Adam Hlebowicz
For the vast majority of Poles, the words Siberia, Sybir have unambiguously negative connotations. They are associated with persecution, deportation, repression related to our independence movement. The martyrdom dimension of the Polish presence beyond Ural is a fact. For many decades, however, Siberia was forgotten as a place for the economic, scientific and public service careers of hundreds if not thousands of Poles. This was especially the case in the second half of the 19th century, and particularly at the turn of that century. At that time, the Romanovs’ Russia began to change, the reforms of Minister Pyotr Stolypin giving it a new impetus.
For many years, Poles living in the Russian Partition were treated as second-class citizens. Whether in the lands of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, in the so-called partitioned lands (otherwise known as the Further Borderlands), or in Russia itself, where many of our compatriots found themselves as a result of repression, deportation, Katorga and exile. At the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, there was a phenomenon in the Kingdom of Poland of a so-called overproduction of humanist intelligentsia, intensified by the increased Russification of the Kingdom’s administration. In fact, the emigration of Poles to Russia was fuelled by positivist ideas calling for people to become wealthy, regardless of the conditions and place of work.
Poles at tsarist universities
The development of capitalism in Russia after the enfranchisement reform of 1861 created a high demand for technical intelligentsia and skilled workers. As a result, since the 1870s, there was a greater influx of Poles into technical studies and various types of higher education institutions in Russia than before. The St Petersburg Institute of Technology, the Institute of Road and Bridge Construction, the Forestry Institute, and Kyiv’s St Vladimir’s University had a good reputation. Poles, unable to thrive in Warsaw, Lublin or Vilnius, were more likely to gain the right education and then lucrative professions within Russia. And they became increasingly successful in the economy of the Romanov state, occupying increasingly important positions in it. This new elite were engineers, doctors, architects.
The economic emigration of Polish peasants and workers to Russia increased in the second half of the 19th century. The 1897 census recorded 289,000 Poles in Russia. By the time of the outbreak of the First World War, the number had risen to at least 400,000. The vast majority – around 60% – were peasants.
In the Polish magazine Kraj, published in St Petersburg, there was a story about the local Poles written from Bijsk in the Altai Krai: ‘Bijsk is a district town in the Tomsk governorate with a population of 20,000. A few Poles occupy fairly good posts here. For the most part, Poles are well regarded here as capable and hard-working officials. Thanks to our national qualities, the name ‘Pole’ is to some extent considered an honour (!) here in Siberia. Not only is there no sign of resentment on the part of the locals, but in fact many of our compatriots enjoy general recognition and fondness’. This was also the image of Poles in other Siberian towns.
Pioneers of the Trans-Siberian Railway
One industry that developed very intensively during this period was the railways. Russia, with its vast territory, needed connections not only to Western Europe, but also the ability to transport goods and people in the eastern governorates, including beyond the Ural Mountains. Hence first, from 1891, the construction, then expansion and finally the creation of the various lines of the Trans-Siberian Railway. Poles made a major contribution to its construction. Employment on this investment was lucrative, giving whole families a sense of stability and the opportunity for development. Hence, our compatriots can be found at the creation of each section of the railway and then at its operation.
The magazine Kraj estimated in 1908 that 18–20% of the labourers working on the railway construction at the time were our compatriots. Between 1888 and 1898 alone, of the 65 workers on the leading staff building the West Siberian Railway, 21 were Poles, including Stanisław Muchliński, the deputy construction manager. On the Central Siberian Railway, the head of the branch, and later its head of traffic, was Ernest Bobieński. The steel structures of the lattice truss bridges over the Ingoda and the Nercha were made by the Warsaw firm of K. Rudzki and S-ka. Most Poles, however, were employed in the construction of the East China Railway, which was headed by Stanisław Kierbedź the younger. He was a pioneer in the use of concrete and reinforced concrete elements in construction, mainly in the construction of bridges and culverts. The East China Railway was a very complicated project, requiring the erection of 912 steel bridge structures (some of them over the great Siberian rivers) and 258 smaller stone and concrete ones. An additional complication was the wilderness and the vast distances between the delineated stations, which required the creation of intermediate supply points, e.g. water towers, to have access to water.
Builders of Siberian cities and towns
In many cases, undeveloped land required the creation of new urban centres. This was the case with Harbin, which later became a major centre in Manchuria. Its location and construction was instigated by a Polish engineer Adam Szydłowski, who headed an exploratory expedition sent from Vladivostok by Stanisław Kierbedź. The chief manager of the city’s construction between 1901 and 1905 was another Pole, Ludwik Wacław Czajkowski, a graduate of the Institute of Civil Engineers in St Petersburg. A prominent figure was Stefan Offenberg, who worked successively on the construction of the Ryazan-Ural Railway, the Ussuri Railway, and between 1921 and 1924 was deputy director of the East China Railway. Everywhere he went, he was involved in patriotic activities, creating Polish communities in the Far East, organising Polish schools, or supporting the building of Catholic churches. In 1925, he returned to Poland and worked for the Warsaw Railway Construction Board, and left behind interesting memories of his time working in the East.
A tiny two-year-old Czesław Miłosz travelled halfway around the world with his mother in 1913 to meet up with his father, Aleksander, who was building bridges in Krasnoyarsk. The journey through St Petersburg, the Urals and then back, took several weeks. His father was a graduate of the Engineering Faculty of the Riga Technical University, which had its renown in the then tsarist state. Miłosz recorded further, more imagined than remembered fragments of this journey in his poem ‘Za Uralem’ (‘Beyond the Urals’).
Neurohistologist, balneologist, gold explorer
The first higher education institution, the Siberian Imperial University, in the area was formally established in Tomsk in 1878, but the first students did not begin their education there until ten years later. By 1895, there were already 413 students at the university – including 11 Poles. Among the academic staff, there were two of them: Aleksander Dogiel and Stanisław Zaleski. Dogiel is one of the founders of neurohistology. He headed the Department of Histology for many years, while Zaleski is counted among the most eminent balneologists.
Although the number of Polish students was not high, the level of education among Siberian Poles was the highest: 34.7% compared to the national average of 25.6%. This was due, among other things, to the fact that although the poor exiles did not have the means to educate their children in schools, the educational process did not stop at home. Later, in adulthood, these people often pursued higher education.
From a scientific point of view, the natural science achievements of Benedykt Dybowski, Jan Czerski, Aleksander Czekanowski, Wiktor Godlewski, Michał Jankowski are well known and described in many works. The work of Polish geologists deserves a separate description. The exploration of mineral resources on Siberian soil, literally the entire periodic table, provided Russia, as it still does today, with a huge source of revenue. Czekanowski and Czerski were geologists. In addition to them, a lesser-known figure in this field of science was Leonard Jaczewski, a graduate of the Mining Institute in St Petersburg employed in Irkutsk.
The organiser of a three-year research expedition to the Sea of Okhotsk and Kamchatka in 1895–1898 was Karol Bohdanowicz. The same scientist conducted research on the Chukotka Peninsula in 1899, leading to the discovery of gold-bearing sands. In 1919, he returned to Poland and played an important role in covering the country’s oil deposits. The same areas in the Far East were explored by Kazimierz Grochowski, interestingly a Pole from the Austrian Partition, who decided to go to the Far East in 1906.
Poles were involved in all fields of science. In many of them, they left behind important achievements that are still valued today.
Zakopane cottages in Tomsk
Polish architects made a huge contribution to the modern, 20th-century faces of cities such as St Petersburg, Odesa and Kyiv. It was no different in Siberia, where we know of more than a dozen examples of outstanding design and construction activity.
In Krasnoyarsk, Włodzimierz Sokołowski erected dozens of buildings in the style of Art Nouveau and Neoclassicism, which was an absolute novelty in this large Siberian city. The same architect designed and built a neo-Gothic Catholic church in the town in 1911.
At the beginning of the 20th century, 12 architects of Polish descent worked in Tomsk. One of the first painters and architects in Western Siberia was the son of a January insurgent, Wincenty Orzeszko. His father Florenty was a doctor in Traugutt’s unit, while his uncle Piotr was the husband of Eliza Orzeszkowa. Some of the best buildings still standing in Tomsk today are built according to Orzeszko’s designs. Another architect, Paweł Naranowicz, held the position of chief architect at the University of Tomsk for many years. He created the designs of the first university buildings. The creator of the face of another Siberian city – Tobolsk – was the architect Leopold Szokalski.
Sometimes the patterns brought from distant Siberia proved inspiring for the creation of original works in Poland. This was the case with Stanisław Witkiewicz, Witkacy’s father. While in exile in Tomsk, he was impressed by the wooden ornaments and construction of the local houses. When he returned to Poland and settled in Zakopane, he created the beautiful wooden houses he remembered from the Tom River, which are now examples of the most beautiful Zakopane architecture.
62 medics for half of Siberia
As far as medicine was concerned, the University of Kyiv had the lead among the universities educating Poles. Graduates of this university spread throughout the empire, often gaining a well-deserved reputation as outstanding medics. Previously, however, the medical ranks in Siberia had been filled primarily by Polish exiles. According to official Russian figures, in 1854, there were only 62 doctors working in the vast expanse of Eastern Siberia. Not surprisingly, medical graduates sent to these lands were the quickest to take up professional work, continue their research and, above all, actively practise medicine. As one of the exiles Henryk Wiercieński wrote: ‘Doctors who in their home country had to stop at a scanty provincial practice, clerks who would never have reached beyond some fourth-rate posts there – here they gained affluence, dignity and importance’.
One of the first major works carried out by Polish doctors in Siberia was the reconstruction and reorganisation of the Tobolsk prison hospital. This work was carried out by Wacław Lasocki, Józef Łagowski and Ignacy Tomkowicz. In the case of the first and the last, this meant immediate release from penal labour. A similar role in Tomsk’s prison hospitals was played by the aforementioned Florenty Orzeszko, who died in that city in 1905, leaving behind his reputation as a doctor devoted to his patients.
Doctors on the sly
Initially, Polish doctors were not allowed to work in hospitals or run a medical practice. Therefore, their knowledge and experience were often availed of on the sly. Even tsarist officials often did so. This was the case, for example, with Lucjan Migurski, or the aforementioned Józef Łagowski in Usol, a salt works to which Poles were sent. Łagowski, a surgeon, then moved to Irkutsk, where he became a local medical celebrity. His home was also a mainstay of Polish social life. In the 1880s, Poles made up a third of the medical staff in this city of some 30,000 people at the time. Benedykt Dybowski, who was a medical doctor by profession, should also be remembered. Although he was mainly preoccupied with natural science research in Siberia, he never refused medical assistance to those in need, including the poor.
A separate category is made up of medical explorers. We can certainly include Leon Hryniewiecki, a researcher of Chukotka, or Julian Talko-Hryncewicz, who researched the original Siberian peoples of the Mongol–Russian borderland. Talko-Hryncewicz went to Siberia to earn his living. He settled in the small town of Troickosavsk (now Kiachta) on the Mongolian border, where he was a district doctor. He had around 70,000 patients under his care. In the small town of 8,000 inhabitants, a museum, a scientific library and even a local publishing house (in which he published his anthropological works) were established on his initiative. In them, he described a picture of the social organisation, history, existence and religion of the Buryats, Evenks and Chalchas.
Aleksander Wasilewski, a political prisoner and graduate of the Moscow University, had an interesting biography. In 1914, he was transferred to Chita as deputy head of the bacteriological laboratory. After the Bolshevik coup of 1917, the partial destruction of the station and the death of the previous manager, he became head of the station. In 1918, he joined the 5th Polish Rifle Division. He became famous for fighting the plague epidemic in Siberia between 1914 and 1920.
Polish doctors were receptive to novelty, eager to engage in new challenges, often beyond strictly medical duties.
Ambition, education, dignified living
The contribution of Poles to the development of Siberia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries went far beyond what their numbers might suggest. If only because the political exiles were a decidedly elite group. The descendants of the exiles inherited their ancestors’ ambitions, their desire to excel, and finally to live a dignified, prosperous life. The same was true of the voluntary resettlers in Siberia. They were usually ambitious people, not afraid of difficult challenges, looking for a better place on earth. Both of these attitudes led to getting an education, seeking interesting, lucrative jobs and sometimes to rise above mediocrity. To achieve and excel in science, the economy, culture or the army.
In the list of prominent Polish Sybiraks, one cannot forget the officials, sometimes of high rank, such as Aleksander Despot-Zenowicz, the governor of Tobolsk. Polish merchants such as Kazimierz Zieleniewski, the owner of a brewery and printing house, one of the richest Poles in Siberia, and finally Alfons Koziełł–Poklewski, who combined official and trade functions.
The last decades have brought a great deal of research and studies, most notably by Antoni Kuczyński of Wrocław, on the creative presence of Poles in Siberia. May this knowledge continue to expand and may we learn the usually forgotten pages of the rich history of the Polish presence in the vast territories between the Urals and the Pacific Ocean.
Adam Hlebowicz is the head of The National Education Office of The Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw
Translated by Małgorzata Giełzakowska
Photo: Land surveyors – builders of the Great Siberian Route. Exhibits of the M. B. Shatilov Regional Museum of Local Lore in Tomsk.