List of maps -- List of photographs and illustrations -- Chronology of relevant events in Russia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -- Author's note. Introduction -- Prologue: The bell of Uglich -- The frozen world from which even the favor of the creator had withdrawn -- As miserable as a young boy can be -- I have the satisfaction of knowing that I have not failed in anything -- The mountaineers of the Caucasus -- The making of a journalist -- It will really be a magnificent trip -- Every respiration seemed to pollute me to the very soul -- The exile system is worse than I believed it to be -- A Telega will simply jolt a man's soul out in twenty-four hours -- The mines of Kara -- There are people who intend to murder us -- Siberia and the exile system -- Epilogue: The changing of the guard -- Acknowledgments -- Selected bibliography -- Notes -- Index

"In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. That changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and he learned of the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months, he traveled eight thousand miles, enduring sandstorms and blizzards. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on inflicted pain and fear. Prisoners in the mines were chained day and night to their wheelbarrows as punishment. Babies froze to death as their mothers held them. After returning to the United States, he set out to generate public outrage over the plight of the imprisoned, writing the renowned Siberia and the Exile System. He then went on a nine-year lecture tour to spread the truth of the Siberian exiles' suffering, intensifying the newly-emerging diplomatic conflicts between the two countries, which last to this day"--