The House of the Dead
Siberian Exile Under the Tsars
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Narrated by:
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Arthur Morey
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By:
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Daniel Beer
About this listen
A visceral, 100-year history of the vast Russian penal colony.
It was known as 'the vast prison without a roof'. From the beginning of the 19th century until the Russian Revolution, the tsars exiled more than one million prisoners and their families beyond the Ural Mountains to Siberia. Daniel Beer illuminates both the brutal realities of this inhuman system and the tragic and inspiring fates of those who endured it. Here are the vividly told stories of petty criminals and mass murderers, bookish radicals and violent terrorists, fugitives and bounty hunters, and the innocent women and children who followed their husbands and fathers into exile.
Siberia was intended to serve not only as a dumping ground for criminals but also as a colony. Just as exile would purge Russia of its villains, so too would it purge villains of their vices. In theory Russia's most unruly criminals would be transformed into hardy frontiersmen and settlers. But in reality the system peopled Siberia with an army of destitute and desperate vagabonds who visited a plague of crime on the indigenous population. Even the aim of securing law and order in the rest of the empire met with disaster: Expecting Siberia also to provide the ultimate quarantine against rebellion, the tsars condemned generations of republicans, nationalists, and socialists to oblivion thousands of kilometers from Moscow. Over the 19th century, however, these political exiles transformed Siberia's mines, settlements, and penal forts into a virtual laboratory of revolution. Exile became the defining experience for the men and women who would one day rule the Soviet Union.
Unearthing a treasure trove of new archival evidence, this masterly and original work tells the epic story of Russia's struggle to govern its prison continent and Siberia's own decisive influence on the political forces of the modern world. In The House of the Dead, Daniel Beer brings to light a dark and gripping reality of mythic proportions.
©2017 Daniel Beer (P)2017 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Overall
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Thomas Keneally, the Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s List, is universally praised for crafting smooth narratives from authentic historical events. With The Great Shame, he turns his insightful eye toward the Irish struggle through the 19h century. In sharp contrast to much of Europe, Ireland was a terrible place to be during the 1800s. Many of the nation’s finest people set sail for America and Canada.
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First read
- By WGrubb on 04-08-16
By: Thomas Keneally
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KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps
- By: Nikolaus Wachsmann
- Narrated by: Paul Hodgson
- Length: 31 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system.
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Narrator warning!
- By S R L COTTERILL on 04-24-15
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Year Zero
- A History of 1945
- By: Ian Buruma
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 14 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Year Zero is a landmark reckoning with the greatdrama that ensued after war came to an end in 1945. One world had ended and anew, uncertain one was beginning. Regime change had come across Asia and all of continental Europe. It was the greatest global powervacuum in history, and out of the often vicious power struggles thatensued emerged the modern world as we know it.
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Great historical overview
- By marykk on 10-14-13
By: Ian Buruma
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The Black Count
- Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo
- By: Tom Reiss
- Narrated by: Paul Michael
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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General Alex Dumas is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for such classics as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.
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The story behind the greatest novelist of all time
- By Melinda on 01-13-13
By: Tom Reiss
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Red Famine
- Stalin's War on Ukraine
- By: Anne Applebaum
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 17 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization - in effect a second Russian Revolution - which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief, the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem.
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Horrifying
- By Mendy on 01-21-18
By: Anne Applebaum
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Phantom Terror
- Political Paranoia and the Creation of the Modern State, 1789 - 1848
- By: Adam Zamoyski
- Narrated by: Gildart Jackson
- Length: 22 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Phantom Terror explores this troubled, fascinating period, when politicians and cultural leaders from Edmund Burke to Mary Shelley were forced to choose sides and either support or resist the counterrevolutionary spirit embodied in the newly omnipotent central states. The turbulent political situation that coalesced during this era would lead directly to the revolutions of 1848 and to the collapse of order in World War I.
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Amazing
- By Mike Johnson on 07-14-15
By: Adam Zamoyski
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French Revolution: A History from Beginning to End
- One Hour History Revolution, Book 1
- By: Hourly History
- Narrated by: Stephen Paul Aulridge Jr
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
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During the late years of the 18th century, the spirit of Enlightenment thinking and revolution were in the air. The world was changing, moving away from ingrained beliefs about religion, reason, society, and the rights of the individual and turning more toward the laws of nature as interpreted by the scientific method. Nowhere was the influence of this radical new way of thinking more apparent than in France, and the upheaval this caused would come to bloody fruition in the form of revolution.
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QUICK STUDY OF FRENCH REVOLUTION
- By AJC on 01-23-19
By: Hourly History
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The Holocaust
- A New History
- By: Laurence Rees
- Narrated by: Eric Vale
- Length: 19 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Laurence Rees has spent 25 years meeting the survivors and perpetrators of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. In this sweeping history, he combines this testimony with the latest academic research to investigate how history's greatest crime was possible. Rees argues that while hatred of the Jews was at the epicenter of Nazi thinking, we cannot fully understand the Holocaust without considering Nazi plans to kill millions of non-Jews as well.
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FANTASTIC BOOK, BUT HORRIBLE READING
- By Aspen on 08-31-17
By: Laurence Rees
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The French Revolution - In a Nutshell
- By: Neil Wenborn
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 1 hr and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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The fifth in the new Naxos AudioBooks series "In a Nutshell", The French Revolution is a short and accessible introduction to one of the most important periods in European history. It brings vividly to life the implacable Robespierre, the frightened Marie Antoinette and the iconic image of the guillotine. But it also demonstrates the key role the Revolution played in the development of European politics.
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Well done!
- By Helen Drew on 03-02-18
By: Neil Wenborn
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Girt
- The Unauthorised History of Australia, Volume 1
- By: David Hunt
- Narrated by: David Hunt
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Girt. No word could better capture the essence of Australia.... In this hilarious history, David Hunt reveals the truth of Australia's past, from megafauna to Macquarie - the cock-ups and curiosities, the forgotten eccentrics and Eureka moments that have made us who we are. Girt introduces forgotten heroes like Mary McLoghlin, transported for the crime of "felony of sock", and Trim the cat, who beat a French monkey to become the first animal to circumnavigate Australia.
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Typically irreverent.
- By patricia heffernan on 12-27-15
By: David Hunt
What listeners say about The House of the Dead
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Gwbach
- 02-25-17
the wild east
it us a long book, but packed with stories and facts that I found hard to believe, but over and over I started to understand. I have no clue on what suffering is. Russian history , human suffering and how we love our freedom.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Susan
- 01-21-17
Siberian Graveyard
If you could sum up The House of the Dead in three words, what would they be?
Frozen in Siberia
Who was your favorite character and why?
In Irkutsk, Maria Volkonskaya, who had given uneven her son to be with her husband(first in Siberia) and other wives of these revolutionaries established a life similar to the ones they left behind. Huge libraries, beautiful homes, adequate food and the staunch mantras of their beliefs belied the fact that the General was now a gardner.
Which character – as performed by Arthur Morey – was your favorite?
No idea
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I was almost totally ignorant of this action under the Tsars as I continue to be of Russian history in general.
Any additional comments?
It was long, but a very thorough and well researched and written book about a period of history which is not as well known as the revolution in 1905.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Rex Riethmeier
- 11-07-17
importantHistory
good summarization for Siberia in the 19th century. Lot of important events /people. I liked the narrator nice balanced even pace without any unnecessary drama in his tone-age. A good book. Interesting.
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