Over the course of the nineteenth century Siberia developed a fearsome reputation as a place of exile, often imagined as a vast penal colony and seen as a symbol of the iniquities of autocratic and totalitarian Tsarist rule. This book examines how Siberia’s reputation came about and discusses the effects of this reputation in turning opinion, especially in Western countries, against the Tsarist regime and in giving rise to considerable sympathy for Russian radicals and revolutionaries. It considers the writings and propaganda of a large number of different émigré groups, explores American and British journalists’ investigations and exposé press articles and charts the rise of the idea of Russian political prisoners as revolutionary and reformist heroes. Overall, the book demonstrates how important representations of Siberian exile were in shaping Western responses to the Russian Revolution.

In late nineteenth-century Russia, a series of organizations emerged from the nascent radical liberationist movement for the purposes of providing aid to political prisoners and exiles. Those leading these endeavors framed them as a philanthropic exercise that was paradoxically always also political, provocatively appropriating the name and humanitarian mission of the Red Cross for their illicit attempts to assist the enemies of the Tsarist state. These efforts provided a unifying thread to the fractious and fragmented revolutionary movement over years and even decades. The unjustly persecuted political prisoner or exile came to serve as a powerful synecdoche for the tyranny of the autocratic state, while assisting these "suffering martyrs" came to be legible as an indisputably noble act across political and even national boundaries. Revolutionary Philanthropy--the first book in any language to provide a comprehensive portrait of the origins of these organizations--posits that the groupings that undertook aid to political prisoners and exiles emerged through gradually accrued shared practices within a series of constantly evolving, overlapping domestic and international personal and political networks. In bringing together two seemingly incompatible modes of social action--radical politics and philanthropy--these "red cross" activities came to form a vital connective tissue across party and ideological lines. Moreover, they connected the still small and isolated groupings of committed revolutionaries to a significantly wider circle of sympathizers, both at home and abroad. Within Russia, this linked radicals to a significantly broader circle of liberals and politically uncommitted supporters, while revolutionary émigrés presented the Western public with a captivating narrative of heroic martyrs unjustly suffering for the cause. While the strain of conflicting imperatives threatened on multiple occasions to unravel the entire affair, in the end this very tension proved instrumental in making them durable. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources inmultiplelanguages,someof which have not been consulted before

Feliks Volkhovskii (1846-1914) was a significant figure in the Russian revolutionary movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He lived through pivotal changes ranging from the rise of ‘nihilism’ in the 1860s and the growth of populism in the 1870s, through to the creation of the Socialist Revolutionary Party in the early 1900s. Imprisoned three times before he turned thirty, he spent ten years in Siberian exile before fleeing abroad to join the fight against tsarist autocracy from western Europe. Following Volkhovskii’s arrival in Britain in 1890, he played a central role in the campaign to win sympathy for the Russian revolutionary movement, editing newspapers and journals including Free Russia. He also helped to smuggle propaganda into Russia as well as becoming one of the most prominent figures in the émigré leadership of the Socialist Revolutionaries. Throughout his life, Volkhovskii was also a prolific writer of poetry and short stories, and was on good terms with many leading literary figures of the time including Ford Maddox Ford and Edward and Constance Garnett. Michael Hughes’s groundbreaking new biography provides a vivid history of this notable but hitherto neglected figure of both the political and literary worlds. Based on ten years of research in archives across the world and drawing on sources in multiple languages, this masterful biography explores how Volkhovskii’s life illuminates broader intellectual and historical questions about the Russian revolutionary movement. It is essential reading for anyone interested in late Imperial Russia and the Russian revolution.

Winner of the Cundill History Prize The House of the Dead tells the incredible hundred-year-long story of “the vast prison without a roof” that was Russia’s Siberian penal colony. From the beginning of the nineteenth century until the Russian Revolution, the tsars exiled more than a million prisoners and their families east. Here Daniel Beer illuminates both the brutal realities of this inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. Siberia was intended to serve not only as a dumping ground for criminals and political dissidents, but also as new settlements. The system failed on both fronts: it peopled Siberia with an army of destitute and desperate vagabonds who visited a plague of crime on the indigenous population, and transformed the region into a virtual laboratory of revolution. A masterly and original work of nonfiction, The House of the Dead is the history of a failed social experiment and an examination of Siberia’s decisive influence on the political forces of the modern world.

This book examines what came to determine the local power and character of the Communist party-state at the level of the national non-Russian republics. It discusses how, although the Soviet Union looked centralised and monolithic to outsiders, local party-states formed their own fiefdoms and had very considerable influence over many policies areas within their republics. It argues that local party-states were shaped by two decisive relationships - to the central Communist party in Moscow and to local constituencies, especially to the local intelligentsia and the creative professions who constituted the local party-states’ biggest potential adversaries. It shows how local party-states negotiated stability and their own survival, and contends that the effects of "Sovietisation" continue to be felt in the independent states which succeeded the republics, particularly in the field of the relationship with Moscow, which remains of immense importance to these countries.

This book presents a new perspective on how Russia projects itself to the world. Distancing itself from familiar, agency-driven International Relations accounts that focus on what ‘the Kremlin’ is up to and why, it argues for the need to pay attention to deeper, trans-state processes over which the Kremlin exerts much less control. Especially important in this context is mediatization, defined as the process by which contemporary social and political practices adopt a media form and follow media-driven logics. In particular, the book emphasizes the logic of the feedback loop or ‘recursion’, showing how it drives multiple Russian performances of national belonging and nation projection in the digital era. It applies this theory to recent issues, events, and scandals that have played out in international arenas ranging from television, through theatre, film, and performance art, to warfare.

This book discusses the diverse practices and discourses of memory politics in Russia and Eastern Europe. It argues that currently prevailing conservativism has a long tradition, which continued even in Communist times, and is different to conservatism in the West, which can accommodate other viewpoints within liberal democratic systems. It considers how important history is for conservatism, and how history is reconstituted according to changing circumstances. It goes on to examine in detail values which are key to conservatism, such as patriotism, Christianity and religious life, and the traditional model of the family, the importance of the sovereign national state within globalization, and the emphasis on a strong paternal state, featuring hierarchy, authority and political continuity. The book concludes by analysing how far states in the region are experiencing a common trend and whether different countries’ conservative narratives are reinforcing each other or are colliding.

Despite reports of exile proving disastrous to the region, 300,000 Russian subjects, from political dissidents to the elderly and mentally disabled, were deported to Siberia from 1823-61. Their stories of physical and psychological suffering, heroism and personal resurrection, are recounted in this compelling history of tsarist Siberian exile.