ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the image of Siberia as it developed among the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia from 1825 to the late nineteenth century, showing how the literary afterlives of the Decembrist revolt gave rise to a Siberian ‘behavioural text’ that identified the steadfast endurance of exile as a sine qua non of revolutionary heroism. It shows how the same tropes of Siberian exile, which initially reached the West as ‘local colour’ in sentimentalist novels and in Polish emigres propaganda, caught on in Victorian Britain as a shorthand for criticism of autocratic Russia long before they were adopted by Russian revolutionary emigres to great effect in the 1880s and 1890s. It analyses the final years of the Tsarist regime as a time when Russian political prisoners and exiles became international celebrities and attempted to leverage the publicity and sympathy available to them in the West.
