


She recounts the demise of the nominally independent Tuvan Republic which in 1929 had three cars, no roads, and a trove of fine horses. Everywhere she traces the scars of Stalinism on native peoples: the mass slaughter of lamas and shamans, collectivisation of reindeer herds, theft of sacred fishing grounds. Traditions are almost gone. In Sakhalin a Nivkh woman explains how her father hunted. “Whenever he caught a seal he cleaned its skull, filled it with berries and threw it back into the sea. Nobody does that now.”

Ms Reid is winningly honest. The centrally-planned settlements she passes are “total dumps”, the native peoples all too often deracinated and undone by drink and poverty. But she has little feel for the wilderness or obvious affection for the outdoor life which formed the native cultures. By the time she reaches Arctic Chukotka, whose fierce Inuit-related Chukchi were the only native people to force the Russians into retreat, she appears defeated, as many before, by Siberia's immensity.