Sybiraks
Encyclopedia
Siberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
) and generally refers to all people resettled to Siberia, it is in most cases used to refer to Poles who have been imprisoned or exiled to Siberia
History
Many Poles were exiled to Siberia, starting with the 18th-century opponents of the Russian EmpireRussian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
's increasing influence in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...
(most notably the members of the Bar Confederation
Bar Confederation
The Bar Confederation was an association of Polish nobles formed at the fortress of Bar in Podolia in 1768 to defend the internal and external independence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth against Russian influence and against King Stanisław August Poniatowski and Polish reformers who were...
). After the change in Russian penal law
Penal law
In the most general sense, penal is the body of laws that are enforced by the State in its own name and impose penalties for their violation, as opposed to civil law that seeks to redress private wrongs...
in 1847, exile and penal labor (katorga
Katorga
Katorga was a system of penal servitude of the prison farm type in Tsarist Russia...
) became common penalties to the participants of national uprisings within the Russian Empire. This led to increasing number of Poles being sent to Siberia for katorga, they were known as Sybiraks. Some of them remained there, forming a Polish minority in Sibera. Most of them came from the participants and supporters of the 19th century November Uprising
November Uprising
The November Uprising , Polish–Russian War 1830–31 also known as the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in Warsaw when the young Polish officers from the local Army of the Congress...
and January Uprising
January Uprising
The January Uprising was an uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Russian Empire...
, the participants of the 1905-1907 unrest
Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland (1905-1907)
The Revolution in the Kingdom of Poland was a major part of the Russian Revolution of 1905 in Russian-partitioned Poland . One of the major events of that period was the insurrection in Łódź in June 1905...
to the hundreds of thousands of people deported in the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939
Soviet invasion of Poland (1939)
The 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland was a Soviet military operation that started without a formal declaration of war on 17 September 1939, during the early stages of World War II. Sixteen days after Nazi Germany invaded Poland from the west, the Soviet Union did so from the east...
.
Around the late 19th century there was also a limited number of Polish voluntary settlers, attracted by the economical development of the region. Polish migrants and exiles, many of whom were forbidden to move away from the region even after finishing serving their sentence, formed a vibrant Polish minority
Polish minority in Russia
There are currently 73,000 Polish nationals living in The Russian federation. This includes autochthonous Poles as well as those forcibly deported during and after World War II; the total number of Poles in what was the former Soviet Union is estimated at up to 3 million.-Before 1917:Many Poles...
there. Hundreds of Poles took part in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway
Trans-Siberian Railway
The Trans-Siberian Railway is a network of railways connecting Moscow with the Russian Far East and the Sea of Japan. It is the longest railway in the world...
. Notable Polish scholars studied Siberia, among them Aleksander Czekanowski
Aleksander Czekanowski
Aleksander Czekanowski was a Polish geologist and explorer of Siberia.He took part in the January Uprising ; in the aftermath he was exiled to Siberia by the Russian authorities; where he took part in and later led several expeditions, surveying and mapping the geology of Eastern Siberia...
, Jan Czerski
Jan Czerski
Jan Stanisław Franciszek Czerski was a Polish paleontologist , geologist, geographer and explorer of Siberia. He was exiled to Transbaikalia for participation in the January Uprising of 1863...
, Benedykt Dybowski, Wiktor Godlewski, Sergiusz Jastrzebski, Edward Piekarski, Bronisław Piłsudski
Bronisław Piłsudski
Bronisław Piotr Piłsudski , brother of Józef Piłsudski, was a Polish cultural anthropologist who conducted outstanding research on the Ainu ethnic group, which then inhabited Sakhalin Island, but now live mostly on the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, with only a small minority left on...
, Wacław Sieroszewski, Mikołaj Witkowski and others.
The term Sybiracy might also refer to former exiles, such as those who were allowed to return to Russian-held Poland following the amnesty
Amnesty
Amnesty is a legislative or executive act by which a state restores those who may have been guilty of an offense against it to the positions of innocent people, without changing the laws defining the offense. It includes more than pardon, in as much as it obliterates all legal remembrance of the...
of 1857 . The group, popular among the youth in the period preceding the outbreak of the January Uprising, supported the idea of organic work
Organic work
Organic work is a term coined by 19th century Polish positivists, denoting an ideology demanding that the vital powers of the nation be spent on labour rather than fruitless national uprisings. The basic principles of the organic work included education of the masses and increase of the economical...
. However, during the January Uprising
January Uprising
The January Uprising was an uprising in the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth against the Russian Empire...
it ceased to exist as some of its members supported the Reds, while others supported the Whites. Among the most notable members of the group were Agaton Giller
Agaton Giller
Agaton Giller was a Polish historian, journalist and politician. He and his brother Stefan Giller played notable roles in the Polish independence movement and in the January 1863 Uprising.-Life:During the January 1863 Uprising, Agaton Giller was a member of the National Government...
, Henryk Krajewski, Karol Ruprecht and Szymon Tokarzewski.
There were about 20,000 Poles living in Siberia around 1860s. An unsuccessful uprising of Polish political exiles in Siberia
Uprising of Polish political exiles in Siberia
Siberian Uprising or Baikal Insurrection was a short-lived uprising of about 700 Polish political prisoners and exiles in Siberia, Russian Empire, that started on 24 June 1866 and lasted for a few days, till their defeat on 28 June....
broke out in 1866.
At the start of World War II, the Soviets deported hundreds of thousands of Polish citizens, most in four mass waves. The accepted figure was over 1.5 million. The most conservative figures use recently found NKVD documents showing 309,000 to 381,220. The Soviets did not recognise ethnic minorities as Polish citizens, some of the figures are based on those given an amnesty rather than deported and not everyone was eligible for the amnesty therefore the new figures are considered too low. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance now estimates of the number of people deported to Siberia to 320,000. Tens to hundreds of thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians were deported after the annexation of their states in 1939-1940 and German invasion of the Soviet Union; many Tatars or Volga Germans joined them just a few years later.. Others were exiled not because of their ethnicity but for belonging to a social group, such as the kulak
Kulak
Kulaks were a category of relatively affluent peasants in the later Russian Empire, Soviet Russia, and early Soviet Union...
s, rich peasants targeted by the Soviet regime.
Hundreds of thousands of people were exiled there during the years of the Soviet Union, including penal labor in Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
prison camps, see Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union
Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be classified into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories of population, often classified as "enemies of workers," deportations of entire nationalities, labor force transfer, and organized migrations in opposite...
and Forced settlements in the Soviet Union for details.
External links
Zsyłki - rys historyczny Website dedicated to the Sybiraks- Polish deportees in the USSR List compiled in 1941 by Tadeusz RomerTadeusz RomerTadeusz Romer was a Polish diplomat and politician.He was a personal secretary to Roman Dmowski in 1919. Later he joined the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he served as Polish ambassador to Italy, Portugal, Japan and the Soviet Union...
, the Polish ambassador to Japan
Further reading
- M. Janik, Dzieje Polaków na Syberii, 1928
- W. Jewsiewicki, Na Syberyjskim Zesłaniu, 1959
- R. Lysakowski, Siberian Odyssey: A Song of the Cornucopia, Vantage Press, 1990, ISBN 0533083869