Secret Agent’s Indictment Amplifies Demand To Rename Kauai’s Russian Fort… Advocates of changing the fort’s name to reflect its Hawaiian heritage are confident the state will do so but no official decision has been made yet.
In November 2017, Russian government officials from Moscow made an unlikely visit to Kauai to commemorate the bicentennial of a neglected Hawaii state park known as Russian Fort Elisabeth.
Transforming a pile of rubble into a replica of the historic 19th century fort is a shared vision of government officials and scholars from both Hawaii and Russia. But the event did little to sort out a controversy over what the site should be called and what version of history it should tell.
Local scholars say Russian presence at the site was minimal — and any plan to rebuild it should focus on the fort’s place in Native Hawaiian history.
