Government and civilian authorities in Russia deported tens of thousands of people to Siberia between 1590 and 1822. The state had several goals for exiles including using them as cossacks, peasants, industrial labourers, and colonial settlers. Landowners and peasant communes used exile to rid themselves of elderly, handicapped, or troublesome serfs. Siberia was also the destination for thousands of political opponents and religious dissidents. This, the first English-language study of pre-Soviet exile, focuses on Russian Siberia's early years, when its role as an open-air prison was established. Populated by such notable rulers and officials as Boris Godunov, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Mikhail Speranskii, and such celebrated exiles as Archpriest Avvakum, Aleksandr Menshikov, Maurice Benyowsky, and Aleksandr Radishchev, Exile to Siberia, 1590-1822 vividly explores the coercive and violent relationship between an evolving bureaucratic state and its body politic.