What were the causes, characteristics, and effects of the great flood of migration over the Ural Mountains into Siberia in the late 19th and 20th centuries? The author studies the background conditions fostering the migration and then the migration itself: its actual course; the establishment of settlements; the legal, political, and economic factors involved. It is the thesis of this book that the Siberian migration was related to other developments in Russian society of late Tsarist times which were tending to break clown legal barriers between social classes and to provide all groups with greater access to economic opportunity.

Originally published in 1957.

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