Open Lands: Travels Through Russia’s Once Forbidden Places

$30.00 CAD

pp. 376, b/w illustrations, ep maps, “An extraordinary and beautifully written chronicle that combines the best of different genres: travel writing, journalism, and history. His first book reveals Taplin, a former public-information officer in the American Embassy in Moscow, to be a keen observer of Russian life and a gifted writer. Fortuitously, he was living in Moscow in 1992 when Russia and the US signed the “Open Lands” agreement permitting free travel throughout both countries. Taplin immediately took action. “Instinctively,” he writes, “I knew I had to go beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, sly old deceivers of travelers past. Was there a truer expression of Russia’s past and its future in those forbidden places of the Soviet era?” He searches for answers in seven locales: Velikiy Ustyug, Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk & Solovki, Kabardino-Balkaria, Tuva, Kamchatka, and Vladivostok. His journeys are full of surprises, revealing a curious mixture of the old and the new, the Soviet-driven and the local. Contrary to general opinion, Vladivostok is not alien or exotic; “it was a veritable bastion of Russianness.””

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Book Information

ISBN 1883642019
ISBN13 9781883642013
Number of pages 376
Original Title Open Lands: Travels Through Russia's Once Forbidden Places
Published Date 1997
Book Condition Very Good
Jacket Condition Very Good
Binding Hardcover
Size 8vo
Place of Publication South Royalton
Edition First Edition
Category:
Author:
Publisher:

Description

pp. 376, b/w illustrations, ep maps, “An extraordinary and beautifully written chronicle that combines the best of different genres: travel writing, journalism, and history. His first book reveals Taplin, a former public-information officer in the American Embassy in Moscow, to be a keen observer of Russian life and a gifted writer. Fortuitously, he was living in Moscow in 1992 when Russia and the US signed the “Open Lands” agreement permitting free travel throughout both countries. Taplin immediately took action. “Instinctively,” he writes, “I knew I had to go beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, sly old deceivers of travelers past. Was there a truer expression of Russia’s past and its future in those forbidden places of the Soviet era?” He searches for answers in seven locales: Velikiy Ustyug, Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk & Solovki, Kabardino-Balkaria, Tuva, Kamchatka, and Vladivostok. His journeys are full of surprises, revealing a curious mixture of the old and the new, the Soviet-driven and the local. Contrary to general opinion, Vladivostok is not alien or exotic; “it was a veritable bastion of Russianness.””

Additional information

Weight 1 kg