XANDER BLAKELY
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SIBERIA BOUND 
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DESCRIPTION Fresh out of college with a degree in economics, I was drawn to frozen, desolate Siberia by the promise of love, the hunger for adventure, and the idealistic urge to bring capitalism to the former Soviet Union. What I found in the middle of a small university town on the vast tundra of Siberia was euphoria and despair, calamity and success, heartbreak and romance. I met an opportunistic Siberian business partner and a new free-market system manipulated by the same people who drove the crumbling communist system into the ground. My partner and I finagled our way into a fledgling distribution business and built a successful company, ultimately dealing in trainloads of condoms and cocoa beans. In my four years in Siberia, I came to adore the people and the place. But as we accrued success, the lure of capitalism changed both the Siberia and the Siberians I loved. I discovered that the materialism and comfort — the very things I rejected at home but promoted abroad — came too quickly in Siberia, with profound and disturbing costs. It is a book about Siberia dusting off the ashes of communism. It is also about America squinting from the glare of capitalism. It is about how life in Siberia seemed, for a limited time, and for a limited number of people, limitless. PHOTO GALLERY: FROM SIBERIA WITH LOVE Take a look at my favorite pictures taken in Novosibirsk
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