WHY Russia Saved the United States: The Forgotten History of a Brotherhood

Why did Russia’s Czar Alexander II deploy the Russian navy to the coasts of the USA during the height of the Civil War in 1863? Why dynamic shaped the rise of the great rail building traditions across Russia, the USA, Germany, Japan and France in the 19th century and how did this shape the sale of Alaska and Bering Strait rail connection between old and new worlds? In this presentation delivered to a Vancouver audience as the first part of a seminar entitled “The Historic Clash Between Open vs Closed Systems“, Rising Tide Foundation President Cynthia Chung demonstrates that in order to answer these questions it is necessary to understand a broader historical dynamic shaped by the great scientist-statesman Gottfried Leibniz who guided Czar Peter the great in the creation of the Russian Academy of Science over 150 years earlier. Cynthia zeros in on the forgotten strategic friendship sparked by the Academy’s first female president Ekaterina Dashkova and America’s Benjamin Franklin beginning in 1780 which was in