The Alaska Purchase in 1867 is often called Seward's Folly, dubbed so by detractors. Did many Russians oppose selling the land? If so, on what grounds?

Great question. The principal Russian reaction against the sale was driven by people who had financial interests in the Russian American Company and those who saw it as a retreat from empire.

First, let's talk about why the sale took place. The Crimean War of the 1850s had exposed a significant problem with Russia's possessions bordering the Pacific Ocean: namely, Russia couldn't adequately defend them. Grainger's The First Pacific War: Britain and Russia, 1854-1856 is a good book on this topic. During the war, the Hudson's Bay Company successfully pressured the British government into making Alaska a neutral country during the war, but Russian-American Company shipping was not subject to that neutrality, and Russian mainland ports (used by the RAC) were attacked (with mixed success) by the French and British.

The Crimean War devastated RAC assets and left the company financially weakened (though it still paid dividends to owners). It also devastated the finances of the Imperial government, which needed liquidity to pay the costs of the war. At the same time, a booming United States appeared destined to control all of North America. Russia, which had been the friendliest European power to the United States for almost a century, had no desire to endanger that relationship.

During the Crimean War, the RAC (before the modus vivendi with the British government was reached) had even contemplated a fake sale of assets to Americans in order to shield the RAC from British depredations. This led to persistent rumors through the late 1850s that Russia was preparing (or had already) sold Alaska to the United States. It seems likely that only the American Civil War prevented an earlier sale.

In 1858, Admiral-General and Grand Duke Konstantin, Tsar Alexander's brother, ordered an inspection team to be sent to Russian America to examine how well the RAC was handling the territory. Konstantin, as head of the Russian Navy, was perhaps the leading proponent of a sale. He comprehensively knew its vulnerability in the event of war, and he also knew what the Crimean War had cost. That inspection team, which included a representative of the finance ministry, and one from the Navy, was organized in 1859 and left for Alaska in 1860. They completed their report in 1862.

Much to their surprise (they had come in with a negative viewpoint), Pavel Golovin and Sergei Kostlivtsov "had to report in clear conscience and justice that they found everything in proper order."

They actually recommended against liquidating the colony, but they did recognize the military vulnerability and urged reforms and limitations of the company's privileges in the territory. A commission met to consider the two men's inspection reports and make recommendations. Of note, they recommended the ban on liquor importation be lifted, and liquor licenses be put into place. Even though the committee's final report noted, "all the financial resources of the country could hardly be sufficient to repay the expense of its defense or even simple administration," it nevertheless concluded, "In spite of the small value to us of the American Possessions as far as industries and trade are concerned, there are political reasons which make their preservation by us an absolute necessity. Only by strengthening our foothold in North America can we call ourselves masters of the Northern precincts of the Pacific Ocean, the control of which for many reasons is a desirable object for a powerful Empire."

Despite this olive branch, the committee's recommendation included reform proposals, some hotly opposed by the directors of the RAC. The RAC enjoyed its monopoly and did not want to pay more to the imperial government to maintain it. In the end, the RAC's board of directors rejected a new 20-year charter under the proposed conditions, based on the notion that they were too severe.

At the end of 1866, the issue of Alaska came before foreign minister Gorchakov, who was busy dealing with the consequences of the Austrian-Prussian war. He nevertheless sided with Konstantin in favor of the sale. Finance minister Reutern also chimed in with agreement, and so did von Stoeckl, the ambassador to the United States. In December 1866, the emperor agreed that negotiations should be opened with the United States for a sale.

There were still opponents, mostly RAC directors (especially Ferdinand von Wrangel), and some lower-level bureaucrats, but the leading figures of Russia had lined up behind a sale. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Count P.A. Valuev, was against the sale, but he was presented with it only after the fact and never spoke of it publicly. He wrote in his diary, dated March 22:

"News was received of cession by us of our American possessions to the United American States for 7 million dollars. None of us knew about this except Prince Gorchakov, the Minister of Finance, and Krabbe. Strange phenomenon and a depressing feeling. . . . We sell part of our territory on the quiet and do a bad turn to England, whose Canadian possessions now still more exclusively contradict the Monroe Doctrine."

When the sale took place, Russian newspapers were "unprepared for the unexpected news, and for awhile a certain confusion was felt," Nikolai Bolkhovitinov writes in Russian-American Relations and the Sale of Alaska.

The newspaper Birzhevye vedomosti (Exchange Gazette), which Bolkhovitinov calls "the organ of Russian business circles," stated in its first commentary that, "True, Russia does not get much benefit from its American possessions, and for political reasons she does not have great need to retain them, but in any case there is hardly anyone who would think of offering our government such an insignificant sum as 7,000,000 dollars for Russian America."

The newspaper Golos wrote strongly against the sale: "We do not know where such rumors originate and for what goals they are disseminated, but one thing is certain, that notwithstanding their evident impossibility, they deeply anger all true Russians," it wrote on March 23, 1867.

The paper said on March 25 that the RAC had "conquered territory and established colonies on it with great sacrifice of labor, capital, and even the blood of Russians, with which they sealed the right of Russia to possess this region."

This was a rare bit of public dissent from a Russian newspaper, which was forced to call such things "rumors" in order to evade Imperial censorship, which would come down hard on any newspaper speaking against an action of the government.

On March 29, the St. Petersburgskie vedomosti referred to "the sincere and insincere howls of robust patriotism that resounded from various corners of our journalism" following the sale. That's undoubtedly referring to the fact ─ obliquely, because of censorship ─ that not everyone was happy with the sale.

Moskovskie vedomosti didn't doubt the reasons for the sale, but it wrote on May 14 that "Our American colonies now ceded to the United States were discovered, brought under Russian sovereignty, and built up solely by private enterprise, at a cost of no little labor and expense. In the course of over eighty years, they supplied Russia with profits of no less than 100 million rubles silver in the form of various types of furs. Recalling this, we cannot be indifferent either to the interests of the colonies, nor to the interests of the company."

Russian newspapers also dodged censors by publishing foreign accounts hostile to the sale. Nevertheless, the furor died down as the months passed.

By September 1868, Birzhevye vedomosti wrote in its September 1868 issue that "rapprochement between Russia and North America, these two colossi on either side of the ocean, was not only possible but also in both their best interests."

It furthermore called the Alaska Purchase a "goodwill concession" to the United States and as a result took the "first step toward a Russian-American alliance," a step which "eliminated every cause for future conflict which might have arisen between Russia and the United States."

A bit of wishful thinking, perhaps, but reasonable given the previous century of relations.

Cassius Clay, the American ambassador to Russia, wrote in a letter to William Seward on May 10 that the Russian attitude could be summed up in a single sentence: "All right, we sold to you too cheaply, but it all remains in the family."

A note on "Seward's Folly" as well. That term was used only by a handful of Radical Republican newspapers and politicians, who were engaged in a bitter political conflict with the more centrist and conservative Republicans, including President Andrew Johnson. In 1958, Richard Welch published a paper in American Slavic and East European Review that surveyed contemporary newspapers and found the vast majority in favor of the Alaska Purchase. He concludes that "Seward's Folly" was an amusing slogan but had little popular opinion behind it. Most Americans believed in the expansion of empire and thought that over the following century, Alaska would be a valuable source of minerals, possibly even becoming a great breadbasket for agricultural development, given enough attention.

As for reading, I'd suggest Ronald Jensen's The Alaska Purchase and Russian-American Relations, pretty much anything by Bolkhovitinov (pretty much the god of Russian-American relations studies), and Lydia Black's Russians in Alaska is a wonderful introductory text to the whole period.