Piotr Ściegienny spent 25 years of his long, almost 90-year life in Siberia. 10 years behind Baikal, and another 15 in the city of Perm in the Urals. He got there thanks to the Tsar’s “grace”, because in 1846 he had been sentenced to death for his “revolutionary” views. The change of his sentence was announced when he was already standing on the scaffold.

He was arrested because he demanded equality and freedom for all and tried to organize an anti-Tsarist uprising in the Kielce region. His funeral in 1890 gathered crowds and was a great patriotic manifestation.