Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2017.
One and a half times the size of Western Europe Siberia has acted as an open prison for centuries. Through physical work the mad, the bad and the dangerous were thought to find the true path to citizenship. There are accounts of such breathtaking savagery it is hard to remember this is truth not fiction. Siberian exile is now remembered as part and parcel of Stalin’s regime, House of the Dead reminds us that the roots of this cruelty go deep into the Tsarist past. ~ Sue Baker
Like for Like Reading
In Siberia, Colin Thubron
Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, Anne Applebaum
Wolfson History Prize Judges: “Elegantly written and finely researched, Beer deploys an impressive array of archival sources in this highly original work.”
| Primary Genre | History |
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THE TIMES and TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2016. It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof'. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Russian Revolution, the tsarist regime exiled more than one million prisoners and their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia. Daniel Beer's new book, The House of the Dead, brings to life both the brutal realities of an inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. This is the vividly told history of common criminals and political radicals, the victims of serfdom and village politics, the wives and children who followed husbands and fathers, and of fugitives and bounty-hunters. Siberia served two masters: colonisation and punishment. In theory, exiles would discover the virtues of self-reliance, abstinence and hard work and, in so doing, they would develop Siberia's natural riches and bind it more firmly to Russia. In reality, the autocracy banished an army not of hardy colonists but of half-starving, desperate vagabonds. The tsars also looked on Siberia as creating the ultimate political quarantine from the contagions of revolution. Generations of rebels - republicans, nationalists and socialists - were condemned to oblivion thousands of kilometres from European Russia. Over the nineteenth century, however, these political exiles transformed Siberia's mines, prisons and remote settlements into an enormous laboratory of revolution. This masterly work of original research taps a mass of almost unknown primary evidence held in Russian and Siberian archives to tell the epic story both of Russia's struggle to govern its monstrous penal colony and Siberia's ultimate, decisive impact on the political forces of the modern world.
The House of the Dead Siberian Exile Under the Tsars features in the following genres: History, Biographies & Autobiographies, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, eBooks of the Month, History and Archaeology, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, Recommendations
The House of the Dead Siberian Exile Under the Tsars is available in Paperback, Hardback
The House of the Dead Siberian Exile Under the Tsars was written by Daniel Beer and published by Penguin Books Ltd
The House of the Dead Siberian Exile Under the Tsars has 528 pages
Yes it is part of Penguin History series
£13.49
