The late W. Bruce Lincoln was author of twelve books on Russia, including The Romanovs: Autocrats of All the Russias; Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War; Between Heaven and Hell: The Story of a Thousand Years of Artistic Life in Russia; and, most recently, Sunlight at Midnight: St. Petersburg and the Rise of Modern Russia. He held the title of Distinguished Research Professor of Russian History at Northern Illinois University.
Lincoln ( Red Victory , LJ 2/15/90) chronicles Siberia's role in Russian history, from the formation of the state to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The author uses primary and secondary documents to create this basic text, which is written for the undergraduate and general reader. Lincoln treats Siberia's resources as a measure of Russia's greatness. He traces Siberia's conquest and colonization; the search for its wealth; its role as an outlet for excess, criminal, and dissident labor; its industrial development and the development of the railroad; its part in the wars and upheaval of the 20th century; and, finally, the recognition of widespread pollution and environmental problems. Historians may still long for a scholarly, comprehensive study of Siberia, but this well-written and -researched book fills a void and belongs in general collections.-- Rena Fowler, Humboldt State Univ., Arcata, Cal.
Russia's conquest of Siberia, begun in 1582 with Cossack chieftan Ermak Timofevich's crushing of the Tatars, transformed the obscure kingdom of Muscovy into the world's larget contiguous empire. To Siberia's native nomads, hunters and reindeer herders, the conquest brought cruel exploitation, torture and corruption under military governors. Three and a half centuries later, the industrial complex that Stalin built east of the Urals manufactured the tanks, planes and guns that defeated Hitler, and Stalin's Siberian slave labor camps swallowed up millions of innocents. Its fragile ecology devastated by industrializers Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Siberia is today one of the world's worst environmental disaster zones. In Lincoln's ( In War's Dark Shadow ) compulsively readable epic narrative, Siberia's dark history comes alive as a vast human drama of greed, adventure, exploration, ambition, persecution and protest. Tamerlaine, Danish explorer Vitus Bering (in the service of Czar Peter the Great), Dostoevsky, Lenin, rogues, reformers and Siberia's natives people this prodigiously researched tapestry. Illustrations not seen by PW. (Jan.)
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