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The one Eastern outpost where the Russian Empire retreated was Alaska. The U.S. had made an offer for it back during the Crimean War, but the Russians refused. In 1867 Secretary of State William Seward tried again, asking first for various fishing and trading rights. The Russian Minister to the U.S., Eduard de Stoekl, refused. "Very well," said Seward. "Will Russia sell the whole territory?" Stoekl said the Russians might consider it if the price were right. Seward consulted President Andrew Johnson, then offered $5 million. Stoekl, who had been authorized to sell at that price, refused, saying he could not consider less than $7 million. Seward grudgingly raised his bids until they reached $7 million. He then found that the Senate, already embroiled in the post-Civil War quarrels that would lead to the impeachment of President Johnson, refused to ratify "Seward's Folly." Only after Stoekl spread substantial sums of money among influential Senators did the legislators suddenly see wisdom in the spectacular bargain.
Despite the ill-considered sale of Alaska, the Romanov Empire by now extended over nearly 7,000 miles, but the vast structure had little strength. The Empire of Japan, newly reopened after its long isolation, proved that in the war of 1905. Though outnumbered, the Japanese pushed back a Russian invasion of Manchuria and virtually annihilated the Russian Navy. Czar Nicholas II barely survived the humiliation and the subsequent revolution that swept over Russia. Eleven years later he blundered into another war, another defeat, another revolution. In the 1918 Treaty of Brest Litovsk, the Germans' price for making peace with the shaky new Bolshevik regime included stripping away Russia's western holdings: Finland, Poland and the Baltic states all regained their independence.
Other territories the new Bolshevik regime fought to retain. The Ukraine declared its independence in 1918, but the Red Army recaptured it the following year. Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia similarly declared their independence, then formed a Transcaucasian Federation that even won de facto ; recognition from the Western allies, but here too the Red Army soon marched in and took over. And so things remained until World War II, when Joseph Stalin began trying to re-create the empire of the Czars -- and more. By attacking the Finns in 1939, he seized a slice of southern Finland; by making a deal with the Germans, he once again annexed the Baltic states. Then, after repelling the Nazi invasion, he established the Red Army in occupied East Germany in 1945, moved the Polish frontiers some 200 miles to the West and established a buffer zone of Communist satellites all across Central Europe. When China too went Communist in 1949, Stalin could claim suzerainty over the largest empire since that of the Mongols. And though nobody realized it then, it was just as doomed.