Description: In this book Valentin Rasputin -- one of the most gifted and influential Russian prose writers of the past thirty years -- offers a sweeping account of and penetrating reflection on the Russians' four hundred years of experience in Siberia. Beginning with Yermak, whose Cossack detachments crossed the Ural Mountains into Siberia in the 1580s, through the rapid Russian exploration, conquest, and colonization of Siberia to today, Rasputin looks at the peculiar physical and character traits of the Siberian Russian type, and at the gap between dreams and reality that has plagued Russians in Siberia.

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