I’m not a huge reader, but I did get into this book by Slavomir Rawicz.
It’s about a group of men that escaped from a Siberian Prison camp in1941. It should keep you turning the page…
Were the men political prisoners, war prisoners or criminals?
I guess it depends who you asked during that time, the Russians or everybody else.
The polish, Lithuanian, Yugoslaviann, even Russian and Americans were tried for their ‘crimes’
under a few different different factions of the judicial system. Mostly, they were victims of circumstance i.e. living/ working close to a border, shoemakers making shoes for certain ambassadors, knowing a second language.
'pretty crude regime at that time…
Sounds like a good book. About a polish POW who escapes a Russian camp and makes his way to India. Unfortunately Russian records show that the author was actually released when the Russians entered the war on the Allied side. So the whole thing was fabricated.
But still sounds like an awesome book.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavomir_Rawicz
Edit: Which lead me to this book about the walk in the opposite direction:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Years_in_Tibet
That one I did read a few years ago.
That’s a good one. Read the book .
Donald Downing’s foreward speaks in terms of having to pry a simple interview from Rawicz berfore he even agreed to write his memoirs.
But a skeptic would beg to differ 
Just reading the stuff from the wikipedia link:
outside.away.com/outside/feature … non_9.html
[quote]British climber and expedition leader Eric Shipton reputedly hooted at the book’s description of abominable snowmen; Hugh Richardson, Britain’s longtime diplomat in Lhasa, cited dozens of errors in a 1957 review for the Himalayan Club Journal, and wondered “whether the story is a muddled and hazy reconstruction of an actual occurrence, or mere fiction.”
I myself learned all this later, after I devoured The Long Walk with stunned enthusiasm. In retrospect, it does seem odd that Rawicz’s Mongolians walk everywhere rather than ride horses, and dress in conical hats and pole their boats up meandering rivers; that sounds more like Vietnam. Rawicz describes going 12 days in the Gobi without water; I recall choking on dust there myself after just a few hours. And I didn’t know what to make of Rawicz’s story of meeting two yetis in the high Himalayas. [/quote]
And the BBC link: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/6098218.stm
That story talks about documents, including those written by Rawicz himself, which describe his release from the Gulag (when Russia released all Polish prisoners) and his enlisting in the Polish Army in Russia (which he couldn’t do if he had walked to India).
Stop poppin’ my bubble!
At least admit that there are many articles about this book. Most of these articles leave a fair bit of room for belief of the story.
Deal?
[quote=“grey hair”]
Stop poppin’ my bubble![/quote]
Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to pop the bubble. It sounds like an awesome book, and if I see it around, I’ll pick it up. It doesn’t have to be a true story to be a great story.