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Siberia

In the 1880s, the daring American journalist George Kennan first revealed the horrors of the tsar’s system of Siberian prisons, where the regime sent dissidents who favored democratic reform in Russia.

Editor’s Note: Gregory J.

SENT ON A HOPELESSLY VAGUE ASSIGNMENT BY WOODROW WILSON, AMERICAN SOLDIERS FOUND THEMSELVES IN THE MIDDLE OF A FEROCIOUS SQUABBLE AMONG BOLSHEVIKS, COSSACKS, CZECHS, JAPANESE, AND OTHERS

During mid-August, 1918, American forces began landing at Vladivostok, the capital of the Soviet Maritime Territory, in one of the more curious side shows of the First World War.

An American journalist, George Kennan, was the first to reveal the full horrors of Siberian exile and the brutal, studied inhumanity of czarist “justice”

Curiosity motivated the first American who crossed Siberia. But he also made a handsome profit.

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