by George Kennan (Author), George Frost (Illustrator), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

SIBERIA AND THE EXILE SYSTEM — VOLUME TWO
By George Kennan
Extensively Illustrated
Designed, Modernized and Edited with an Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

The journey becomes an indictment.

In Volume One, George Kennan crossed the immense Siberian frontier, increasingly questioning the Russian Empire's system of exile and punishment. In Volume Two, those doubts disappear forever.

Travelling thousands of miles farther into Eastern Siberia, Kennan reaches the most feared destinations of Imperial Russia—the remote prisons, penal settlements, and infamous katorga mines of the Trans-Baikal. Here he encounters political prisoners, hardened convicts, prison officials, and ordinary Siberians whose lives have been shaped by one of history's harshest systems of punishment.

What he witnesses is both shocking and meticulously documented. Kennan examines overcrowded prisons, disease, forced labour, administrative exile without trial, brutal punishments, and the daily struggle for survival endured by men and women banished to the edge of the known world. Drawing upon official government records, personal interviews, and his own observations, he constructs a devastating portrait of a penal system that profoundly altered Western understanding of Tsarist Russia.

Yet Volume Two is more than an exposé. Kennan remains a gifted travel writer whose vivid descriptions of Siberia's mountains, forests, rivers, settlements, and extraordinary people transform this work into one of the greatest travel narratives ever written. The breathtaking beauty of the landscape stands in haunting contrast to the suffering concealed within it.

This new 2026 edition has been carefully designed and extensively edited for the modern reader while preserving Kennan's original voice and historical integrity. OCR errors have been corrected, typography modernized, and the narrative presented in a clear, readable format, while retaining the rich illustrations that accompanied the original publication.

More than a century after its first appearance, Siberia and the Exile System remains one of the most important eyewitness investigations ever published—a work of journalism whose influence reached far beyond Russia and helped expose a penal regime that much of the world preferred not to see.

Together, Volumes One and Two form one of the greatest works of investigative travel writing and prison history ever written—an unforgettable journey into the frozen heart of the Russian Empire.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 284p.

by George Kennan (Author), George Frost (Illustrator), Graeme Newman (Introduction)

SIBERIA AND THE EXILE SYSTEM — VOLUME ONE
By George Kennan. Extensively Illustrated. Designed, Modernized and Edited with an Introduction by Graeme R. Newman

In 1885, American journalist and explorer George Kennan journeyed deep into the Russian Empire intending to investigate—and, in many respects, defend—the notorious Siberian exile system. What he discovered changed his mind completely.

Siberia and the Exile System became one of the nineteenth century’s most influential works of investigative journalism: a firsthand account of prisons, convict transports, political exile, arbitrary banishment, and life on the immense Siberian frontier. Kennan entered Russia initially skeptical of reports of government brutality. Eighteen months later, after visiting prisons, traveling with convicts, examining official records, and speaking privately with political exiles, he emerged as one of the system’s most formidable critics.

Volume One follows Kennan and artist George A. Frost from St. Petersburg across the Urals and into Siberia. Their journey takes them through the Tiumen forwarding prison, aboard a Siberian convict barge, across the vast Kirghis steppe, into the Altai, and through settlements populated by men and women banished by administrative order—sometimes without trial or even a formal criminal charge. It concludes with Kennan’s investigations in Tomsk and his increasingly disturbing encounters with the machinery of exile.

Yet this is far more than a catalogue of suffering. Kennan was an accomplished travel writer with an extraordinary eye for landscape and character. Siberian villages, endless roads, river journeys, frontier inns, officials, peasants, prisoners and revolutionaries emerge vividly from his narrative. Humor and adventure repeatedly interrupt the darkness, making the eventual revelations about imprisonment and exile all the more powerful.

Of particular importance is Kennan’s changing perspective. He began his investigation believing that Russia and its penal system had been unfairly represented and that many revolutionaries were simply dangerous fanatics. His own observations progressively undermined those assumptions. The result is the unusual spectacle of an investigator changing his conclusions because the evidence before him demanded it.

This new 2026 edition has been designed and extensively edited for the contemporary reader while preserving Kennan’s narrative voice and historical testimony. It is extensively illustrated, drawing the reader visually into the extraordinary landscapes, journeys, prisons, settlements and people Kennan encountered.

At once travel narrative, prison exposé, political history and eyewitness investigation, Siberia and the Exile Systemremains a disturbing examination of what happens when punishment is removed from public view and political authority acquires the power to make inconvenient people disappear.

Volume One begins the journey. Volume Two carries Kennan deeper into Eastern Siberia and toward the dreaded katorga mines of the Trans-Baikal.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 284p.

By The HALTSolitary Campaign & Mental Health

New York State prisons had an epidemic of suicides in 2024, with the widespread use of solitary
confinement in violation of the HALT Solitary Confinement Law contributing significantly to this
crisis. According to data provided by the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) and
published by the Correctional Association of New York, 25 people died by suicide in 2024. The
number of people who died was more than double the previous year, the highest number since
at least 2000, more than triple the rate of deaths by suicide annually in New York prisons from
2000 to 2023, and more than four times the rate of deaths by suicide in prisons across the
country.

Looking at the locations where these deaths occurred reveals that a vastly disproportionate
number of deaths by suicide took place in solitary confinement. The Department of Corrections
and Community Supervision (DOCCS) has been systematically violating the HALT Solitary
Confinement Law. Among other violations, DOCCS has been locking people who have mental
health needs in solitary in violation of the law’s explicit ban on such confinement. DOCCS has
also been operating so-called alternatives to solitary – including Residential Rehabilitation Units
(RRUs) and Residential Mental Health Units (RMHUs) – as solitary by another name by denying
people the out-of-cell time and group programming required by the law.
These violations have caused devastating harm and death, as the recently released data
shows. In 2024, at least nine of the 25 people who died by suicide, or 36%, were in official
isolation units – namely three people in Special Housing Units (SHUs), three people in RRUs,
and three people in RMHUs. Given that these units hold a relatively small percentage of people
in DOCCS prisons, the rates of death by suicide among people in one of these isolation settings
are vastly disproportionate compared to the rates of death by suicide among people in
non-isolation settings.

Specifically, people died by suicide in isolation units at a rate more than seven times higher than
people in non-isolation settings, including nearly 23 times higher in SHU, three times higher in
RRU, and nearly 32 times higher in RMHU than in non-isolation settings.
Looking at self-harm more broadly, over 60% of self-harm incidents took place in isolation
settings, including SHU, RRU, and RMHU, as well as the Behavioral Health Unit/Therapeutic
Behavioral Unit (BHU/TBU), Residential Crisis Treatment Program (RCTP), and protective
custody. These isolation units had rates of self-harm over 15 times the rates of self-harm in
non-isolation settings, with the rates in SHU 19 times higher than in non-isolation settings, rates
in the RMHU 35 times higher than in non-isolation settings, rates in the BHU/TBU 316 times
higher than in non-isolation settings, rates in the combined disciplinary Residential Mental
Health Treatment Units (RMHTUs) of nearly 50 times higher than in non-isolation settings, and
rates in the RCTP 162 times higher than in non-isolation settings.