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Open Lands : Travels Through Russia's Once Forbidden Places
" An extraordinary and beautifully written chronicle that combines the best of different travel writing, journalism, and history . . . A modern classic tale of a foreigner’s travels through Russia. "--Kirkus Reviews
VAST FORBIDDEN AREAS, once marked in red on official maps of the Soviet Union, were suddenly thrown open for travel in 1992 when the United States and Russia signed the "Open Lands" agreement which allowed free travel throughout both countries. For nearly 75 years whole cities and regions, roads, rail lines, and rivers, had been colored crimson on the maps, hidden from the prying eyes of foreigners by the secretive Soviet government.
Taplin interpreted the Open Lands agreement as an invitation to hit the road, visiting seven cities and regions – from the Arctic to the Caucasus, from Gorky in the west to Kamchatka in the far east – which had been barred to foreigners for decades. Taplin’s report of what he found, Open Lands, is an exhilarating, rugged journey into the world of ordinary Russians.
"While Open Lands does not pretend to be a scholarly work," wrote the Moscow Times, "there is enough research here to satisfy the historian. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read . . . a heartfelt evocation of lands and peoples struggling to come to grips with their past and their future."
VAST FORBIDDEN AREAS, once marked in red on official maps of the Soviet Union, were suddenly thrown open for travel in 1992 when the United States and Russia signed the "Open Lands" agreement which allowed free travel throughout both countries. For nearly 75 years whole cities and regions, roads, rail lines, and rivers, had been colored crimson on the maps, hidden from the prying eyes of foreigners by the secretive Soviet government.
Taplin interpreted the Open Lands agreement as an invitation to hit the road, visiting seven cities and regions – from the Arctic to the Caucasus, from Gorky in the west to Kamchatka in the far east – which had been barred to foreigners for decades. Taplin’s report of what he found, Open Lands, is an exhilarating, rugged journey into the world of ordinary Russians.
"While Open Lands does not pretend to be a scholarly work," wrote the Moscow Times, "there is enough research here to satisfy the historian. It is a thoroughly enjoyable read . . . a heartfelt evocation of lands and peoples struggling to come to grips with their past and their future."
376 pages, Paperback
First published November 25, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 8, 2016
Mark Taplin was an American diplomat in Moscow during the 1980s. After Russia and America signed the Open Lands agreement in 1992, allowing freedom to travel anywhere within country to citizens of the other, Taplin went back to Russia to visit several of the places which had been closed to foreigners during Soviet times. He describes the history of these cities, both Tsarist and Soviet, and brings it up to the present time through interviews with locals.
The trip from Krasnoyarsk to Tuva intrigued me as I made the same journey more or less, 10 years later, though my reasons were more romantic than historical. Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk and the Solovetskiy Islands, and Vladivostock were hard to read because of the association with the Gulag. Taplin referenced Solzhenitsyn, Ginsberg, Mandelstam, and others who wrote of their ordeals and interviewed survivors. He visited Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka, Nalchik in the Caucuses, Velikiy Ustyug, and Nizhniy Novgorod. Each city had its own grim history and its own way of dealing with the present.
This book is well worth reading, even if you know nothing of Russia. It provides snapshots of history and of Soviet/post-Soviet Russia. It is well the author made the trip when he did, as today it would once again be impossible.
The trip from Krasnoyarsk to Tuva intrigued me as I made the same journey more or less, 10 years later, though my reasons were more romantic than historical. Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk and the Solovetskiy Islands, and Vladivostock were hard to read because of the association with the Gulag. Taplin referenced Solzhenitsyn, Ginsberg, Mandelstam, and others who wrote of their ordeals and interviewed survivors. He visited Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka, Nalchik in the Caucuses, Velikiy Ustyug, and Nizhniy Novgorod. Each city had its own grim history and its own way of dealing with the present.
This book is well worth reading, even if you know nothing of Russia. It provides snapshots of history and of Soviet/post-Soviet Russia. It is well the author made the trip when he did, as today it would once again be impossible.
July 26, 2017
I bought this book at a sale and left it lie around for while. Sorry for that, book! I am happy I finally got to it because it's a great blend of travel writing and history, especially considering when it was written. I like the fact that the narrator does not annoy me during his travels, which tends to happen sometimes. He really seems to adapt to his environment, being both respectful and streetwise, and thus managing to reach some of the farthest corners of Russia. So many great stories, both humorous and depressing, so much great imagery, and so much randomness in a country that just got out of the communist era (for the most part).
Overall, I had in mind to do a Russian tour in 2020. Now it's definitely happening!
Overall, I had in mind to do a Russian tour in 2020. Now it's definitely happening!
January 4, 2026
I’m a little biased given that the author is my Dad. That said, I have no qualms about defending my five star rating.
The book has a massive geographical and historical scope. That’s not surprising— Russia’s a massive country. In discussing his travels, dad covers a host of the most under-apprecited chapters in Russian history. The old believers. Western intervention after World War 1. Ethnic minorities like the Tuvans and the Balkars. Russian traders, merchants and explorers.
The book feels extremely personal at the same time. He presents the people he meets in an unvarnished and unromaticized way. The story unfolds in the early 1990s, a time in Russian history that proved to be in retrospect quite anomalous.
You get the sense that in throwing off the shackles of communism, Russia found itself both adapting to a new of world of free markets and global trade, and at the same time newly confronted by the scars of 1,000 years of often brutal history which had been papered over for decades by official Marxist ideology. Perhaps that sudden confrontation with both future and past shocked Russia into a retreat towards sterile Putanism.
In addition, I must mention that the book is beautifully written.
Some reviewers here take umbrage with the book for romanticizing pre-Soviet Russia or taking a ‘Reaganist’ perspective on the Soviet Union.
I don’t see the book that way. The book is a search for the Russia that the soviets tried to destroy. Russia has 1200 years of history to its name, the Soviet Union lived for a mere 80. Some of the cultures that were subsumed into the Russia state, no doubt, go back even further. There is much to value in that history. The soviets, rightfully, take the blame for their wildly destructive and genocidal acts against whole cultures, communities and historical truth itself.
The book has a massive geographical and historical scope. That’s not surprising— Russia’s a massive country. In discussing his travels, dad covers a host of the most under-apprecited chapters in Russian history. The old believers. Western intervention after World War 1. Ethnic minorities like the Tuvans and the Balkars. Russian traders, merchants and explorers.
The book feels extremely personal at the same time. He presents the people he meets in an unvarnished and unromaticized way. The story unfolds in the early 1990s, a time in Russian history that proved to be in retrospect quite anomalous.
You get the sense that in throwing off the shackles of communism, Russia found itself both adapting to a new of world of free markets and global trade, and at the same time newly confronted by the scars of 1,000 years of often brutal history which had been papered over for decades by official Marxist ideology. Perhaps that sudden confrontation with both future and past shocked Russia into a retreat towards sterile Putanism.
In addition, I must mention that the book is beautifully written.
Some reviewers here take umbrage with the book for romanticizing pre-Soviet Russia or taking a ‘Reaganist’ perspective on the Soviet Union.
I don’t see the book that way. The book is a search for the Russia that the soviets tried to destroy. Russia has 1200 years of history to its name, the Soviet Union lived for a mere 80. Some of the cultures that were subsumed into the Russia state, no doubt, go back even further. There is much to value in that history. The soviets, rightfully, take the blame for their wildly destructive and genocidal acts against whole cultures, communities and historical truth itself.
July 5, 2015
This book is interesting and depressing, but it's more hopeful than many books about Russia, although not starry-eyed. Russia was in a BIG, messy, horrible stage when this was published, & it will take lots of time to solve all the many problems, but there was, at least, more choice, more freedom, and more movement than 15 prior to that, when I was a tourist there. On the other hand, it was also considerably more difficult to stay alive day-to-day, although not that much harder when one considers the ravages of Bolshevism and Stalinism: ten million (or more) organized deaths over 15 years in the 1930s, plus millions more before and after Stalin's purges. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, people were being killed by the 'mafia' rather than by the State (as such). It was all very complicated.
I want to go back and visit, but as I've said for many years, not until things have settled down further.
I want to go back and visit, but as I've said for many years, not until things have settled down further.
August 24, 2009
A very interesting combination of travelogue and history of seven parts of Russia that were closed to foreigners when Russia was part of the U.S.S.R. The sheer scale of the Soviet malignant imprint upon Russia is shown for its brutality and stupidity. The book chronicles a nation trying to escape from this malignant past - one has to wonder to what levels the nation has sunk back into a Soviet mentality during the Putin Presidency and its aftermath.
December 7, 2008
An in-depth take on various locales in Russia; unusual, thoughtful, wry sense of humor.
July 29, 2011
It was intresting, but not enough to hold my attention.
I expected more from this book, and don't feel it lived up to its promise of being about the new 'unexplored russia'
I expected more from this book, and don't feel it lived up to its promise of being about the new 'unexplored russia'
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews