“Siberia” is a historical-revolutionary novel. Its events unfold from winter 1916–1917.
At the center of the novel is the fate of young Bolshevik revolutionaries Ivan Akimov and Katya Ksenofontova.
The plot is built around the story of Akimov’s escape from a remote Narym exile to Stockholm, where party comrades are waiting for him, as well as his uncle—Professor Likhachev, a brilliant expert on the natural riches of Siberia, whose knowledge is being pursued by agents of a foreign joint-stock company.
Akimov is helped, protected, and passed along through a chain. And before the reader appears an entire gallery of original Siberian characters— the Gorbyakov family, the Lukyanovs, the ancient Mamika, the truth-seeker Okeniy the Free, and others. With an unrelenting pen, the book depicts the trading and swindling world of Siberian money barons.
In 1976, the novel “Siberia” was awarded the Lenin Prize, and later, an eponymous film was made based on it.