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A Prison Without Walls?: Eastern Siberian Exile in the Last Years of Tsarism
Contributor(s): Badcock, Sarah (Author)
ISBN: 0199641552     ISBN-13: 9780199641550
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
OUR PRICE:   $123.50  
Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats
Published: December 2016
Qty:
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- History | Russia & The Former Soviet Union
- Social Science | Sociology - General
Dewey: 305.906
LCCN: 2016940583
Physical Information: 0.7" H x 6.1" W x 9.3" (1.00 lbs) 214 pages
Themes:
- Cultural Region - Russia
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
A Prison Without Walls? presents a snapshot of daily life for exiles and their dependents in eastern Siberia during the very last years of the Tsarist regime, from the 1905 revolution to the collapse of the Tsarist regime in 1917. This was an extraordinary period in Siberia's history as a
place of punishment. There was an unprecedented rise of Siberia's penal use in this fifteen-year window, and a dramatic increase in the number of exiles punished for political offences. This work focuses on the region of Eastern Siberia, taking the regions of Irkutsk and Yakutsk in north-eastern
Siberia as its focal points. Siberian exile was the antithesis of Foucault's modern prison. The State did not observe, monitor, and control its exiles closely; often not even knowing where the exiles were. Exiles were free to govern their daily lives; free of fences and free from close observation
and supervision, but despite these freedoms, Siberian exile represented one of Russia's most feared punishments.

In this volume, Sarah Badcock seeks to humanise the individuals who made up the mass of exiles, and the men, women, and children who followed them voluntarily into exile. A Prison Without Walls? is structured in a broad narrative arc that moves from travel to exile, life and communities in exile,
work and escape, and finally illness in exile. The book gives a personal, human, empathetic insight into what exilic experience entailed, and allows us to comprehend why eastern Siberia was regarded as a terrible punishment, despite its apparent freedoms.