The 1st Russian lady tycoon - Natalia Shelikhova and her enterprise in Alaska

By Al Palladin – speech at the Seattle Olympic Club, October 8, 2020. From the upcoming book “America’s arch ally: Russia’s forgotten role in the founding, development and defense of the United States”.

If one were to choose two words to describe the character of this outstanding lady, resilience and perseverance would be appropriate. The mother of 11 children, who lost 5 in their infancy, loyal wife and business partner of a true entrepreneur, she faced adversity and intrigue by conniving competitors when she suddenly became a widow. Originating in a remote province and having led most of her life in Siberia and the Far East, she became known to and supported by 3 Czars and the Court in the capital, St. Petersburg. At a time when society relegated women to “secondary” roles, Natalia Shelikhova rose to the strategic leadership of the most prominent corporation in Russia – bringing her business empire back from the brink of failure, and outlining a clear path for improvements, directions that were still being executed upon for decades after her passing.

Natalia married Grigorii Shelikhov in 1775, and they went on to build their family, and business together for the next 20 years. Thanks in part to her dowry, Shelikhov that same year was able to co-finance an expensive expedition. Following the guidance from Catherine the Great, Russian entrepreneurs were expanding the reach of their highly profitable fur trade – and Grigorii set out towards the Kuril Islands and Japan. This marked the first of many times during their lifetime together that the husband would entrust Natalia with many complex matters – not only that of running an expansive household at their home base in Irkutsk, but to also act as his representative in business matters while he was away. In 1775 he was 26 – and she was only 14, but already she showed her grit.

In the following 8 years Grigorii enjoyed increased success by pushing further eastward. As investors the Shelikhov family bought shares in fur-trapping parties, known as voyages. In 1781, with enough capital and practical experience from their success in Russian America, the Shelikhov-Golikov Company was formed.

In August of 1783 Natalia joined her husband as they led 3 of their business’s ships from Okhotsk, across the Pacific, to Alaska. The party of 192 people included Shelikhov’s one-year old son Mikhail. Natalia gave birth to their daughter Avdotya on Kodiak Island in 1784. “(My wife) followed me everywhere and did not turn away from enduring hardships” – later recalled Grigorii. They spent a total of 3 years in their profitable voyage in Alaska, and by the time that they returned to Russia in 1786, Natalia had learned all the intricacies of the fur business firsthand, including the management of key operations, employee affairs and the establishment of friendly relations with the native people.

In 1787-1788 the Shelikhov’s presented a business plan to the Russian government. While Grigorii was formally the petitioner, Natalia contributed, and continued with the key themes of the strategy after he passed away in 1795. The proposal was to significantly enlarge Russian America through additional resources – skilled labor and military. It envisioned gainful employment for willing members of the local communities of the Aleutian and Kuril Islands. There was a call to increase the exploration of the American mainland, to establish “wheat-farming, factories and plants” and to make the natives subjects of the Russian Empire. Further, the Shelikhov’s called for development of trade relations with “Japan, China, Korea, India, Philippine and other islands, and in the Americas with Spaniards and Americans”. In order to achieve all of this, they were asking for a monopoly, as well as substantial business loans – something that a Czar could grant.

In 1788 Natalia, at the age of 25, and already a mother to 6, joined her husband on a year-long engagement with the Court and nobility in St. Petersburg. They were able to persuade the Committee on Commerce and the Council to the Court to support their plan, but received a stark rejection from Catherine the Great. In her verdict the monarch stated that if such a concession was granted to the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, it would “open the pathway to a hundred-headed beast (i.e. monopoly) to start sneaking into Russia”. The Empress was against monopolies, which was inline with mainstream economic theory of the second half of the XVIII century. Further, Catherine II stated that she required more convincing on the value of the lands to be gained in North America.

Between 1789 and 1794 Natalia Shelikhova continued to run the day to day business affairs of the thriving enterprise and it is known that she intentionally studied trade practices. She tracked the movement of high value goods across vast and treacherous territories, dealt with fur fairs and their fluctuating pricing across the whole of Russia, traded in goods with China, handled a complex commercial structure with debtors and creditors. While Natalia’s husband was away in successive lengthy voyages, she kept up with politics – and grew the family’s influence through cultivated connections, charming governors, key moguls in non-competing business fields, and nobility, including Catherine’s “favorites”.

In 1795 tragedy struck – Grigorii passed away from an illness. A multitude of competitors, as well as duplicitous business partners, tried to exploit the situation and wrestle away the business. But Natalia persevered. She not only protected what was rightfully the family’s, by successfully appealing to the authorities to grant her, a woman, business control – which was extremely rare back in the day. And she was also able to persuade Catherine the Great. Based on her request to the ruler of Russia – documents that were well written, logical, with sound business arguments, which distinguished Natalia’s petition from competing requests, which were authored by her male adversaries – the Shelikhov-Golikov Company gained much needed support from the Empire. Further, in 1796, in recognition of her success as a business leader, Catherine II granted hereditary nobility status to Shelikhova.

By 1797 Natalia became the de-facto leader of the fur-trade in Russian America and the Pacific. She was helped by two key in-laws – noblemen Nikolai Rezanov and Mikhail Buldakov, whom she had as managing directors of her venture (the later married Alaskan-born Avdotya). Together they conceived and received from Catherine’s son and successor, Emperor Paul I, permission to establish the Russian American Company. In 1798 Natalia submitted a business development document to the Court, which can be regarded as the pinnacle of her corporate leadership career. The “Memorial towards the firm reestablishment of the American Company” laid out a detailed plan in 30 paragraphs for the “rights and privileges”. It eventually led to the creation of a form of business, which at the time was unique in Russia. By 1799 the Czar granted the support of his Government for a “unified monopolistic shareholders society”. Modeled in part on the British East India Company, and partially on contemporary practices in France, the Russian American Company proceeded to issue shares available for purchase and trade by any Russian citizen – at a time when no stock market yet existed in the country. Paul’s son and successor, Czar Alexander I continued with support for Natalia and her business efforts from 1801 onwards.

The Russian American Company paid close to 500,000 rubles in dividends to its shareholders in 1802-1803. With these proceeds the benefactors could buy, for example, ~50,000 modest cottages (“izbi”).

The business that the Shelikhov family founded and cultivated extended from the heart of Siberia to the Pacific Coast of Russia, to the permanent settlements that their company was first to establish in Alaska, to the North American mainland and down the coastline to an outpost in California, and even sponsored a venture to bring the Hawaiian Islands into the Russian Empire. Natalia - who grew from a homemaker with little formal education into a globally minded merchant tycoon, and one of the most progressively minded people of her time - made it happen over decades of work and leadership.

Recommended further reading: Dr. Alexander Petrov is a historian at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, who has written extensively on the subject matter. “Natalia Shelikhova: Russian Oligarch of Alaska Commerce (Volume 15) (Rasmuson Library Historic Translation)” was published by University of Alaska Press in 2010 (ISBN-13 : 978-1602230736). For those who can read in Russian: ?Наталья Шелихова у истоков Русской Америки? (издательство ?Весь Мир?, 2012 ISBN 978-5-7777-0541-9)