Russian
INTERBERING MANAGEMENT – FYODOR SOLOVIEW
Fyodor Soloview is an Alaskan businessman and visionary founder of InterBering LLC, an international consulting group advocating for the construction of a Bering Strait railway tunnel that would connect the United States, Russia, and East Asia.
A graduate of Lomonosov Moscow State University, Soloview was raised in Moscow, the son of parents employed by the world-renowned Bolshoi Ballet. Since relocating to Alaska in 1990, he has leveraged his cross-cultural expertise and international business experience to promote stronger commercial ties between the U.S. and Russia.
Soloview has long championed the idea of a direct rail link connecting the continents, viewing it as a natural evolution following the transformative success of Europe’s Channel Tunnel.
His advocacy has been featured by The Atlantic, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch, and Voice of America, which once noted that “Washington’s diplomatic ‘reset’ with Moscow could be welded in steel” through such a project.
As Soloview puts it: “In all the world, there is perhaps no more obvious opportunity to bring together natural resources and ready markets than Alaska’s Bering Straits. Facilitating the transport of goods and passengers between North America and Asia will not only open a major new avenue for trade but will also serve as a catalyst for development in both Alaska and the Russian Far East.”
In 2017, the Anchorage Museum featured Fyodor Soloview and InterBering LLC in its exhibition The Polar Bear Garden – The Place Between Russia and Alaska, marking 150 years since Alaska’s transfer to the United States.
Anchorage Museum Exhibition: The Polar Bear Garden – The Place Between Russia and Alaska
Alaska and Russia are intimately connected by land and history but are also distant — separated by water, language, war, and politics.
Today, ice, ambition, oil, and commerce continue to define this complex relationship. Talk abounds of Russia claiming both Alaska and Crimea; of a bold Russian-led transcontinental railway project linking Siberia with North America; of traversing the Bering Strait through what could become the world’s longest tunnel.
Building a railway across the Bering Strait was first proposed by Tzar Nicholas II in 1905. The idea gained new currency in recent years after the Russian government revealed plans for a new “super agency” to develop infrastructure in the Russian Far East, and Vladimir Putin vowed to spend $17 billion a year for new and improved railroads.
Some Russian economists believe in a future railroad tunnel across the Bering Strait. Such a tunnel would cost over $100 billion and would need to be at least 64 miles long — twice the length of the tunnel beneath the English Channel. In Alaska, Fyodor Soloview, a native of Moscow, recently formed InterBering LLC, a private company to lobby for rail construction across the Bering Strait.
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Full Exhibition Gallery