An American journalist's unflinching account, published in two volumes in 1891, of Russia's brutal penal system in Siberia.

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George Kennan was an American journalist and adventurer, who traveled to Siberia in the late 1800s to investigate how Russian criminals and dissidents were punished with exile to remote lands. By the time Kennan traversed the Siberian countryside, villages and towns, Russia's exile system had existed for several decades. His researches demonstrate how common the use of exile as punishment was in Russia; some were exiled due to serious crimes, while others were sent to Siberia for petty offences, or for expressing political opinions. Various intellectuals and creatively talented persons such as the author Dostoyevsky and the philosopher Pyotr Kropotkin spent time in Siberian exile. The remote country of Siberia is depicted as both beautiful and merciless; many convicts suffered immensely in dreadful conditions, struggling with hunger and cold. The climate was frequently harsh and residences commonly squalid or even ramshackle. Despite the often dire circumstances, a culture arose among the exiles; many - especially the politically inclined - were educated and cultured, and would hold impromptu debates upon various subjects. Kennan also examines the native populations such as the Cossacks in great detail, alongside settlements such as Omsk, Tomsk and Pavlodar.

"In Wallance’s bracing narrative, Kennan emerges as a cheerful, deeply decent companion, an uncompromising observer whose greatest strength was his ability to change his mind. He’s a welcome change from the callous imperialists who people most Victorian travelogues, and his humanity allows Into Siberia to delve into horror without succumbing to despair." — The New York Times Book Review In a book that ranks with the greatest adventure stories, Gregory Wallance’s Into Siberia is a thrilling work of history about one man’s harrowing journey and the light it shone on some of history’s most heinous human rights abuses. In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. All that changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and his eyes were opened to the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months Kennan traveled eight thousand miles, mostly in horse-drawn carriages, sleighs or on horseback. He endured suffocating sandstorms in the summer and blizzards in the winter. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on the fuel of inflicted pain and fear. Prisoners in the mines were chained day and night to their wheelbarrows as punishment. Babies in exile parties froze to death in their mothers’ arms. Kennan came to call the exiles’ experience in Siberia a “perfect hell of misery.” After returning to the United States, Kennan set out to generate public outrage over the plight of the exiles, writing the renowned Siberia and the Exile System. He then went on a nine-year lecture tour to describe the suffering of the Siberian exiles, intensifying the newly emerging diplomatic conflicts between the two countries which last to this day.