Between the coronation of Alexander I in 1801 and Nicholas II’s abdication in 1917, tsarist Russia banished over a million people to the misery of Siberian exile. Political prisoners and common criminals were sent to mine Siberia’s natural resources and settle remote regions while improving themselves through self-reliance and hardship; but penal colonization bred, rather than eliminated, revolutionary politics. Drawing on archives across Russia, Beer’s study recovers the experiences of exiles and describes Russia’s struggle to govern its ‘prison empire’. American-cut pages and felt-tip mark on lower trimmed edge.