Abstract
Abstract The year 1981 marked the 300th anniversary of the birth of Vitus Bering, the Danish navigator who led Russian expeditions from Kamchatka into the far North Pacific in 1728 and 1741. Members of the All‐Union Geographical Society of the USSR have led the way in the study of Bering's explorations and discoveries. Recent archival finds have resulted in reinterpretations of Bering's voyages, especially the purpose of the First Kamchatka Expedition, which was intended not to discover whether Asia and North America were connected but to extend the lucrative Russian fur trade from Siberia to the Northwest Coast of America. The real purpose was camouflaged in order to fool Russia's imperial rivals; even the leader of the expedition himself, let alone subsequent scholars, was misled. In order to correct this misadventure the Second Kamchatka Expedition was undertaken in 1741. It produced many valuable works by scientific participants from the young Academy of Sciences, but Peter I's successors were slow to exploit Bering's discoveries, so that much of the Northwest Coast was lost to Russia's competitors.
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