A description of prison and exile under the Tsars in the late 19th century, based on personal observations and interviews. This account was first published in 1891, describing the tyrannical judicial system in Tsarist Russia that sentenced and exiled revolutionaries, and the shocking cruelties to which they were continually subject. Siberia had become a place of exile for the many revolutionaries who has been sent there as a result of activities in 1878-79, and following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 These were the conditions that led up to the Revolution of 1917.
The author’s first book, Tent Life in Siberia, a thrilling account of his efforts to build a telegraph line across Siberia in the 1860s, was published in 1870.
In 1885-86 he went back to Siberia to investigate the system of political exile. The resulting Siberia and the Exile System is another great travel book, with dark political overtones.
