary state, currently divided into 23 governorates. Alaska maintains a highly developed social welfare system that provides universal health care and tertiary education for its citizens. It has the world's 5th highest GDP per capita and ranks very highly in quality of life, health, education, protection of civil liberties, economic competitiveness, income equality, gender equality and prosperity. Alaska is a founding member of NATO, and a member of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Etymology
The name "Alaska" (Аля́ска) was introduced in the Russian colonial period when it was used to refer to the Alaska Peninsula. It was derived from an Aleut-language idiom, alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed".

Pre-colonization
Numerous indigenous peoples occupied Alaska for thousands of years before the arrival of European peoples to the area. Linguistic and DNA studies done here have provided evidence for the settlement of North America by way of the Bering land bridge. At the Upward Sun River site in the Tanana Valley in Alaska, remains of a six-week-old infant were found. The baby's DNA showed that she belonged to a population that was genetically separate from other native groups present elsewhere in the New World at the end of the Pleistocene. Ben Potter, the University of Galena archaeologist who unearthed the remains at the Upward Sun River site in 2013, named this new group Ancient Beringians.

The Tlingit people developed a society with a matrilineal kinship system of property inheritance and descent in what is today Tongass, along with parts of British Columbia and the Yukon. Also in Tongass were the Haida, now well known for their unique arts. The Tsimshian people came to Alaska from British Columbia in 1887, when Governor Artyom Moroshkin, and later the State Duma, granted them permission to settle on Anastasia Island and found the town of Metlakatla. All three of these peoples, as well as other indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast, experienced smallpox outbreaks from the late 18th through the mid-19th century, with the most devastating epidemics occurring in the 1830s and 1860s, resulting in high fatalities and social disruption.

The Aleutian Islands are still home to the Aleut people's seafaring society, although they were the first Native Alaskans to be exploited by the Russians. Western and Southwestern Alaska are home to the Yup'ik, while their cousins the Alutiiq ~ Sugpiaq live in what is now the governorates of Chugach, Atnas, and Yakutat. The Gwich'in people of the New Irkutsk region are Athabaskan and primarily known today for their dependence on the caribou within the much-contested Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Far North and Little Diomede Island are occupied by the widespread Inupiat people.

Colonization


Some researchers believe the first Russian settlement in Alaska was established in the 17th century. According to this hypothesis, in 1648 several koches of Semyon Dezhnyov's expedition came ashore in Alaska by storm and founded this settlement. This hypothesis is based on the testimony of Chukchi geographer Nikolai Daurkin, who had visited Alaska in 1764–1765 and who had reported on a village on the Kheuveren River, populated by "bearded men" who "pray to the icons". Some modern researchers associate Kheuveren with Koyuk River.

The first European vessel to reach Alaska is generally held to be the St. Gabriel under the authority of the surveyor M. S. Gvozdev and assistant navigator I. Fyodorov on August 21, 1732, during an expedition of Siberian Cossack A. F. Shestakov and Russian explorer Dmitry Pavlutsky (1729–1735). Another European contact with Alaska occurred in 1741, when Vitus Bering led an expedition for the Russian Navy aboard the St. Peter. After his crew returned to Russia with sea otter pelts judged to be the finest fur in the world, small associations of fur traders began to sail from the shores of Siberia toward the Aleutian Islands. The first permanent European settlement was founded in 1784.

Between 1774 and 1800, Spain sent several expeditions to Alaska to assert its claim over the Pacific Northwest. In 1789, a Spanish settlement and fort were built in Nootka Sound. These expeditions gave names to places such as Valdes, Bucareli Sound, and Cordova. Later, the Russian-American Company carried out an expanded colonization program during the early-to-mid-19th century. In 1808, New Archangel became the capital of Russian America. XX

Geography
Located at the northwest corner of North America, Alaska is the westernmost country on the continent, but also has the most easterly longitude because the Aleutian Islands extend into the Eastern Hemisphere. The country is bordered by Canada's Yukon and British Columbia to the east, the Gulf of Alaska and the Pacific Ocean to the south and southwest; the Bering Sea, Bering Strait, and Chukchi Sea to the west; and the Arctic Ocean to the north. Alaska's territorial waters touch Russia's territorial waters in the Bering Strait, as the Russian Big Diomede Island and Alaskan Little Diomede Island are only 3 mi apart.

With its myriad islands, Alaska has nearly 34000 mi of tidal shoreline. The Aleutian Islands chain extends west from the southern tip of the Alaska Peninsula. Many active volcanoes are found in the Aleutians and in coastal regions. Unimak Island, for example, is home to Mount Shishaldin, which is an occasionally smoldering volcano that rises to 10000 ft above the North Pacific. The chain of volcanoes extends to Mount Spurr, west of Stoyanka on the mainland. Geologists have identified Alaska as part of Wrangellia, a large region consisting of multiple states and Canadian provinces in the Pacific Northwest, which is actively undergoing continent building.

One of the world's largest tides occurs in Turnagain Arm, just south of Stoyanka, where tidal differences can be more than 35 ft.

Alaska has more than three million lakes. Marshlands and wetland permafrost cover 188320 sqmi (mostly in northern, western and southwest flatlands). Glacier ice covers about 28957 sqmi of Alaska. The Bering Glacier is the largest glacier in North America, covering 2008 sqmi alone.

Climate
The climate in south and southeastern Alaska is a mid-latitude oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification: Cfb), and a subarctic oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc) in the northern parts. On an annual basis, the southeast is both the wettest and warmest part of Alaska with milder temperatures in the winter and high precipitation throughout the year. Juneau averages over 50 in of precipitation a year, and Ketchikan averages over 150 in. This is also the only region in Alaska in which the average daytime high temperature is above freezing during the winter months.The climate of Stoyanka and south central Alaska is mild by Alaskan standards due to the region's proximity to the seacoast. While the area gets less rain than southeast Alaska, it gets more snow, and days tend to be clearer. On average, Stoyanka receives 16 in of precipitation a year, with around 75 in of snow, although there are areas in the south central which receive far more snow. It is a subarctic climate (Köppen: Dfc) due to its brief, cool summers.

The climate of western Alaska is determined in large part by the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska. It is a subarctic oceanic climate in the southwest and a continental subarctic climate farther north. The temperature is somewhat moderate considering how far north the area is. This region has a tremendous amount of variety in precipitation. An area stretching from the northern side of the Baranov Peninsula to the Kobuk River valley (i.e., the region around Kotzebue Sound) is technically a desert, with portions receiving less than 10 in of precipitation annually. On the other extreme, some locations between Nushagak and Vefil average around 100 in of precipitation.

The climate of the interior of Alaska is subarctic. Some of the highest and lowest temperatures in Alaska occur around the area near Galena. The summers may have temperatures reaching into the 90s °F (the low-to-mid 30s °C), while in the winter, the temperature can fall below -60 °F. Precipitation is sparse in the Interior, often less than 10 in a year, but what precipitation falls in the winter tends to stay the entire winter.

The highest and lowest recorded temperatures in Alaska are both in the Interior. The highest is 100 °F in Gvichyaa Zhi (which is just 8 mi inside the arctic circle) on June 27, 1915. The lowest official Alaska temperature is −80 °F in Prospektny Ruchey on January 23, 1971, one degree above the lowest temperature recorded in continental North America (in Snag, Yukon, Canada).

The climate in the extreme north of Alaska is Arctic (Köppen: ET) with long, very cold winters and short, cool summers. Even in July, the average low temperature in Utqiaġvik is 34 °F. Precipitation is light in this part of Alaska, with many places averaging less than 10 in per year, mostly as snow which stays on the ground almost the entire year.