Word: brodyagi
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...most Russians, as to most of the world, Siberia means desolation and exile. In the old days it seemed a trackless waste infested by brodyagi, branded criminals with slit noses and lashed backs who had escaped from convict prisons and lived by robbery and murder. Siberia was synonymous with space, silence, emptiness and snowbound darkness for 20 hours of every winter's day. The grim land was said to unhinge men's minds: bored Czarist officers in isolated forts broke the monotony by playing Russian roulette. Settlers in the barren north fell victim to "arctic hysteria...
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