Andrew A. Gentes. Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. xiii, 271 pp. Bibliography. Index. $80.00, cloth.
One of the curious aspects of the Siberian exile system in Russian historical writing is that it never seems to get better - it starts off bad and simply gets worse. As Andrew A. Gentes argues in his Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822, the Muscovite state invented the brutal habit of dumping unwanted people in Siberia. Peter the Great then expanded the scope of the system and made it even more brutal, while would-be "liberal" reformers like Mikhail Speranskii only made it more efficient. In fact, anyone who wants to see the Russian government become gentler …
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