Siberia - Want It All

Siberia

Before Russians crossed the Urals Mountains in the sixteenth century to settle their â€˜colonyâ€™ in North Asia, they heard rumours about bountiful fur, of bizarre people without eyes who ate by shrugging their shoulders and of a land where trees exploded from cold. This region of frozen tundra, endless forest and humming steppe between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean was a vast, strange and frightening paradise. It was Siberia.Siberia is a cradle of civilizations, the birthplace of ancient Turkic empires and home to the cultures of indigenes, including peoples whose ancestors migrated to the Americas. It was a promised land to which bonded peasants could flee their cruel masters, yet also a â€˜white hellâ€™ across which exiles shuffled in felt shoes and chains. If in Stalinâ€™s era Siberia became synonymous with the gulag, today it is a vast region of bustling metropolises and magnificent landscapes, a place where the humdrum, the beautiful and the bizarre ignite the imagination. Tracing the historical contours of Siberia, A. J. Haywood offers a detailed account of the architectural and cultural landmarks of cities such as Irkutsk, Tobolsk, Barnaul and Novosibirsk.
Country USA
Manufacturer Signal Books
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2012-05-02
Format Kindle eBook