Karina Gaibulina
Although Poles were not initiators of the colonial conquest of Siberia, the Caucasus, or Central Asia, they did nonetheless actively take part in the process of subjugating other nations and states. Sometimes against their will, and at other times fueled by the pursuit of career ambitions, did they voluntarily join the ranks of Russian colonizers. The conquest of the eastern territories of Asia — and Polish participation in it — was justified on the grounds of it being some form of “civilizing mission”: ushering in technological progress, medicine, education, and other “benefits of civilization” to peoples viewed as being on a “lower level of development.” In this fashion, Poles to some extent, became missionaries of Western values — indeed, values they had themselves imported from Western Europe.
Siberiada
Following on from the conquest of the Khanate of Sibir at the close of the 16th century, the Grand Duchy of Moscow regarded the lands east of the Urals as a region for forging great opportunity, initiative, and wealth. From the mid-17th century onward, however, these territories assumed a starkly different role — becoming a kind of penal colony, which served as a “safety valve” for the Russian Empire. Exile permitted the authorities to rid themselves of individuals whom they considered dangerous to the regime: criminals, rebels, and prisoners of war. No social class was immune from such punishment and in this way, the empire both “tamed” and “made safe” its vast, expanding territory, exploiting the physical and intellectual potential of the inmates.
Polish Siberiada commenced during the Lithuanian-Polish-Russian wars of the 16th century, when Poles first wound up in Siberia as prisoners of war. Later groups of Polish exiles found themselves in ‘deep Russia’ after the fall of the Bar Confederation. Following further repressions after the defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising and Napoleon’s campaign, further groups of Poles joined the ranks of the already exiled.
1815 onwards signaled a new era in the history of Polish exile. While earlier deportations had mainly concerned prisoners of war, after 1815 exile was also instituted as a punishment for conspiracy and pro-independence activities. The Vilnius trial of the Philomaths and Philarets marked the beginning of this new phase. Between 1815 and 1830, political deportations were hardly carried out on a mass scale, but the November Uprising heralded a dramatic increase in the number of Poles sent away beyond the Urals — in the majority of cases, to Western Siberia.
The January Uprising of 1863 brought with it an unprecedented wave of repression: after the rebellion was quelled, between 1863 and 1867, more than 38,000 Poles ended up being deported. From that moment onwards, political exiles were increasingly sent out to Eastern Siberia. Starting from the 1870s, the social makeup of those punished for participating in secret or illegal organizations underwent change, along with the radicalization of their political convictions. If, between the 1820s–1840s, most exiles had hailed from the educated upper classes and held liberal-democratic views, by the 1880s many deportees were now accustomed to espousing revolutionary ideals.
In an effort to deal with rising revolutionary sentiments, the Russian authorities introduced a new form of punishment — administrative exile, which allowed for the deportation of persons merely suspected of “disloyalty,” without the need for either sentencing or the burden of proving guilt. By the end of the 19th century, these administrative sentences came to represent a fundamental preventive measure employed by the state. The last major wave of repression took place during the Revolution of 1905, but along with the stabilization of political conditions in Russia, the number of deportations showed a gradual decline.
Fluid Geography
In line with the common 19th century imagining, the name Siberia referred not only to what we have now come to know as Western and Eastern Siberia, but also to lands extending as far as the northern borders of China, the Pacific Ocean, and the Arctic Sea. In 20th-century historiography, this concept was somewhat narrowed down— excluding the Caucasus, the Central Asian steppes, and even the Far East. Yet this broader understanding of “Siberia” remained the most useful category for researchers studying the imperial practice of exile. Siberia at the mythical level thus came to embody not merely a geographical location, but above all an imagined space where Poles were forcibly exiled, but not only.
As the Russian frontier edged further eastwards and southwards, the semantic scope of the category of Siberia was also expanded. The untranslatability of the imagined Siberia into its original geographical boundaries arose from the specific practices of colonial management of foreign lands and the strict methods employed by Russia against its subjects in order to enforce their obedience—factors obscured by the seemingly static notion of “Siberia”, synonymous with the East. The ambiguity and fluidity of Siberia’s physical and symbolic boundaries harmonized perfectly with the conquest strategies of the Russian Empire, reflecting its imperial “geography of power.”
Myths
One of the most deeply ingrained myths regarding Siberia in the Polish consciousness—shaped by national martyrology—was the envisioning of it as the world’s largest “prison without bars” or a “purgatory of redemption,” a place of suffering, penance, eternal longing, and the forging of national character. Romantic literature and poetry played a key role in perpetuating this martyrological image and the idea of “redemptive martyrdom.” The term “literature of exile” (la littérature de postée) was first coined by Adam Mickiewicz in 1842 in the course of his lectures at the Collège de France in Paris.
These martyrological and messianic conceptions of exile and Siberia as an open frontier of punishment and banishment resulted partly from the loss of national independence, and also complemented the broader sense of exile felt by the Polish diaspora—who had been uprooted from their homeland—at the same time constituting a form of structural opposition. In this way, oppressive forms of imperial governance underwent reinterpretation through the lens of national trauma, resulting in the formation of an imagined map of meaningful places.
In spite of the dark descriptive tones used by Polish historiography to express the exiles’ fate, their actual circumstances varied greatly, and depended on numerous factors – for example, the sentence received, the place of settlement, the possession of individual talents or personality. Political prisoners often fared much better than common criminals. In any case, Polish exiles from the intelligentsia or nobility—who accounted for the majority of exiled Poles in the first half of the 19th century—were more disposed to forge friendly relations with members of the local elite or imperial administration. For example, according to official law that forbade political exiles from being employed in teaching or tutoring roles, such restrictions were often overlooked due to a chronic shortage of qualified educators in Siberia.
One of the distinctive features of Russian bureaucracy was actually its flexibility. This allowed for the integration of political exiles into the ranks of imperial officials without causing any major disruption to the hierarchical structure of power. The Russian penal system was so constructed as to exploit both the physical and intellectual potential of the deported rebels, which was executed in the service of both “taming” and “securing” the empire’s vast frontier territories.
Another enduring myth—deeply rooted in both the Polish and European imagination—was the myth of katorga, or hard labor. Popular depictions lifted straight from the works of artists such as Artur Grottger and Jacek Malczewski, painted a picture of convicts set to work exclusively in underground mines, were not always in line with the reality of the situation. In truth, conditions were far more diverse. In the penal facilities of Irkutsk, for example, some prisoners were made to chop firewood, while others mowed the grass or worked in the fields, while literate inmates were hired in clerical, administrative roles. Underground mining was typically reserved only for common criminals.
In turn, one of the most frequently imposed punishments in the first half of the 19th century was “conscription into the army.” Although it was officially classified under Russian law as a milder sentence, in reality it proved to be among the most severe—owing to widespread corporal punishment, the extremely harsh conditions of military service itself, along with the high mortality rate resulting from rampant disease in the Imperial army, not to mention the risk of death from armed combat and its aftermath.
Historian Przemysław Adamczewski has, with uncanny precision, debunked several other long-standing myths in the Polish historiography—such as the supposed solidarity between Poles and the indigenous peoples of the Caucasus when facing a common enemy. He has also challenged the belief of Polish exiles’ resistance to assimilation and the romanticized “progressive-explorer” myth pertaining to Polish participation in the colonization of Siberia.
Perspectives
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, new research perspectives started to appear. Scholars shifted their analytical focus onto issues such as the daily lives of exiles, their problems with regard to adaptation to new environments, their role in the social, economic, and educational development of the region, the charitable work of the Catholic Church in Siberia, and the fate of those women who had made the decision to accompany their husbands into exile. Researchers also began to shine a spotlight on the living circumstances of various marginalized social groups, among others vagrants and common criminals.
In recent years, voices have started to appear more closely examining the Polish exile experience, through a postcolonial lens. Key areas of inquiry brought into focus through such an approach, include examining the long-term impact of interactions between Polish deportees and the inhabitants of Siberian towns or “natives” of the region, and the impact that had on the outlook of the exiles. Attention has also been drawn to the forced nature of these interactions, which was often dictated by the nature of the official positions held by Poles within the imperial administration. This, in turn, highlights the complexity, ambiguity, and multi-dimensionality of these cross-cultural encounters alongside the ambiguity of the division between colonizer and colonized—particularly in relation to Poles, Russians, and the indigenous population of Siberia.
However, Polish historiography to this day, rarely acknowledges Polish Siberiada in the context of Polish participation in Russian imperial and colonial political actions. And when this topic is brought up, it is often treated euphemistically—presenting descriptions of Poles as being only “unwitting participants” in Russia’s territorial conquests and expansion. Even more seldom is mention made of that “ideological colonialism” associated with Enlightenment concepts of progress and a civilizing mission. This area has typically been eclipsed by a narrative which asserts Poles as a “progressive” influence on local social, political, and cultural life, as well as on education, medicine, and scientific or ethnolinguistic research.
Yet, contained within this notion of delivering “education” alongside the “accomplishments” of Western civilization to the supposedly backward populations of the Caucasus, Siberia, or Central Asia, can be heard the unmistakable audible echoes of evolutionist and colonial ideologies of progress. Involvement of Polish exiles in the (re)production of imperial and colonial discourse thus remains one of the most poorly explored elements of this entire history.
The Polish “Siberian Triangle”
For those Polish exiles who lived in fervent hope of receiving a pardon and eventually being able to return to their homeland, there appears to be partial justification for their becoming embroiled in the imperial exploration and development project, in subjugating Russia’s southern and eastern territories—even their participation in military campaigns. When examining the relationships between Polish deportees and members of the Russian administration, local elites, and ordinary citizens of Siberian towns through the lens of their shared – though somewhat dubious and contentious Central European background – new light is shed on the part they played in Enlightenment-inspired projects of exploration, education, and science. When taking into account this perspective, the imperial oppressors frequently appeared to have more in common both culturally and ideologically with their Polish subordinates than with the “native” populations.
The glorified ideals of progress, modernization, and the “study” of local cultures—rooted in Enlightenment notions of reshaping the world—were, in reality, one of the driving forces of Russian imperialism. The endeavours pursued by Polish exiles during their deportation were thus inevitably shaped by political and ideological imperialism, which constituted as the precondition for encounters with peoples of Russia’s conquered eastern lands. The messianic discourse of “introducing progress” was utilized as an ideological tool for uniting the diverse social strata of Siberia’s frontier communities. Russian conquest and expansion was often perceived, judged—and even partly approved of—by Polish exiles through the prism of Enlightenment ideas of civilization and human advancement, producing an unanticipated shared common space of understanding between former historical adversaries.
Conversely, it ought to be noted that the homogenizing perception of the inhabitants of the Asian territories of the Empire tended to identify Poles—and representatives of other nations in its service with whom they came into contact—with the agents of the Russian colonial administration, and resultantly, with Russians themselves. Thus, they were regarded as being bearers of the same Other, that is, European, cultural models. The Polish “Siberian triangle,” thus consisted of essentialized notions of Polishness, Russianness, and Easternness, constituting a basis for self-identification of Polish exiles. They experienced a type of double alienation: surrounded by an alien Siberian landscape, they remained torn between enslavement and self-identification with Western culture, simultaneously affirming and perpetuating the imperial opposition between “East” and “West. To sum up, although Poles were not the initiators of the colonial conquest of Siberia, the Caucasus, or Central Asia, they nevertheless participated in the subjugation of other nations and territories—sometimes unwillingly, sometimes voluntarily, in pursuit of military or administrative careers. Both Russia’s eastward expansion and their own role in it were not infrequently justified as efforts to deliver “civilization,” technical progress, medicine, education and so on, to peoples considered to be at an “inferior stage of development.” By so doing, they often stepped into the role of missionaries for Western values—values they had themselves once imported from “Western Europe.”
Karina Gaibulina – cultural scholar and graduate of the University of Warsaw and the University of St. Gallen (Switzerland). She has authored several works dedicated to Polish exiles in Siberia and Central Asia, including among others Adolf Januszkiewicz. 24 Years of Exile in Siberia: Between “Civilization” and the “Untamed World” and Ethnographers by Compulsion: Polish Exiles in the Colonial Service of the Russian Empire. As part of her doctoral research, she produced the short documentary film Adolf Januszkiewicz Among His Dear Kazakhs (2020). Her research interests encompass media theory, postcolonial studies, and the anthropology of language, with a focus on oral tradition, writing practices, and the cultural and cognitive implications of the assimilation of literacy.
Translated from Polish by Jan Dobrodumow.
A reprint of the article translated from Polish into Ukrainian can be found here: https://novapolshcha.pl/article/polska-sibiriada-istoriya-mifi-pamyat/