Semyon Ivanovich Yanovsky (; April 15, 1789 – January 6, 1876) was a Russian naval officer who was appointed in late 1818 as Chief Manager of the

Russian-American Company The Russian-American Company Under the High Patronage of His Imperial Majesty was a state-sponsored chartered company formed largely on the basis of the Shelikhov-Golikov Company, United American Company. Emperor Paul I of Russia chartered the c ...

, serving into 1820. He had traveled to Kodiak Island with his commanding officer, Ludwig von Hagemeister, who appointed him to the post. The Russian-American Company conducted trading and colonization based in present-day

Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...

. Yanovsky was replaced in 1820 by Matvey Ivanovich Muravyev, who had been selected by the Board of the RAC. Weeks after the naval party reached Kodiak Island in 1817, Yanovsky married Irina Baranova, daughter of

Alexander Andreyevich Baranov Alexander Andreyevich Baranov (; 1747 – 1819), sometimes spelled Aleksandr or Alexandr and Baranof, was a Russian trader and merchant, who worked for some time in Siberia. He was recruited by the Shelikhov-Golikov Company for trading in Rus ...

, the Chief Manager of the RAC since 1799. She was half-

Aleut Aleuts ( ; (west) or (east) ) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska ...

Career

Yanovsky, a member of the aristocracy, attended the

St. Petersburg Naval Institute The Peter the Great Naval Corps - Saint Petersburg Naval Institute (), formerly known as the M. V. Frunze Higher Naval School (named after Mikhail Frunze, in ), is the oldest of the Russian Navy's naval officer commissioning schools. It is locate ...

to train as an officer. After graduating, he was recruited to the service of the

(RAC) in 1816, which drew from the navy for its leaders. He acted as second-in-command to Ludwig von Hagemeister, a

Baltic German Baltic Germans ( or , later ) are Germans, ethnic German inhabitants of the eastern shores of the Baltic Sea, in what today are Estonia and Latvia. Since Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–1950), their resettlement in 1945 after the end ...

. Hagemeister was assigned in 1817 by the Board of the RAC to investigate the finances of the

New Archangel Sitka (; ) is a unified city-borough in the southeast portion of the U.S. state of Alaska. It was under Russian rule from 1799 to 1867. The city is situated on the west side of Baranof Island and the south half of Chichagof Island in the Al ...

, and deputized to appoint a replacement Chief Manager if he believed it necessary. Chief Manager

had been serving since 1799. Hagemeister and Yanovsky reached the settlement in late 1817, in present-day Alaska. Soon after being stationed there, Semyon began a romance with Irina Baranova, the

mixed-race The term multiracial people refers to people who are mixed with two or more races and the term multi-ethnic people refers to people who are of more than one ethnicities. A variety of terms have been used both historically and presently for mul ...

, half-

daughter of the Chief Manager. Baranov had had three children with his Aleut mistress, whom he had married in 1807 after learning that his wife had died that year in Russia. Yanovsky and Irina married six weeks after they met.Borneman, Walter R
''Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land.''
New York City: HarperCollins. 2003, pp. 73-76. At the age of 70, Baranov was replaced in early 1818 by Hagemeister, who had been directed to review his financial accounting for the Company and appoint a successor. Baranov had been seeking to return to Russia for years. From 1818 on, all Chief Managers were drawn from officers of the

Imperial Russian Navy The Imperial Russian Navy () operated as the navy of the Russian Tsardom and later the Russian Empire from 1696 to 1917. Formally established in 1696, it lasted until being dissolved in the wake of the February Revolution and the declaration of ...

. Hagemeister appointed Yanovsky as Chief Manager in late 1818. The senior Hagemeister and Baranov departed together to return to St. Petersburg by a sea route around the coast of Africa. During their lengthy trip, Baranov became ill and died in April 1819, and was buried at sea. Yanovsky served as Chief Manager of the RAC from 1818 to 1820, when his official replacement arrived. Like his predecessors, Yanovsky continually requested the company to recruit doctors for work in Russian America; the first arrived in 1820. The Russian Orthodox priest known as

Herman of Alaska Herman of Alaska (; 1756 – November 15, 1837) was a Russian Orthodox monk and missionary to Alaska, which was then part of Russian America. His gentle approach and ascetic life earned him the love and respect of both the native Alaskans and th ...

influenced Yanovsky. Despite the naval officer saying he "was a liberal thinker tinged with anticlericalism", after his return to Russia, he later became a monk himself. He also wrote a biography of Herman. Herman was eventually canonized as an Orthodox saint, known for his service to the Alaskan Natives and Aleut.Black (2004), p. 251 In 1819 Yanovsky ordered an expedition to be sent to the Copper River. After receiving the officer's reports after return, he concluded copper mining operations on the river would be too expensive.Grinev, Andrei V. "On the Banks of the Copper River: The Ahtna Indians and the Russians, 1783-1867." ''Arctic Anthropology'' 30, No. 1 (1993), pp. 54-66. Informing his superiors of the many costs that would be incurred from such ventures, Yanovsky persuaded the company against pursuing immediate explorations in the area. Yanovsky's replacement, Matvey Ivanovich Muravyev, arrived in 1820, having been appointed as Chief Manager. Travel to the island from St. Petersburg took a year.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yanovsky, Semyon Ivanovich 1789 births 1876 deaths 19th-century military personnel from the Russian Empire Governors of the Russian-American Company Imperial Russian Navy personnel People from Hlukhiv