Imperium

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THIS BOOK consists of three parts.

Part 1 is called “First Encounters (1939–1967)” and is a report on my long-ago sojourns in the Imperium. In it I tell about the entrance of Soviet troops into my hometown in the Polesie region of Poland (today this is Belorussia), about a journey across a snow-covered and desolate Siberia, about an expedition to Transcaucasia and to the republics of Central Asia — in other words, to the territories of the former USSR that are filled with exoticism, conflicts, and a singular atmosphere replete with emotion and sentiments.

Part 2 is called “From a Bird’s-Eye View (1989–1991)”; it is an account of several of my longer wanderings over the vast lands of the Imperium, which I made in the years of its decline and final disintegration (final at least insofar as the form in which it existed in 1991 is concerned). I made these journeys alone, bypassing official institutions and routes, and the path of these expeditions led from Brest (the border between the former USSR and Poland) to Magadan on the Pacific, and from Vorkuta beyond the Arctic Circle to Termez (the border with Afghanistan). A total of about sixty thousand kilometers.

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