Home Feed
Home
Search
Search
Add Review, Blurb, Quote
Add
Activity
Activity
Profile
Profile
The House of the Dead
The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars | Daniel Beer
15 posts | 4 read | 36 to read
A visceral, hundred-year history of the vast Russian penal colony. From the beginning of the nineteenth century to the Russian Revolution, the last tsarist regimes exiled more than one million prisoners and their families to Siberia. Common criminals, political radicals, prostitutes, and alcoholics arrived desperate and half-starving in a land of harsh weather, grueling work, and pestilential conditions. A place of brutal realities, it was known as "the vast prison without a roof." In his riveting new history, Daniel Beer takes readers deep inside Siberia, unearthing true-life tales of inhuman punishments and the crimes that occasioned them. Focusing his gaze on the last five tsars (1801 to 1917), Beer sheds light on how the massive penal colony, a project of correction and colonization, became an incubator for the radicalism of revolutionaries who would one day rule Russia. As comprehensive as it is bloody, The House of the Dead delves beneath the statistics and dares to imagine the human experience of Siberian exile. Beer's original scholarship--examining letters, petitions, and court records in Russian and Siberian archives--tells the story of Russia's struggle to master its prison continent as revolution loomed. From the Hardcover edition.
Amazon Indiebound Barnes and Noble WorldCat Goodreads LibraryThing
Pick icon
100%
review
Oblomov26
post image
Pickpick

A fascinating book on the system of Siberian exile in the time of the Tsar‘s, before the creation of the gulag system with which most people are familiar. From the turn of the 19th century when the concept of penal exile was used as a method to grow and populate the great swathes of land claimed by the empire to the early 20th century, when Siberia had turned into a hot bed of revolutionary activity.

BookishTrish I thought this was fantastic too! 6y
59 likes2 stack adds1 comment
blurb
BookishTrish
post image

blurb
BookishTrish
post image

1 #audiobook 😂 2 My glasses‘ frames 👓 3 Russian history, non-fiction 🇷🇺 4 Maybe a year or two ago?!? 🥔 5 I‘ve done it precisely once and had a good time 🎼 #HumpDayPost @MinDea

MidnightBookGirl Love this meme! I'm a huge fan of audiobooks and it bothers me when people don't think they "count" as read books. 6y
julesG 😂😂😂😂 That meme! 6y
Reggie Lol 6y
Birdsong28 Not necessarily as I read Circe using the Whisper Sync option and it changed words, missed out sentences or added words and sentences. So I just wonder what kind of context it left my story in. 😀📚📖 6y
MoMogrl 😂 6y
63 likes5 comments
blurb
BookishTrish
post image

Cozy blanket and a 5am fire in stark contrast to the content of this brutal and fascinating book about The gulags under Romanov rule.

IndyHannaJones WHY ARE YOU UP AT 5AM!? 6y
Zelma Cozy! 6y
PurpleyPumpkin Love your fire! Perfect for today!🔥📚☕️ 6y
BookishTrish @IndyHannaJones Freaking insomnia 6y
75 likes1 stack add4 comments
quote
BookishTrish
post image

Write a horror story in a single sentence...

Suet624 Yikes. 6y
62 likes1 comment
quote
BookishTrish
post image

Anyone else have that Pulp song stuck in their heads #insomnia

blurb
BookishTrish
post image

TFW the opening act isn‘t working for you, but you‘ve got an engrossing work of non-fiction on your Kindle app

Zelma Bookworm win! 🙌 6y
58 likes1 comment
blurb
BookishTrish
post image

When you‘re at the rink and reading about Dostoyevsky in Siberia

bookcollecter A chilling experience I'm sure 😬 6y
Cathythoughts Nice 👍🏻 6y
66 likes1 stack add2 comments
quote
BookishTrish
post image

This quote is about the Decembrists‘ exile and reminds me that much of Russian history had an unintentionally dark comedy vibe. See also: The Death of Stalin

56 likes2 stack adds
blurb
BookishTrish
post image

A study in contrasts #vacayallday

Mollyanna Looks wonderful! 6y
88 likes1 comment
blurb
BookishTrish
post image

Librarian on a lunch break

94 likes1 comment
blurb
BookishTrish
post image

#Birthdayhaul, part 1. I may have made a most wanted Excel spreadsheet to guide the shoppers. #bookwormproblems

TheWordJar Genius!! 🤓 7y
Reagan The Ruins is so scary. 7y
BookishTrish @Reagan-reads That's exactly what I wanted to hear! 7y
88 likes1 stack add5 comments
blurb
Oblomov26
post image

Having read the experiences of several authors who were sent to count trees, I could not turn up this history of the Siberian penal work camps in the 19th century

59 likes4 stack adds
review
ssravp
post image
Pickpick

Just absolutely brutal. The amount of times I cringed or recoiled reached points I haven't seen since Symphony For The City Of The Dead.

blurb
MrBook
post image

#TBRtemptation post! Wow! This book sounds amazing! This is a cultural history of Siberia from the early 19th Century through the Russian Revolution. It was a place where the tsars banished criminals, as we all know; but it became something much more. An experiment in natural resource extraction; an experiment in revolutionary politics; an experiment in operating, in effect, a massive penal colony. Intriguing. #blameLitsy #blameMrBook 😎

SharonGoforth Just bought this yesterday. The NYTimes had a good review of it last week. 8y
MrBook @SharonGoforth Oooh, didn't see that review! Eager to hear your thoughts when completed 😊👍🏻! 8y
LitsyGoesPostal 😊👍🏻 8y
88 likes20 stack adds3 comments