INTERBERING MANAGEMENT – FYODOR SOLOVIEW

Fyodor Soloview is an Alaskan businessman and founder of InterBering LLC, an international consulting and advocacy group promoting the construction of a railway tunnel beneath the Bering Strait to connect the United States, Russia, and East Asia.

Soloview was born and raised in Moscow and graduated in 1986 from the Faculty of Journalism of Lomonosov Moscow State University. After graduation, he worked as a reporter for Moscow Radio of Gosteleradio, the State TV and Radio Committee of the USSR. He grew up in a family closely connected with the world of classical ballet: both of his parents worked at the renowned Bolshoi Theatre. His father, Georgi Soloviev, a Bolshoi soloist dancer, toured the United States with the Bolshoi Ballet in 1959, 1962, and 1964 during the Cold War cultural exchanges between the Soviet Union and the United States.

During the 1962 American tour, U.S. President John F. Kennedy attended performances of Swan Lake in Washington, D.C., where Soloviev performed the role of the Jester. Contemporary newspapers reported that Kennedy wished to meet the dancer after the performance; see the report in the Arkansas Gazette (November 16, 1962), reproduced here: Arkansas Gazette newspaper clipping. According to family recollections, Kennedy later greeted members of the Bolshoi troupe backstage following the ballet.

After this meeting, the President invited those dancers who wished to do so to visit the home of his father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy, at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, who was then recovering from a stroke. Although President Kennedy himself did not attend that informal gathering, the visiting dancers — primarily male members of the Bolshoi troupe, including Georgi Soloviev — were received and accompanied by the President’s younger brother, the recently elected U.S. Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy. A photograph of this meeting, showing Senator Kennedy together with members of the Bolshoi Ballet delegation, can be seen here: photograph with Senator Edward Kennedy and Russian ballet guests.

Fyodor’s mother, Bolshoi ballerina Ekaterina Mikhailova, also had an early North American connection. The Bolshoi Ballet made a historic visit to Montreal, Canada, in June 1959 as part of its first acclaimed North American tour, and both Ekaterina Mikhailova and Georgi Soloviev were members of that delegation. During the troupe’s appearances in Montreal in mid-to-late June 1959, Ekaterina — a capable French speaker and, according to family recollections, the only member of the troupe able to address the public fluently in French — delivered a greeting on Montreal radio, welcoming Canadians on behalf of the Bolshoi Theatre.

The family’s connections with the United States extended even further back into the nineteenth century. Soloview’s great-grandfather, Friedrich Koenemann, emigrated from Moscow to the United States in 1857 together with his German-Russian family. Their arrival is recorded in the passenger manifest of the ship Argo, which sailed from Bremen and arrived at the port of New York. Friedrich’s father, Victor Koenemann, a former textile manufacturer in Moscow, later settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he became a substantial landowner. There he created an 80-acre subdivision consisting of 31 residential lots — known as the Victor Koenemann Subdivision — located around the intersection of Fond du Lac Plank Road (today’s Teutonia Avenue) and the County Road now known as Atkinson Avenue. The family’s household of seven persons living together in Milwaukee was also recorded in the U.S. Census of 1860. After establishing property interests in Milwaukee, the family eventually returned to Moscow in the 1860s.

Soloview later researched and documented this largely forgotten American chapter of his family’s history in his genealogical study “Victor Koenemann’s Secret 19th-Century American Chapter: From Europe to the New World and Back”. His investigations into nineteenth-century migration, trade routes, and transcontinental economic connections helped deepen his interest in the broader historical idea of linking Eurasia and North America through major transportation infrastructure.

After relocating to Alaska in 1990, Soloview began developing international business and research initiatives aimed at strengthening commercial and cultural ties between the United States and Russia.

During the 1990s he was actively engaged in cross-border trade through his Anchorage-based company RUSA, organizing shipments of consumer goods from Alaska to the Russian Far East. Much of this commerce relied on direct air cargo connections operated by Aeroflot and Alaska Airlines, which provided regular flights between Alaska and cities in eastern Russia. When both airlines abruptly discontinued their direct service to Russia in the late 1990s, the air cargo corridor that had supported many cross-border trading ventures effectively collapsed. This experience led Soloview to reconsider the long-term infrastructure needed to sustain economic cooperation between the two regions.

From this realization emerged his growing interest in the idea of a permanent transportation link between Alaska and Eurasia. He later established InterBering LLC to promote the development of rail connections from Anchorage both southward to Canada and westward toward Russia across the Bering Strait.

Throughout his career Soloview has advocated the concept of a fixed rail connection between Eurasia and North America across the Bering Strait. He has argued that such a project would represent a natural continuation of global infrastructure development following the successful completion of Europe’s Channel Tunnel.

His work and proposals concerning the Bering Strait transportation corridor have been discussed in publications including The Atlantic, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch, Engineering News-Record (ENR), The Moscow News, and Voice of America, which once noted that “Washington’s diplomatic ‘reset’ with Moscow could be welded in steel” through such a project.

Soloview has described the strategic importance of the region as follows: “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.