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Title details for The House of the Dead by Daniel Beer - Available

The House of the Dead

Siberian Exile Under the Tsars

by Daniel Beer
Arthur Morey
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
Winner of the Cundill History Prize 
A visceral, hundred-year history of the vast Russian penal colony.
It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof.' From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the Russian Revolution, the tsars exiled more than one million prisoners and their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia.  Daniel Beer illuminates both the brutal realities of this inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. Here are the vividly told stories of petty criminals and mass murderers, bookish radicals and violent terrorists, fugitives and bounty hunters, and the innocent women and children who followed their husbands and fathers into exile.
Siberia was intended to serve not only as a dumping ground for criminals but also as a colony. Just as exile would purge Russia of its villains so too would it purge villains of their vices. In theory, Russia’s most unruly criminals would be transformed into hardy frontiersmen and settlers. But in reality, the system peopled Siberia with an army of destitute and desperate vagabonds who visited a plague of crime on the indigenous population.  Even the aim of securing law and order in the rest of the Empire met with disaster: Expecting Siberia also to provide the ultimate quarantine against rebellion, the tsars condemned generations of republicans, nationalists and socialists to oblivion thousands of kilometers from Moscow. Over the nineteenth century, however, these political exiles transformed Siberia's mines, settlements and penal forts into a virtual laboratory of revolution. Exile became the defining experience for the men and women who would one day rule the Soviet Union.
Unearthing a treasure trove of new archival evidence, this masterly and original work tells the epic story of Russia's struggle to govern its prison continent and Siberia's own decisive influence on the political forces of the modern world. In The House of the Dead, Daniel Beer brings to light a dark and gripping reality of mythic proportions.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 3, 2017

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781524703387
      • File size: 493123 KB
      • Duration: 17:07:20

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Arthur Morey does well in his performance of this history of Siberian exile under the tsars. Spanning the reigns of tsars from Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II, this audiobook is filled with interesting details from numerous sources. Listeners hear that the region shaped, and was shaped, by the different types of prisoners who were sent there--not only political prisoners, but also criminals and prisoners of war went to this vast region. Morey is clear in diction, easygoing-- almost conversational--in pace, and somewhat neutral in tone. Although his American accent may surprise listeners conditioned to hear only narrators with English accents read works of Russian history, his performance is easy to follow and doesn't distract from this interesting work. M.T.F. © AudioFile 2017, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 17, 2016
      In this meticulously researched and often enlightening account, Beer (Renovating Russia), senior lecturer in history at Royal Holloway, University of London, shows that populating and cultivating the resource-rich expanse east of the Ural Mountains was a test that the czars failed spectacularly. As early as the 17th century, Russian peasants, soldiers, and officials began to settle Siberia, soon joined by exiles “in ever greater numbers.” Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the state banished people deemed “harmful agents” to serve prison sentences, perform hard labor, or settle permanently in what became Russia’s “Wild East.” Thrown together in grueling convoys, deteriorating way stations, and hellish mines were minor offenders, hardened criminals, and generations of revolutionaries for whom Siberia was both a punishment and a chance to test and spread revolutionary ideas. Beer details the systemic incompetence of the penal administration and the brutal physical punishments inflicted on exiles, as well as the violence that escaped convicts unleashed on the indigenous population. Loosely organized and often repetitive, Beer’s history is nevertheless dense with memorable anecdotes and images, including a hillside of empty graves dug to serve a penal colony. As Beer demonstrates, the Russian empire’s grand ambitions for Siberia, like those graves, “sank into the earth without a trace.” Illus. Agent: Michael V. Carlisle, InkWell.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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