Siberian Dawn: A Journey Across the New Russia - Hardcover

Tayler, Jeffrey

3.97

89 ratings by Goodreads

9781886913264: Siberian Dawn: A Journey Across the New Russia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886913269 ISBN 13: 9781886913264

Publisher: Ruminator Books, 2000

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The author describes his eight-thousand-mile overland journey through Russia, describing his encounters with lawlessness, bureaucratic apathy, the disorder caused by widespread alcohol abuse and poverty, and the inescapable legacy of toxic waste

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From Kirkus Reviews:

A young American's encounters with arctic cold, violent vodka-induced drunkenness, unknown levels of radiation, and mafia-ruled hinterland cities reveal the bleak and desperate side of life in the post-Communist Soviet states. Inspired by his love of Russian culture and finding himself at loose ends in Moscow, Tayler decided in 1993 to cross the entire landmass of Russia. Naively enthusiastic, yet ill-equipped and underprepared, the young American started out on a perilous journey from the desolate byways of the Russian Far East, across Siberia and the Urals, to the Polish-Ukrainian border. The journey embodies both a personal quest and a search for the heart of Russia. Tayler explains, ``I wanted to fuse my fate with the country's in a crucible of my own making.'' And a crucible it was. Against the odds of inadequate equipment, incredible coldness, unwise decisions, and the constant threat of violence in Russia's depressed provinces, Tayler survived the solo journey. He describes his travels by bus, train, truck, and car, his fleeting friendships and sometimes violent encounters with almost uniformly desperate men and women, the astonishing changes in weather and landscape in this vast region, and the physical state of Russia's hinterlands, including its environmental devastationnone of which is uplifting. The harrowing stories he shares about life in Russia's desolate hinterland sharpen our understanding of Russia's past and present with their unforgettable details: cockroaches emerging from hosts' wallpaper and ceilings during a meal, scary confrontations with several of Russia's drunks that lead to exchanges of words and blows, and the filth and dangers of life in polluted Chelyabinsk, the once-thriving center of the Soviet nuclear and defense industries. By the trip's end, it's a toss-up who is more relieved to cross the Polish border, Tayler or his reader. Graphically describes the deeply disturbing state of the ``new'' Russia and its demoralized citizens. -- Copyright �1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

The ideal readers for this book would be World Bank advisers drawing up credit agreements in their five-star Moscow hotel rooms as they dine on German beef. Yet anyone seeking an understanding of post-Soviet Russia that goes beyond the dull CNN cliched fade-out of a Lenin monument standing before a McDonald's will be mesmerized by this account of an American's overland journey from Magadan to Warsaw. Completing a trip that even few Russians would be willing to attempt, Tayler portrays a Russia to which foreigners have long been denied access, both geographically and spiritually. Tayler (a contributor to Atlantic Monthly and commentator for NPR's All Things Considered) begins his 8325-mile trip by hitching a ride out of deepest, darkest Siberia, above the Arctic Circle, where the remnants of the Gulag system lie strewn about the frozen steppe. His willingness to press onward and calmly accept local conditions distinguishes this experience from most Westerners' travels in Russia. The Kalmyk, Burati and other Siberian peoples, including the Russians, are a reminder that this is a country straddling Europe and Asia. The reader is confronted with a bleak landscape blighted by ecological disaster, alcoholism, poverty, bad roads (where roads exist at all) and a systemic breakdown so severe that many pine for a return to authoritarianism. Yet, through the entire book, Tayler's fascination with and love for the birch forest, the steppe and the enduring Russian spirit remain at the fore. Refreshingly, cracker-barrel discussion of who "won the cold war" and suggestions for reform are left out.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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