Customer Reviews

Siberian Dawn: A Journey Across the New Russia

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The book is well written and tells a very engaging story. It's in the tradition of "hardship travel" writing. I'm reminded of an essay by the philosopher Santayana about travelling "in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately..." The author's adventure involves all those things. I knew Jeff Tayler in college and am not surprised that he could make the journey. His language skills were legendary, and he already showed some taste for enduring hardship. He also had a talent for empathy that is showcased here. I will add a few things that other reviwers have not mentioned. The view of Americans by Russians is more favorable than I expected, and rather poignant. The chapter about Jeff's visit to Lenin's hometown is brief but fascinating. Although the book is quite serious, there is some needed comic relief in such things as the Russian fascination with the soap opera "Santa Barbara." In the end, the depiction of Russian life is pretty bleak, and the prospects for it getting better in the near future do not appear bright. The picture painted is of a damaged culture and a beaten-down people. It comes across as a hard place to like, which makes Tayler's love for it even more remarkable.

Like the author, I am fascinated with all things Russian. I will not discuss much about the book - the other reviews pretty much cover what I have to say, and I truly enjoyed it. The author did a fine job. However, I have a major criticism (which made this a 4-star instead of a 5-star book) - as some others said, the publisher (not the author) does a great disservice by including no photos - also, I cannot understand any travel book not containing at least a route map! This is unbelieveable, and Hungry Mind Press should be severely ashamed! If the object was to save money, then this publisher is "penny-wise and pound-foolish." It steers readers away from other publications from the same publisher because of a shoddy production impression.

This is a tremendous book. Jeffrey Tayler's Siberian Dawn a chronicle of his 8000 mile trip across Russia tells us as much about the current state of the former Soviet Union as it does about the bleak consequences for Russia's future. Through Tayler's masterful descriptive narrative and an unmatched ability to communicate the important details skillfully we are bestowed with a mostly grim picture of a people and society in complete disrepair. At some points a dangerous journey, he threads his way across a Russian geography complete with a remnant (and maddening) bureaucracy, copious criminal elements, dangerous drunkards, and treacherous unrelenting weather. Jeffery Tayler's trip makes any college student's year off hitchhike across the U.S. look like an arranged travel company tour complete with catering. Not without its bright spots, Tayler occasionally catches glimpses of Russian scenery that by its beauty and power leaves him spell bound. Also, he is occasionally bestowed with what might be considered genuine hospitality. He does meet a few Russians along the way that offer kindness, guidance and who possess a recognition that not all is lost in post communist Russia. As is true with much of Tayler's work the real power of this book is the strength and skill of his writing. Like few other travel writers he places you at the scene both physically and emotionally. My only regret about the book is that he did not include some of the photographs he took on the trip and provide a map illustrating the course of his journey (I found one and tracked it myself). Nonetheless you will enjoy this fine read and will come away with an appreciation of Tayler's magnificent accomplishment in writing about his travels across Russia. S. H. Hassett

From Magadan to Warsaw Jeffery Tayler takes you on a bumpy "zimnik" ride from eastern Siberia to the smooth rails of western Europe. It is not a Slavomir Rawicz "The Long Walk" trek of survival, but a journal by road along the desolate and barren Kolyma Route in Siberia to the railhead at Berkakit and then to the warmer and fertile points westward. It is Tayler's sobering journey by road and rail and his encounters with the people, the places and the history that exists at each major mile marker that make this a fascinating read. Sadly, Tayler provides you with no inclusive road maps with which to guide you along his route and no snapshots from his camera to help bring the journey and the people into focus. You are left only with his descriptions and characterizations of the Yakuts, the people of Chernyshevsk, and Chelyabinsk that he brushes up against, dines and often sleeps with. Tayler only gives you his mental snapshots of the "sopki"; of the cities and towns that are still struggling from the effects of totalitarianism and the environmental fallout from the once flourishing military/industrial complexes. Tayler's journey is one which helps us understand the once large sphere of influence the Soviet Union encompassed, but leaves you with a question of how these regions and their people will find their place in the next millennium without central State control and its economic subsidies.

Like reading a battle survivor's story, you wonder how he made it. The Kirkus review says it all. The only negative is that all throughout the book he talks of taking pictures but none of them made it into the book. I kind of wonder if the publisher left them out for monetary reasons. A good book that would have been a spectacular one with the pictures...

I was looking forward to this book because it struck me as an exceptional idea for a travel book. But mr. Tayler seems to regard a travel book as being about his travels when it should really be about the places he is traveling through. The entire thing could have easily been shortened into a brief magaizne article with three main (and fairly well-known) points: (1) People in the former USSR drink a lot of vodka; (2) many of the roads in the siberian wilderness are bad; (3)The accomodations are lousy. Tayler couldn't be expected to learn a lot about the places he goes through because he spends a lot of his time in trucks or on trains. This doesn't lead to much insight for the reader. And while the region certainly is decaying, poor and polluted, taking a long bus trip across the US would give a pretty squalid view as well. To his credit though, Tayler does have some real moments when he describes the desolation and the widespread despair of the people. Its too bad he didn't spend a lot more time in the journey.

I admire the heck out of Jeffrey Tayler for the courage it took to do what he did. This is a man who, alone and unaccompanied by a support team, set off across Siberia: Russia's "Wild Wild East." Where thousands may dream of such a trip to a strange land, understandably few would dare undertake it. Tayler did.

Siberian Dawn is full of descriptions that generate mental images of a vast, frozen land of natural beauty and interesting people. It is also a frank revelation of how the Soviet Empire spent half a century abusing its Asian ecosystem and mistreating the often semi-captive inhabitants there. As Tayler tells, there are polluted stretches of Siberia that are literally deadly for anyone living nearby, and hazardous for anyone passing through. Toxic waste dumps litter the virginal forests and parts of the fragile taiga are chemical stews that emit unnatural glows into the night sky.

The Siberia Tayler's readers will discover is also home to a hardy and pragmatic population who by and large welcomed this stranger into their lives and imparted onto him the stories of their day-to-day existences in what is both a bleak and magnificent corner of the globe.

What I found funny was how few Siberians Tayler met realized at first that he was an American: he was mistaken for a man from the Baltic. Even in the era of a supposedly progressive and open Russia, old ways sometimes lingered on in an undead fashion, and at times Tayler was treated with suspicion and even confronted by old line Stalinist authorities, puzzled and threatened by the presence of this inquisitive visitor to their homeland.

I have always had an interest in Russia, both the place of past history and the nation of modern times, and Siberian Dawn proved informative and enjoyable.

...and what a journey! Geographical descriptions were vivid; I felt as though I were riding with him. Gives new meaning to the word "desolation". Would like to have seen a map of the itinerary published in the book, along with pictures taken during the trip (including pictures of the truck drivers and friends met who invited him into their homes). Looking forward to the next adventure... (I'll get there someday!)

Long fascinated by Russia's vastness, extremes of climate, tumultuous history and nuclear arsenal, Jeffrey Tayler quit his stultifying Peace Corps job in Tashkent in 1993 to get to know the country by traveling "the entire landmass of the former Soviet Union", a journey of 8,325 miles, from Magadan, Siberia, to Warsaw, Poland.

With Tayler's survival sometimes in doubt and his progress often in peril (from bureaucrats as much as terrain), its tempting to flip to the end of his account, "Siberian Dawn," to make sure that he did, in fact, succeed.

Few armchair travelers will envy Tayler his harrowing trip - across Siberia, through the Urals, into the Black Earth zone and over the Ukraine border - but his stubborn approach, open friendliness and occasional lapses of temper make him a stimulating guide to a land of grandeur, chaos and tragedy.

The bleakest of the bleak is the frozen Far East, Siberia. Populated by the descendants of prisoners and a few others lured by high salaries in the `60s, now evaporated, none can afford to leave. Indeed, it seems, when Tayler arrives by air at his starting point, Magadan, that air is the only way out. Road travel, he is told, is not possible. At last a friendly inhabitant admits, "It's not impossible. Sometimes trucks go to Ust-Nera. But who wants to go there? When you leave you will fly out."

Tayler sticks to his plan and hitches a ride on one of the trucks taking a route "passable only when frozen." The driver immediately wants to know, " `What drives an American from the comforts of the U.S. to Magadan? This doesn't seem normal to me. And frankly, I wonder if an American can handle the toughness of it.' "
But Tayler, speaking Russian like a native, or at least like "a Soviet citizen from one of the Baltic Republics," maintains his determination and confidence. Siberia, a land of riches and perils, is sparsely dotted with enclaves of dour, defeated Russians, maintained on vodka and bad food. They mix not at all with the native ethnic peoples who seem to Tayler no better off.

But Tayler speaks to everyone he meets, even makes friends. He gathers the history of places (most hark back to Stalin) and notes the old people's nostalgia for Stalin's strong arm, the young people's sullen defeatism, the general distrust and envy of capitalism. And everywhere the land is blighted by toxic, even radioactive waste.
A numbness settles over him, though it is not reflected in his observations or conversations, which remain full of curiosity and sympathy. But Siberia, "a natural prison," seems to have a natural numbing effect on everyone. The weather, the isolation, the history, the bleak landscape, the hopelessness. It's a place that actually breeds bracing theories about the benefits of radioactivity.

Not until Lenin's birth place on the Volga does this oppressive feeling lift. "An intoxicating warmth stole over me," Tayler says, wandering the streets of Ulyanovsk. "In some visceral way, I suddenly realized how European Russians are," he writes, reflecting that the Eastern conquered territories "remained places of exile."

Some things don't change though. Despite the light and color, the bureaucrats remain surly; martinets drunk with a fistful of power. He is more recognizably American in the West and has to dig his heels in harder not to be fleeced like a tourist. In Siberia it was easy to pass for Soviet; most people had never seen an American and couldn't imagine why one would visit.

Wherever he is, Tayler gathers stories; personal tales, strident opinions, sweeping philosophical and historical views. He accepts hospitality wherever it's offered and makes friends, some enduring, as he tells us in an epilogue summing up his last five years residing in Moscow.

"Siberian Dawn" is moving, fascinating, worrisome. It portrays a vast land plagued by alcoholism and poverty and industrial pollution so profound it will take your breath away - almost literally. Russia seems so mired in its troubles that its literature and the glories of its past sink beneath the awful awareness of its huge, unstable nuclear arsenal. The book ends in Moscow with the October 1993 siege of the Russian parliament - unsuccessful and unable to capture the attention of most Muscovites.

A most absorbing book with two flaws - no map (why not??) and no pictures. Though Tayler frequently mentions the photos he took of the people he meets and the places he describes, none are included.

I felt I was back in Siberia. I enjoyed myself immensely in Western Siberia and Tayler's book brought back the sights and smells.