Gregory Wallance neatly packages all one would want to know about the distant, ominous region of <i>Siberia</i> into his forthcoming book. Readers will learn how Siberia’s exile system came to be, as well as get to know George Kennan, the American explorer-journalist who first cast it into the searing spotlight in the late 19th century. Wallace meticulously details Kennan’s journeys into Siberia, and one can understand how Kennan’s findings shocked the American public and forever impacted U.S.-Russia relations. <i>Into Siberia</i> is a robust, engrossing, and informative read.

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing me a digital ARC of this book.

In the latter half of the 20th Century, diplomat George Frost Kennan rose to prominence as the architect of US containment strategy during the Cold War. A century before that, his older cousin, George Kennan, rose to prominence exposing Tsarist Russia’s system of exiling political and criminal prisoners to Siberia and the inhuman conditions under which they were forced to live.

Gregory Wallance’s “Into Siberia” is a well-written history. As much a biography of Kennan as it is a tale of 19th-century Russia and Siberia, it tells the story of an adventurous young man who began his career as a telegraph operator during the Civil War and used that experience to get himself appointed to a several-years-long expedition to build an overseas telegraph link through Siberia. Upon his return, he became a writer/lecturer on Siberia, taking the position that Russia’s exile system was benign. To support that position, he returned to Siberia to inspect the various prisons, transfer stations, mines, factories, etc. comprising the exile system. The conditions he found were so brutal and inhumane that the articles he wrote describing them changed America’s then-favorable public opinion of Russia. Those articles were later published as “Siberia and the Exile System,” a two-volume set that, along with Kennan’s extensive lecturing, would adversely affect America’s perception of Russia into the latter part of the 20th Century.

Mr. Wallance does an excellent job of telling this story. His descriptions of Mr. Kennan’s participation in the telegraph expedition give us a great sense of how hostile conditions in Siberia can be. Long, freezing, blizzard-filled winters, savage swarms of mosquitos in summer, unreliable food supplies, towering mountains, primitive roads, bone-bruising conveyances (horse-drawn sleighs and carriages), no way to call for help—these are only some of the dangers Kennan and his co-workers faced. And those dangers pale in comparison to what Kennan found on his later months-long odyssey with artist George Frost to investigate the exile system: prisoners being worked to death amidst the cruelest, most filthy, perilous, and soul-crushing conditions, all to the enrichment of the Russian government. Mr. Wallance concludes by explaining the impact of Kennan’s later writings and lectures on American public opinion of Russia and on Russia itself. (Indeed, the Russian government was so displeased with Kennan that it arrested him on a later trip and permanently barred him from re-entering the country.)

In short, “Into Siberia,” is one-part adventure tale, one-part biography, one-part lesson in 19th century Russian/Siberian history and geography, one-part civil rights story, and one-part “backgrounder” on U.S. – Russian relations. I found it to be a highly informative “must-read” for anyone interested in Russia, the Soviet Union, Siberia, and the course of US-Russian relations over the past century and a half.

My thanks to NetGalley, author Gregory Wallance, and publisher St. Martin’s Press for providing me with an electronic ARC. The preceding is my honest, independent opinion.

Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia
Gregory J. Wallace
George Kennan, an American Diplomat, is associated with the term “containment.” He was responsible for the Cold War Policy of Containment as it was applied to Russia. Kennan became a persona non grata by Stalin within a few months of traveling to Moscow. In 1885 Kennan traveled to Siberia where he witnessed the viciousness Russia was exercising to destroy opposition. Author Gregory J. Wallace shares Kennan’s journey through Siberia and the things he witnessed. Traveling by horseback, horse drawn carriage and sleighs, Kennan survived blizzards and sandstorms. He interviewed detainees, offenders, and refugees. Through the interviews he observed the agony and fear Russia utilized to keep the people inline. Babies died of exposure as their mother’s cradled them in their arms. Convicts were shackled to wheelbarrows deep in the mines as punishment. When George Kennan returned to the United States, he wrote Siberia and the Exile System in order to spawn public fury over the treatment of the exiles. He spent years conversing the lecture circuit sharing the suffering of the exiles.
This is a difficult book to read for the cruelty was real the treatment inhuman. Author Gregory J. Wallace did a superb job in presenting the life of George Kennan.

Well, naturally I expected an early adventure of George Kennan The Moscow Guy, so was briefly disappointed. But when I got into the story of George Kennan The Siberia Guy (a cousin, as it happens), I was interested again. Amazing how people can get obsessed by a country, especially a country as problematical as Russia. Whether the monster in the Kremlin is a Putin or a Party Secretary or a Tsar, the hardships for the Russian people don't seem to change.

"We may die in exile and our grand children may die in exile," one woman told him, "but something will come of it at last." I'm afraid she was wrong.

Very much worth reading.

Into Siberia, while a great true story, fails as a book because it takes a phenomenal story and makes it bland and boring and that is the worst thing you can do to a historical story. Overall Gregory Wallance just doesn’t deliver a great story and takes it in a boring area.

This book was very difficult to read in places and I had to take a couple of breaks. I read it over a period of a couple of weeks with a few days off between readings. This is a nonfiction account of the Siberian exile system in Czarist Russia. It is not pretty. I did not expect it to be. It is a modern account of a late 1800s researcher/journalist who visited Siberia and the prison camps in that region.
It is well written and well researched. It is so well-presented, it is heartbreaking. The author places the reader in the situation and spares no unpleasant detail.
You do not need to be a historian or especially knowledgeable about Russian history to understand and appreciate the content of this book. Index and footnotes included.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Since people are typically familiar with Soviet Gulags, many don't realize that they were built on the 19th century precedent of Tsarist labor camps. George Kennan traveled throughout the Russian east and brought news to America of the practices of Russia. Since the Russians were the only power to really back the US during the Civil War, this was unwelcome news to the American public.

This book reminds me a lot of King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild; stories of men who exposed human rights abuses to an unsuspecting world.

George Kennan’s journey into the far eastern reaches of imperial Russia in order to investigate its exile system is the kind of story that honestly baffles me upon first hearing about it - namely over the fact that something so fascinating has apparently managed to fall so far out of the historical narrative into obscurity.

I would say that Gregory Wallace has definitely done quite a favor by not only shining a spotlight back onto this event, but by doing so with as rich a context as he could have possibly supplied. “Into Siberia” includes Kennan’s first foray into Russia as part of the attempt to establish a Russian-American telegraph via the Bering Sea, his subsequent journeys through the recently-conquered Caucasus region, brutal detail about the ordeals of Russian exiles learned through his third journey into the country, a surprising amount of information about the indigenous peoples of the Siberian region, and so, so very much more. The book practically bursts with abundant information that for me was all quite new, and which I was very, very happy to absorb in turn through that lens of Wallace’s thrilling narrative.

For anyone who enjoys curling up with an excellent history book, I can quite confidently say that “Into Siberia” is definitely one for your to-read itinerary.