SOURCE: Pryce-Jones, David. “From Fear to Pity.” National Review 51, no. 24 (20 December 1999): 64-6.

In the following review, Pryce-Jones examines the change in Thubron's attitude toward Russia between Among the Russians and In Siberia.

Colin Thubron first visited the Soviet Union at the height of its powers, in the closing years of the Brezhnev era. Among the Russians, the travel book he then wrote, begins with the unforgettable sentence, “I had been afraid of Russia ever since I could remember.” It was an appropriate Cold War response. The Russians were then a universal menace. Whatever were they asking of themselves, and of us? How could they unleash such violence, to such deliberately murderous ends? These were questions quite as much human as political.

A marvelous reporter of detail that builds into the big picture, Thubron sought only humdrum encounters with humdrum people. He speaks enough Russian to pass as some...