title: Siberian Dawn: A Journey Across the New Russia
author:  Jeffrey Tayler 
description: 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. <br />Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
  						    	
  						        	--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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  The
  
  
  SIBERIAN INCIDENT
  
  
  
  
  
  Greig Beck
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![](../images/00001.jpeg)
  
  
  [www.severedpress.com](http://www.severedpress.com)
  
  
  COPYRIGHT: Greig Beck 2019
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  “We know more about the face of the moon than we do about the Blue Eye of
  Siberia (Lake Baikal).”
  
  
  
  
  
  Old Siberian saying.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  We Were Never Alone
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  
  
  
  
  
  The
  
  
  SIBERIAN INCIDENT
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
    
  PROLOGUE
  
  
  
  
  
  Lake Baikal, Southern Siberia—100,000 years ago
  
  
  
  
  
  The object entered the southern part of the nearly 400-mile long lake where it
  was deepest, at 5,300 feet—just over a mile down to where it was darker than
  night with crushing depths and a permanent, unbearable cold. Its ferocious
  impact shattered and melted the lake’s ice layer, and the flash and sonic boom
  created a pressure wave so great it flattened the trees around the l