Sergiusz Leończyk
At the turn of the 20th century, voluntary resettlement, also known as “Siberian fever”, began in the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, annexed by Russia following the partitions (the so-called Taken Lands). Furthermore, the authorities began their campaign of ridding the area of Poles in order to facilitate the Russification of the Eastern Borderlands. Their primary goal was to implement their policy of having a Russia dominated by Orthodox populations, which in this region included Belarusians, Ukrainians, and, to a lesser extent, Russians themselves.
In the second half of the 19th century, the difficult economic situation in Poland (as with other European countries) was an objective factor which directly contributed to emigration. Aspects that contributed to this included rapid population growth, the structure of rural land ownership, the steadily increasing number of landless people, and insufficient industrial development.
In the Kingdom of Poland and the so-called Western Land (as the annexed territories were referred to in the Russian Empire), there were specific and additional elements that influenced emigration: the lack of statehood, the lack of national freedoms, and the limited contact between individual Polish lands. The already difficult economic situation in the Polish lands worsened after 1885 because of the agricultural crisis which began in Western European countries as early as the 1870s.
The difficult economic situation encouraged peasant emigration westward. A large stream headed to Brazil, where the authorities offered free passage and free land. The desire to own a piece of land to support their families was so strong that it compelled Polish peasants to emigrate not only overseas to Brazil but also to the equally distant and little-known Siberia.
Siberian rush
At the turn of the 20th century, voluntary resettlement known as “Siberian Fever” began from the lands of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania. At the same time, the tsarist authorities began to prioritise the departure of Poles from these territories, as this facilitated the Russification of the Eastern Borderlands. Their primary goal was to rid the region of undesirable Polish elements, which, the government claimed, was dominated by “Russian and Orthodox populations”: Belarusians, Ukrainians, and, to a lesser extent, Russians. This policy is well illustrated in documents in the Russian Historical Archive in Saint Petersburg (RGIA).
On 9 December 1903, the Governor-General of the Northwestern Krai, Piotr Sviatopolk-Mirski, sent a letter to Minister Vyacheslav Plehwe highlighting what he saw as the positive advantages of granting Polish nobles the right to resettle on treasury lands in Asian Russia. He argued that this would ease tensions among the nobility, which would have a positive impact on the departure of a significant contingent of noble landowners from the North-Western Krai and make it possible to expand the colonisation in the Kresy (editor’s note) with peasants of Russian origin and the Orthodox faith.
The first Polish village in Siberia, initially called Nowe Pole, was established in 1882 in the Tobolsk Governorate. It was founded by members of several dozen families exiled after the January Uprising who decided to stay in Siberia because they had difficulty returning to their homeland after the amnesty. Some of the amnestied even returned to the borderland governorates of Minsk, Mogilev, and Vitebsk, but they met with resistance, both from local authorities and the local nobility – often their own families – who no longer expected their return from exile! The Siberian governorate authorities granted the former exiles fifteen tithes of agricultural land per man. The village, which still exists today, was named Despotzinowka a year after its founding, in honour of the former Tobolsk governor, Alexander Despot-Zenowicz, who was sent to work in Siberia for political reasons long before the January Uprising. In 1862, he was appointed governor of Tobolsk, but five years later he was dismissed from this role for supporting Polish exiles.
Poles? Latvians? Belarusians?
A second Polish village was founded in a similar manner in 1893 by representatives of the Polish provincial nobility of the Minsk Governorate. Originally, its official name was Urazajski, but the Polish settlers fought for a name change to distinguish them from their ethnically diverse but primarily peasant surroundings. Their determination resulted, in the early 20th century, in the new name Mińsk Dvoriański, a less frequently used name being Mińsk Szlachecki.
Soon, more villages sprang up in Siberia, some of which were founded by voluntary resettlers from the provincial nobility. At the turn of the 20th century, most villages were founded by resettlers from the Vilnius, Grodno, and Volhynia regions of the Western Krai. These were often ethnically mixed villages, inhabited by Poles, Belarusians, Latvians, and Lithuanians. It is worth noting that at the end of the 19th century, the national identity of the borderland population was not entirely clear. The census from the end of the 19th century classified them – based on their religion (Orthodox/Catholic) – as Belarusians, Ukrainians, or Lithuanians, although they likely did not always identify themselves as such. An example of such a Catholic village was Vilnius (in another version: Wilna) in the Yenisei Governorate, Balakhtyn County, founded in 1897 by Catholic settlers from the Vilnius County of the Vilnius Governorate.
Polish colonisers
After the first voluntary arrivals of groups of Poles from the Western Krai, Siberian authorities, who initially feared the establishment of Polish villages, began to perceive the positive influence of Polish peasants on the agricultural economy. The first Russian sociological study of the lives of Siberian resettlers, conducted in 1892, noted:
Most of the Polish resettlers – the most cultured segment of the population – live in solid houses, sometimes more than one storey. The houses are neat and impossibly clean. White curtains line the windows. The floors are usually painted. The walls are often plastered. Chairs line the walls, rather than the benches common in Russian houses. In every home, there’s a prayer book and a calendar. Polish resettlers are quite wealthy and enterprising. Some of them engage in trading, e.g., cattle.
In 1894, the governor of Tomsk ordered an investigation into the villages of the western resettlers. These were Lithuanians, Latvians (Latgalians), and Poles who, between 1868 and 1888, had resettled without government permission and established the settlements of Baisagolskaya and Szadowska in the Ust-Tartas region. The report stated: “They live quite prosperously and are content with their lives; their huts are made of round beams with sawn roofs”. Of the 16 Polish families who settled in the Baisagolskaya settlement, twelve built huts in the first year, and eight immediately began ploughing the land. The following year, four more families joined them. However, not all the Polish resettlers engaged in farming and grain processing, and some became grain traders. Most of them also decided to raise cattle in the second year of their stay. On average, each Catholic resettler family had approximately six milking cows, five head of cattle for slaughter, and 15 sheep. The report paid special attention to the farm animals: “Although they are local breeds, thanks to good care they are fat and produce good coats. They don’t keep many horses and don’t want to breed them. However, the Poles collect a lot of butter from the cows, more than anyone else in the area. This is explained by the fact that they are too frugal and don’t eat anything themselves”.
Thrifty, diligent and very pious
Russian economist Alexander Kaufman identified the source of the first problems between Polish resettlers and the local population in his 1894 study on the economic situation of resettlers in the Tomsk Governorate. If land allotments did not directly border or overlap those of local peasants, problems between the new resettlers and the native Siberians did not arise; the Baysagol settlement was a prime example. Meanwhile, in the Szadowska settlement in Ust-Tartas County, discontent erupted because the authorities measured out and reallocated allotments from native Siberians’ lands to the resettlers. In retaliation, or perhaps as compensation, the Siberians began illegally felling trees on the lands granted to the resettlers. This in turn led to the resettlers seizing the Siberians’ ploughed lands without permission and sowing them for themselves. Kaufman also noted that the local population was afraid to hire resettlers for seasonal work because they were a “newcomer nation” and it was unclear what to expect from them. This hampered the adaptation of the Polish resettlers, who, wanting to develop their farms in their new location, had to seek additional income. However, over time, the Polish resettlers began to gain sympathy from the local peasants, primarily because they were considered thrifty, conscientious, frugal to the point of miserliness, and very pious.
Grandfather chose Siberia
In 1896–1897, resettler villages from the Volhynian Governorate were established in the southern part of the Yenisei Governorate in Algishtak, Kreslawka, Abadziul, and Kożuchowski-Aleksandrówka. These settlements were ethnically quite interesting: they included not only Poles but also Polonized Germans and the so-called “Masurians” originating from the Volhynian Governorate. The village of Kożuchowski-Aleksandrówka was officially established in 1897 on a resettlement site, while Kożuchowski was established in the Minusinsky district of the Salabinsk commune in the Yenisei Governorate. However, residents claim that the village already existed by 1894, and that its founders were Poles from Lesser Poland. It was only later that Polish-Masurian Evangelicals settled there. The founder of the village was supposedly a peasant named Kożuchowski. The family of Aleksander Kiersz moved to the village later, in 1905, and the village was renamed Aleksandrówka in the early 1930s in his honour.
Aleksander Kiersz’s grandson recalls: “My grandfather’s family was large: four sons with their wives and children. They all lived together. We also shared the farm: four horses, four cows, three calves, sheep, and domestic fowl. In addition to wheat and rye, we sowed flax. We wove clothes from wool”.
Emil Cekało, whose grandfather resettled in Aleksandrówka, recalls: “My father and mother, teenagers, arrived with their parents. My father’s family was starving in the Volhynian Governorate. From there, they came here to a free land. Many went to Brazil at that time, but my grandfather, Michał Cekało, chose Siberia”.
In 1904, Aleksandrówka had 32 households with 98 inhabitants; in 1909, 239 inhabitants; in 1917, 61 households and 319 inhabitants; and in 1928, 68 households and 368 inhabitants. It was not the only Polish village in the region, but Aleksandrówka differed from other settlements in that the Poles living there were Lutherans, Evangelicals, or Baptists. The Poles and Germans brought their faith from Volhynia, where, in the second half of the 19th century, dissatisfaction with the Lutheran clergy had significantly increased the number of other Protestant denominations, including Baptists.
The unique character of the settlement, beautifully situated in the Salabinsk commune in Minusinsk County, was noted by Alexander Kornilov, an official from the Irkutsk Governor-General’s office who was visiting the resettlers. In the summer of 1896, he noted in his report: “The peasants were quite wealthy and distinguished themselves from the Siberian peasants by a certain independence. Many of them also differed from the rest in their appearance. They wore round hats and looked like Tyroleans, which, incidentally, harmonised with the beautiful mountain landscape of the village”.
60 polish villages
As a result of the peasant reform initiated by Prime Minister Piotr Stolypin, the Resettlement Office, which was responsible for colonisation processes and headed by Alexander Krivoshein, began to officially invite peasant families not only from the Western Krai, but also from the Kingdom of Poland. This immediately created favourable conditions that encouraged resettlement. Above all, what enticed the resettlers was allowing the presence of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Resettlement Office supported the construction of Roman Catholic churches and chapels in newly established Polish villages. Among these were the churches in the villages of Białystok in the Tomsk Governorate and Vershina in the Irkutsk Governorate.
Between 1885 and 1914, approximately 60 villages in Siberia were inhabited by Poles. In terms of the number of Polish settlers, between 1896 and 1914 nearly 9,000 people resettled from the Kingdom of Poland to Siberia, while almost three times as many Poles emigrated from the “Polish” governorates, which became part of the Western Krai (the territories of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania). Additionally, approximately 25,000 people resettled from the Kresy region, bringing the total number of Polish resettlers in Siberia to approximately 34,000.
The influx of rural people to Siberia from the Polish governorates intensified even more during World War I, but these were war refugees. Polish peasants settled most frequently in Western Siberia, in villages in the Tobolsk Governorate and the Akmolin Oblast.
Anti-Polish operation in Siberia
After the October Revolution of 1917 and the repatriation of most Poles to their homeland between 1921 and 1924, difficult times awaited the Poles residing in Siberia. A 1924 report by the Polish Bureau of the National Education Committee (Narkompros) indicated that the majority of the Polish population in Siberia lived in rural areas as this population benefited less from repatriation to Poland than did Poles living in Siberian cities. It emphasised that the Polish rural population in Siberia was less prepared for life “in the new socialist reality” and was hindered primarily by priests and church institutions. It recommended that special attention be paid to establishing ethnic schools in villages inhabited by Poles.
The collectivisation policy pursued by the Soviet authorities particularly affected “national villages”, including Polish villages in Siberia. Primarily, the establishment of collective farms resulted in the liquidation of Poles’ family-owned farms which the authorities considered “remnants of private capitalist property”. Polish farms were particularly numerous in the Omsk Oblast and the Tomsk Oblast. In 1929, Poles began to be relocated from these farms to larger Russian villages, and their lands were transferred to newly established collective farms. Following these radical changes, most Polish peasants emigrated to cities.
Between 1937 and 1938, the NKVD carried out a repressive anti-Polish operation in the USSR. In less than two years, 96 percent of all arrested Poles were murdered in the Irkutsk Oblast, and 94 percent in the Novosibirsk Oblast! It is no wonder, then, that their families often renounced their nationality and language in their efforts to assimilate into the Soviet environment.
After World War II, at least 30 Polish villages survived in Siberia. However, in the 1970s, as a result of the policy of liquidating “unpromising villages”, most Polish villages ceased to exist. Their inhabitants emigrated to large Siberian cities, and in many cases the descendants of voluntary settlers joined with those of Polish exiles, establishing new families. The largest groups of descendants of Polish voluntary settlers remained in Tyumen, Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, Abakan, and Irkutsk.
Seven villages remained
At the turn of the 21st century, there were only seven Polish villages in Siberia. Four of them had regional branches of Polish organisations, churches, and Polish schools: Vershina (Irkutsk Oblast), Znamenka (Republic of Khakassia), Białystok (Tomsk Oblast), and Despotzinovkoye – Despotzinovka (Omsk Oblast).
Today, the most ethnically Polish villages are Wierszyna, founded by settlers from the Kingdom of Poland, and Aleksandrówka, founded by Polish–German settlers from Volhynia. From a Polish–German settlement, this village became Polish in the 1990s, as Germans repatriated to the Federal Republic of Germany while Poles remained.
Sergiusz Leończyk is a professor of The University of Siedlce.
Translated by Sylwia Szarejko.
Mid-titles come from the editorial team.