New Poland 5/2013 Michal Potocki

POLISH EXILES IN SIBERIA

Although we failed to achieve freedom in 1863, our exiles played an important role in the development of Siberia. Here are some of the most famous Poles in the region.

We cannot consider the Poles as strangers. In Buryatia, they are their own, in the end, they arrived here at the same time as the Russians, ”said Mikhail Kharitonov, deputy head of the presidential administration of this Baikal republic, at one of Polonia’s events in Ulan-Ude (180 km from the Mongolian border). And he said it not only out of politeness. The Poles, although usually not of their own free will, ended up in Siberia for several centuries, and few people can boast of such a contribution to the development of this part of Asia.

One of the first Poles here was Nicephorus Chernihovsky (Nikifor Chernigovskiy), who was taken prisoner during the Smolensk War of 1632. He was sent to the army on the Chinese border. After a conflict with the local authorities (he killed an official), Nicephorus revolted, leading several dozen Cossack soldiers, and occupied the abandoned prison of Albazino. For more than ten years he held power in a quasi-state, named after his own nickname Yaksa, and maintained diplomatic relations not only with the surrounding tribes, but also with the Chinese Empire. In the end, for his merits, the king cleared him of the charge of murder. The Russo-Chinese clash, of which Chernikhovsky's personal war was a part, ended with the signing of the Nerchinsk Treaty, the first ever treaty signed between Russia and China. One of the surviving letters of Emperor Kangxi with the terms of the border treaty was written in three languages ​​- Chinese, Russian and Polish. The Russified surname Chernigovsky is still found in the Baikal region.

We associate Siberia with a cursed place of exile, camps and repressions. However, the descendants of the Poles ardently protest when they hear the expression "inhuman land" in relation to their land.

“This land is very humane, one can live normally here, this is our small homeland,” I heard many times during the trip.

Prison changes lives

In the Asian part of Russia, Poland is not perceived with caution, as it happens closer to the capital. Mikhail Kharitonov came to the school in Ulan-Ude for a ceremony, part of which was the presentation of several “Pole cards” by a representative of our consulate in Irkutsk. Something similar would be absolutely impossible in St. Petersburg or Moscow.

The local intelligentsia willingly learns the Polish language, however, a significant part of it has Polish roots. Among them, for example, the famous historian Boleslav Shostakovich, whose great-grandfather - with the same name and surname - being an exile, in 1902-1903. even served as mayor of Irkutsk. The history of his short reign was marked by the organization of a network of city baths and the introduction of a tax on water from city wells. And his grandson Dmitry became a world famous composer.

80 km northwest of Irkutsk, in the small town of Usolye-Sibirsky, there is the only public school in Russia where children can choose Polish as their language of choice. foreign language. And they choose. Annette Ksel teaches our language to 200 of the 600 students at the gymnasium. Most of them are ethnic Russians, although some admit (sometimes without good reason) that their great-grandfather or great-grandmother was Polish. At the same time, the director of the gymnasium, Sergei Krivobokov, is fully supported by the local authorities.

— We provided the children with a wide language program. They could choose Spanish, German or French,” says Krivobokov.

And no one can convincingly explain why the gymnasium is located in Usolye. There is practically no one among the children who directly considers himself a Pole. Perhaps the spirit of history was decisive. The city was a center of exile for the Poles after the 1863 uprising. January 22 will be the 150th anniversary of the uprising. From 20 to 40 thousand people were exiled to Siberia. After the amnesty of 1883, only a part of them returned to Poland. The rest - and among them were the most active and educated people - remained.

So the doctor Celestin Tsekhanovsky remained. Graduate of the Warsaw Academy of Medicine and Surgery, the first higher educational institution, which resumed work in the Kingdom of Poland after the suppression of the uprising of 1830, Tsekhanovsky was sentenced to life exile in Siberia and hard labor for treating the wounded rebels and holding weapons.

- Tsekhanovsky ended up in the Alexander Central, where he spent 20 years, - says his great-granddaughter Nina Kolesnikova. She herself no longer remembers the Polish language, but she speaks of her great-grandfather with great emotion. This prison was located in the small village of Aleksandrovskoye in the Irkutsk province. During several decades of its existence, many Poles visited its walls - from Pyotr Vysotsky, the initiator of the uprising of 1830, to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the future creator of the bloody Bolshevik political police.

In the 80s of the XIX century, Alexander Sipyagin became the head of the prison.

- Tsekhanovsky helped him improve the hygienic conditions of the prisoners. When local workers found out about this, they begged the boss to let the doctor go to them for calls to the sick. Soon the whole district started talking about Tsekhanovsky, and patients began to come from neighboring villages with requests for help, - says Kolesnikova. Great-grandfather was released in 1883, but soon returned to prison - now as a staff prison doctor.

In Irkutsk, which was then the most big city Siberia, the majority of practicing doctors (and there were 30 in total) were Poles. Thanks to our compatriots, the first polyclinic in the city was created.

- Celestin Tsekhanovsky died in 1907, after his beloved son, medical student Mikhail, was killed in Moscow. The heart could not stand it, - says Nina Kolesnikova. Another son of Tsekhanovsky and his wife Tatyana, whom he met in Siberia, the architect Stepan, was shot in 1937 during the so-called "Polish operation". He became one of the 100,000 victims of the first Stalinist genocide aimed at a specific people.

Doctors, geologists, engineers

Most of the punishments inflicted on the rebels were not related to forced labor in a certain place or imprisonment, but consisted in a ban on leaving a particular city or returning to the European part of Russia.

Therefore, the exiles did what they knew how to do best. Siberian historian Yekaterina Degaltseva writes about the Zavadovsky family, which in the 1980s created a trading empire in the region. They bought furs from the indigenous peoples of Siberia, meat and fish from Russian peasants. Then the goods were sent west, all the way to Tyumen, that is, more than 3,000 km from Irkutsk. As Degaltseva describes, late XIX- the beginning of the XX century. in almost every Siberian city there were "Warsaw shops". They could buy goods brought from the "old homeland", mainly shoes and handicrafts. Something like colonial goods, but in reverse.

The Russians willingly resorted to the help of Polish engineers. Baron Johann Aminov first took part in the suppression of the uprising of 1863, and then - becoming the head of the construction of the canal connecting the Ob with the Yenisei - he gathered around himself Polish specialists: Balitsky, Mickiewicz, Stratonovich. In turn, a well-known revolutionary, elected as a member of the government by the leaders of the Transbaikal uprising of exiles (1866), Iosafat Ogryzko, worked in the exploration and gold mining in this region. And to our doctors - Lisotsky, Lagovich and Tomkevich - Tobolsk owes an end to the typhus epidemic.

However, the Poles made the greatest contribution to the development of Siberia in the study of geography and ethnography. The most famous of them are Jan Chersky and Alexander Chekanovsky. The first from Vitebsk, the second from Volyn - both were exiled to Siberia for participating in the same uprising. Thanks to the intercession of colleagues Grigory Potanin and Alexander Middendorf, Chersky, despite being forced to serve in the tsarist army, was allowed to engage in geological surveys. The Russians owe him a thorough study of Lake Baikal and the first geological map its shores. When you drive from Irkutsk to Listvyanka, a resort on Lake Baikal, the Chersky Range hangs over your head. Several streets, a village in Kolyma, and even an organization of the Belarusian minority in Irkutsk also bear his name, because Belarusians also consider the researcher “their own”.

Jan Chersky died in 1892 during his last expedition, on the banks of the Kolyma river Omolon. Alexander Chekanovsky - in 1874 in St. Petersburg from an overdose of drugs. If Chersky's name is mainly geographic features, then the memory of Chekanovsky keeps the world of plants and animals. His expeditions were major rivers Central Siberia - Lena, Lower Tunguska, Angara. Yes, and in itself the exile was for him one big, albeit forced, expedition. To the first place of exile, in Tobolsk, Chekanovsky was sent from Kiev on foot.

The environs of Baikal and Kamchatka were also studied by the well-known naturalist Benedict Dybovsky before the uprising. In 1864, as a former commissioner of the National Government of Lithuania and Belarus, he was sentenced to death penalty. He managed to escape the noose only thanks to the intercession of German zoologists and Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. In exile, Dybovsky, together with another participant in the uprising, Viktor Godlevsky, explored the Baikal region and described more than a hundred previously unknown animal species.

Dybovsky left a good memory of himself also with his charitable activities. Having become a district doctor in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, he established hospitals in Kamchatka, and also promoted the development of reindeer herding, goat and sable breeding, thus giving the inhabitants of nearby islands a source of livelihood. The most high mountain on the Bering Island located off the coast of Kamchatka, Dybovsky Mountain is named after him. The Russian government for his services allowed him in 1883 to emigrate to Lvov, which at that time was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Dybowski died in 1930 at the respectable age of 96 in the independent Polish Republic.

Polish scientists have contributed to the study of the customs and languages ​​of the indigenous peoples of the Russian Far North and Far East. Brother of Józef Piłsudski Bronisław, exiled to Sakhalin in 1887 for participating in preparations for an assassination attempt on the Tsar Alexander III, compiled dictionaries of the Nivkh and Ainu languages, indigenous peoples living between Sakhalin and the Japanese island of Hokkaido. When he was released, he married the Ainca Chusamma. The grandson of Bronisław and Chusamma Piłsudski, Kazuyasu Kimura, lives in Yokohama, Japan. He is the only descendant of the Piłsudski brothers in the male line.

Forgotten in Poland, Edward Pekarsky, who was born near Minsk five years before the uprising of 1863 and exiled to Yakutia in 1888, became the author of the fundamental Russian-Yakut dictionary, which is still used today, as well as numerous publications devoted to the customs of this half-million people - a distant relative of the Turks. The first entries for the dictionary Pekarsky made with ink from a decoction of willow bark on scraps of newspapers, so as not to die of boredom in a small yurt in the village, which the locals called Dzherengneeh.

In Yakutsk, the capital of the Autonomous Republic of Sakha, today there is a monument to Pekarsky. Just like Chersky, not only Poles, but also Belarusians consider him their compatriot.

“Our countryman Eduard Pyakarsky (that’s how his last name sounds in Belarusian. - Ed.) gave the Yakuts a dictionary, and the monument says “great Polish traveler,” complained to the presidential newspaper Belarus Today” polar explorer Vladzimir Drabo, head of the Belarusian expedition to Yakutia in 2004. “But someday we will restore historical justice.

Polish soft power

For Poland, the January uprising meant another slaughter of her best sons, after which came the years of the most difficult "Russification" on the banks of the Vistula, forever depriving of hope for the restoration of a multinational state within the boundaries in which it existed before partitions. In Russia, the anti-monarchist action of the Poles became one of the catalysts for ideological evolution in the circles of the intelligentsia: from liberalism, which was fashionable before, including in interethnic relations, towards Russian nationalism and chauvinism. These changes can be traced, for example, in the works of I.S. Turgenev.

In Siberia, however, the post-uprising wave of Poles evokes good associations. In Irkutsk, there is not only Chersky Street, but also the Street of the Polish Insurgents, although they opposed the Russian state. A keen interest in the Polish language in Usolye-Sibirsky, Irkutsk and Ulan-Ude often arises among representatives of the indigenous peoples of Siberia. The DGP correspondent happened to meet Buryats beyond Baikal, relatives of the Mongolian peoples, who spoke Polish better than the local activists of Polonia.

— My grandmother was from Poland. Although it is possible that she was not Polish, but Jewish,” Gennady Ivanov, deputy head of the Polish organization Nadezhda in Ulan-Ude, told me with a smile. Ivanov knows many Polish expressions, wears a Polish national team shirt and calls himself a Buryat-Polish nationalist. With the exception of his grandmother of today unknown nationality and his Polish wife Maria, Ivanov is a 100% Buryat, fully rooted in the Buddhist culture of the region. Apparently, this special Polish soft power captures not only the direct descendants of the exiles. Hence also the presence of representatives of local authorities at the ceremony of presenting the “Polish cards”. It would be great if this often disinterested sympathy extended to federal officials as well.

From time to time I receive surprised comments with something like this: "How could a church be built in Siberia in the 19th century?!" That's what I'm going to tell you now, because in Siberia churches are not uncommon in county towns and even villages. Why are there churches - in the Siberian wilderness, synagogues are not uncommon!

On the title frame - the Assumption Church in Irkutsk (1881-82), now occupied by the organ hall. It stands very close to the former prison, a hundred meters from the ancient Church of the Savior. Similarly, right at the foot of the Kremlin, there is also the Trinity Church in Tobolsk (1907):

At first glance, it is absolutely alien in the Siberian landscape - but in fact it is absolutely logical here. And walking around the Tobolsk church, I will briefly tell the story of Siberian Catholics.

In principle, the answer to the question about churches in Siberia suggests itself: after all, Siberia in the 19th century is a link, a link is people objectionable to the regime, and Poles were at the forefront of those in the 19th century. Each of the Polish uprisings invariably ended with the deportation of several thousand people to Siberia. And if the misconception is widespread in the West that the Siberian exile is a kind of hell, and the person sent there seemed to disappear, the local reality testifies to the opposite. Many tend to confuse "link" and "hard labor", although these are completely different things. The exile was simply forbidden to live anywhere other than the specified place, and to leave the limits of a certain territory (say, not to appear west of the Urals). And in general, many exiles quickly realized that it was quite possible to live in Siberia too!

Catholic priests also fell into exile, so the appearance of church parishes here was a matter of time, and a very short time. The first parish was founded in 1806 in Tomsk by specially arrived Dominican monks, and in 1811 the Bernardines founded a Catholic church in Irkutsk as well. The first Siberian churches were something like prayer houses, but over time they began to acquire capital buildings.

Catholics were, of course, not only Poles - there were Lithuanians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians among them, but these assimilated rather quickly, while the Poles kept themselves closed, cherished their language and customs, and quickly became one of the most influential national minorities. Siberia. Indeed, in the second generation they were no longer exiles, but full members of the local society, and the change of emperors often ended with the rehabilitation of certain exiles. Suffice it to say that in 1902-03, a participant in the uprising of 1863, Boleslav Shostakovich, managed to stay in Irkutsk as the mayor. And many rebels, being inherently passionate people, in Siberia often turned into researchers - for example, geologists Jan Chersky (an unlimited number of mountains are named after him, including the Chersky Range in Yakutia, which is larger than the Caucasus in area) and Alexander Chekanovsky, zoologists Dybovsky and Godlevsky and others. As, by the way, did the Decembrists, many of whom became local historians in exile.

However, everything, of course, was not so blissful: no one canceled hard labor either - for example, it was the Poles who first built the Krugomorskoye Highway (1860s), and then the Circum-Baikal. In 1866, there was even a Polish uprising here (with the ideological support of Russian revolutionaries), in which 683 people took part, led by former military Nartsiz Tselinsky and pianist (!) Gustav Sharamovich ... however, quickly and brutally suppressed. Or just recently periscope talked about the Slyudyanka station, where Polish convicts posted the word XYN (that's right!) At the base of the water tower. The "base" of the Circum-Baikal penal servitude was Tunka, among the prisoners of which was Jozef Pilsudski himself ... but in our time Tunka is considered a resort! And in general, there was enough of everything - a detailed story about the fate of the Siberian Poles, there is,.
Much gloomier is the story of the Catholics, abandoned in Siberia in the 20th century - deportees and convicts (and, as you might guess, mostly political ones).

The oldest in Siberia, the Church of the Virgin Mary, the Queen of the Holy Rosary (1833) has been preserved in Tomsk - and as far as I know, initially most of the local churches looked like this, only they were wooden. And this architecture is more specific to Siberia - after all, neo-Gothic churches of the indispensable red brick were built in the 1880-1910s throughout the empire.

However, churches in provincial cities are also not specific: in Russian Empire every provincial city, even in Turkestan, even for Far East, received a set of church-church-mosque-synagogue. It is much more interesting that churches in district towns are not uncommon in Siberia - for example, the Church of St. Joseph in Tyumen (1903):

However, I do not know if churches have been preserved in any cities that have remained county. For example, in the Krasnoyarsk Territory there were churches in Achinsk, Bogotol and Kansk. In addition, a solid piece of Siberia went to Kazakhstan - and for example, in Petropavlovsk there is a church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (1912), the oldest in this country:

Although in the steppe and militarized Akmola region (with the center in Omsk) the exiles lived much harder than in taiga Siberia, and forced military service in terms of mortality (primarily from diseases) was not inferior to hard labor. So the history of the Poles in Siberia and Kazakhstan is not the same.

Many of these churches are now active, and a small closed Catholic community (often not so much Polish as German) is such a close, cozy world where everyone knows each other by sight and faithfully keeps traditions.

At many churches there are also museums collected by the parishioners themselves - for example, in the same Petropavlovsk:

Household items (including dung - the main fuel in the Kazakh steppes) and cult:

Relics - such as a handwritten prayer book from the 1930s.

But one should not think that all Siberian Catholics did not come here of their own free will. People were exiled mainly to cities, even county ones, but in Siberia there are entire Polish villages! Polish is spoken there to this day, folk holidays are celebrated, for which they prepare National dishes, and go to wooden churches - such as in the village of Vershina Irkutsk region:

These Poles came to Siberia quite voluntarily at the beginning of the 20th century, when Stolypin launched a large-scale program for the resettlement of peasants from European Russia to Siberia. The program was quite organized: unoccupied lands were divided into plots, resettlement was agreed in advance, and local authorities were obliged to help newcomers. Mostly they moved to Siberia from the Russian Chernozem region, here many have ancestors from near Kursk or Voronezh. The Far East turned out to be closer to the Ukrainians, where they departed from the port of Odessa. The Poles did not particularly burn with the desire to go to Siberia, but nevertheless, several thousand of those were found in the entire Kingdom of Poland, and unlike the Orthodox settlers, for 100 years they never merged with the old-timers. Full list I don't have Polish villages in Siberia, but Irkutsk Vershina and Tomsk Bialystok are considered "capitals", both with wooden churches. These villages maintain contact with their historical homeland, thanks to which they live well - tourists, journalists and delegates come here, hence students of Polish universities.
Icons in one of the Vershina houses:

19.

In general, at the beginning of the 19th century there were 25 Catholic parishes in Siberia, three deaneries with centers in Irkutsk, Tomsk and Omsk, the largest Catholic community was in the Yenisei province (about 10 thousand people), but the data on the number of Siberian Poles in general are very different: from 90 to 150 and even 600 thousand at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Here you can also talk about the Siberian Ukrainians, who, although they also once lived in the Commonwealth, ended up in Siberia in a completely different way. As already mentioned, under Stolypin they actively moved beyond the Urals along with the Russians (although there were those who left with the Poles for Canada), and even gave their names to these regions: Gray Wedge (Western Siberia and Kazakhstan) and Green Wedge (Far East), where in some places they made up the majority of the population (for example, "Grey Ukraine" stretched a 150-kilometer strip from Orenburg to Semipalatinsk, that is, through the whole of Kazakhstan). Flag of the Green Wedge:

But there was another category of Ukrainians in Siberia - many people know such names as Filofey Leshchinsky, Innokenty Kulchitsky, Innokenty Nerunovich and others. It so happened that in the 18th century it was the representatives of the Little Russian clergy who were at the forefront of Siberian Orthodoxy. Kulchitsky, for example, is known as Innokenty of Irkutsk and is considered the Orthodox patron of Siberia.

And the Tobolsk Metropolitan Philotheus Leshchinsky at the beginning of the 18th century became famous as the largest in new history Russian missionary (only his own expeditions baptized more than 40 thousand natives), and even built in Tyumen (he didn’t like Tobolsk for some reason) the Trinity Monastery in the Ukrainian Baroque style - the Trinity Cathedral (1715-17) and the Peter and Paul Church (1755). And after all, these are the same age as the oldest Russian churches in Siberia.

Finally, another topic, much less known, is the Siberian Jews. Sounds like an oxymoron, right? But a few months ago Yaroslav Blanter in his journal he wrote about Mariinsk in the Kemerovo region - a real shtetl (Jewish town), as in the west, long abandoned by the Jews. After that, I became interested in the question of where the Jews came from in Siberia, and what I learned is impressive.

The largest synagogue in Siberia (1879) is now in Irkutsk and operates, and by analogy with the Tobolsk church, here I will tell the story of Siberian Jews:

They got here in two main ways. The first, as for the Poles, is exile, especially since the Jews actively participated in the Polish uprisings. But do not forget that the vast majority of the several million Jews of the Russian Empire were born in exile and lived until the end of their days - this exile was only called the "Pale of Settlement" and covered most current Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine and Moldova. However, it was possible to leave the “line”, however, for those who turned out to be really useful and irreplaceable in a new place - Jewish merchants, doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, distillers lived throughout the empire ...

It was somewhat easier for Jews to get to Siberia, where hands and brains were in dire need. Their main specialization here was originally distilling. But business acumen also had an effect - in Siberia, in the order of things, the houses of merchants with surnames like Kappelman or Khaimovich. The exiles often understood that it was better for them here than there, and they took their relatives to Siberia.

Here, in Siberia, they sent "subbotniks" - that was the name of Christians who observed some Jewish laws, Mariinsk and Zima became their centers. The largest Jewish community has developed, which is quite logical, in Irkutsk, the largest and richest city in Siberia, since the second half of the 19th century, Jews have consistently accounted for 7-10% of the population here. In Chita, Jews made up 12% (out of about 10-15 thousand of the population), but the largest communities formed in Kainsk (now Kuibyshev Novosibirsk region) and Barguzin (Buryatia) - up to 30%, which is very close to the level of cities former speech Commonwealth.

In general, in Siberia, by the beginning of the 20th century, a second “Pale of Settlement” began to take shape, and Stalin organized the Jewish Autonomous Region in the Far East not from scratch. I wonder how the history of Siberian Jews would have developed if not for the revolution? Here, for example, is a colorful Jewish story from Barguzin.

The relations of the old-timers with the Jews developed quite peacefully - in general, Siberia was a very tolerant region: the main thing is that the person be honest and serious, and who he prays to is the tenth thing. The first Jewish pogrom in Siberia took place only in 1916 in Krasnoyarsk, but then the Civil War, in which, as you know, Jewish pogroms reached their peak. There were no Petliurists and "Greens" in Siberia, but the Whites, especially Kolchak and, of course, Ungern von Sternberg, perverted. In Transbaikalia and Mongolia, Jews often hid from rioters in Mongolian yurts...
At the entrance to the Irkutsk synagogue - a stone in memory of the victims of the Holocaust:

Again, the existence of synagogues in Irkutsk, Chita, Krasnoyarsk is quite logical for the reason already mentioned. But like churches, synagogues in Siberia are often found in county towns! For example, in Ulan-Ude, which, as you know, was then Verkhneudinsky, the fair capital Eastern Siberia:

The already mentioned Mariinsk (photo, of course, not mine, but Yaroslav Blanter):

Petrovsk-Zabaikalsky, which at that time was the factory village of Petrovsky Zavod:

But neither the Poles nor the Jews created a specific civil architecture in Siberia, and they lived in exactly the same houses as the Russians, especially the merchant eclecticism often resembled the "Moorish style" beloved by the Jews. The former Jewish quarter of Irkutsk looks like this:

Yes, and there were no Jewish quarters in the cities in Siberia, the Jews simply preferred to live closer to the synagogue. In Irkutsk, houses with the Star of David are found in various parts of the city - for example, on Rabochey Shtaba Street in the Radishevsky Suburb:

A synagogue among the spinning huts, frost under -40, and a freight train rattling along the Trans-Siberian Railway. And this kind of thing happens...

EASTERN SIBERIA-2012
" ". Introduction.
. "Along the Great Siberian Highway..."
Middle Angara
.
. City and hydroelectric power station.
. Angarskaya village.
Rzeczpospolita in Siberia.
Churches and shtetls.
Way to the Top.
Vertex. Wierszyna.
Irkutsk and surroundings.
First meeting. Glazkovka, bridge and two stations.
Irkutsk prison.
Marx Street and surroundings.
The streets of the old outskirts.
Suburb Working.
Taltsy at -43 degrees.
Listvyanka. First meeting with Baikal.
Buryatia.
Petrovsk-Zabaykalsky.

Eastern Siberia has been used by the Russian state as a place of exile since the 17th century. Boyars, nobles, court nobility, as well as archers, peasants, townspeople, Old Believers, captured Poles, and Swedes went here “for treason”. During this period, mostly participants in failed palace coups, victims of the intrigues of regular temporary workers, fell behind the Ural stone. Among them were Poles.

So, it is known that back in 1668, the Siberian order painted 22 gentry with families sent to serve in Siberian cities.

In 1775, peasants appeared in the Selenginsky district, exiled at the behest of the landowners along with runaway schismatics from Poland, who received the name here “Semeisky” or “Poles”. According to the data, there were already 1660 revision souls.

The first political exiled Poles began to arrive in the Armed Forces after the Decembrists. These were participants in the national liberation uprising of 1830. The system of their distribution in Siberia was just taking shape, so local authorities were often simply not aware of how and where their life and work should be organized. This happened, for example, with Yuzef Sasinovich, a gentry from near Bialystok, who was sentenced to “one of the fortresses of Eastern Siberia” for participating in “active and zealous contribution to the spread of outrageous intentions,” or, more simply, for harboring participants in the uprising. Once Sasinovich fought under the banner of Napoleon, was wounded, blind, went to Siberia, accompanied by a peasant servant Adam Belyavsky. Already in 1834, the Poles arrived in Irkutsk, and from here, in the absence of "fortresses" in the province, they were sent to the Petrovsky Zavod.

Since there were no separate casemates for political exiles at the plant, Sasinovich, by order of the Governor-General N.S. Sulima, was placed in the semi-barracks of state criminals. For such arbitrariness, Sulima immediately received a suggestion from St. Petersburg: “... in this case, I cannot keep silent that as the barracks of the Petrovsky Plant is intended solely for keeping state criminals who are related to the case known to you, dear sir, then before ordering the placement of Joseph Sasinovich in it , Your Excellency should first ask for proper permission for this in the prescribed manner.

Similarly, priests Antony Oyzhanovsky and Ludwik Tenserovsky were sent to Siberian exile, accused of "dealing with some of the intruders." According to the verdict, they were to be kept without deprivation of dignity in "remote Roman Catholic monasteries." In the absence of these, the local authorities were forced to send priests in February 1835 to Tunka, and from there already in August of the same year, given the crop failure and the high cost of food, to the city of Balagansk, where they were until 1842.

GAIO. F. 24. Op. Ots. D. 632. Report on the management of Eastern Siberia for 1857.

In 1857, there were 87 people under special police supervision in Eastern Siberia, 76 political criminals. Of the first, 10 - decent behavior and 5 - disapproving; in addition, 1 exile was exiled to the Tomsk prison company. All the rest, as well as political criminals, are distinguished by good behavior and obedience to local authorities.

The Polish exile reached its greatest extent after the suppression of the national liberation uprising of 1863-1864. According to various sources, from 18 to 22 thousand Polish patriots were sent to Siberia in three years. Some of the exiles served their sentences in Eastern Siberia, in particular, in the Nerchinsk penal servitude, and then went to a settlement in Western Transbaikalia.

How many Poles were exiled to Western Transbaikalia after the events of 1863, there is no exact data. From the “Report on the state of the Trans-Baikal region for 1865” it follows that on the occasion of the unrest that took place in the Kingdom of Poland, only in the Trans-Baikal region and in just one year were sent “for use in hard labor at the Nerchinsk factories 1595 political criminals”, which were partly placed in factory buildings, partly in buildings belonging to the military department. [GAIO. F. 24. Op. OC. D. 686: GAIO. F. 24. Op. OC. D. 81.]

In the 1860s, the Petrovsky Plant was the center for placing political exiles. From January to December 1864, exiled Garibaldians, participants in the Polish uprising, were here. In 1863, they were taken prisoner by Russian troops, sentenced in Warsaw to significant terms of hard labor and taken to Western Transbaikalia. The Garibaldians arrived from Irkutsk as part of a large party of Polish exiles, numbering at least 74 people,

A large colony of Polish exiles formed in Irkutsk. According to the memoirs of Agathon Giller, there were at least 150 Poles in the city. In 1868, out of two large carpentry workshops in Irkutsk, for the production of furniture, one was Robert Reichart, a political criminal. There were 7 carpenters, turners and apprentices working here. Among the three dyeing establishments in the city, one belonged to the political criminal Osip Krulikovsky.

The number of Polish exiles in the IS districts can be judged from the following figures for 1871-1872: in the Irkutsk district political 794; Nizhneudinsk - 290; Balagansky - 1090; Kirensky - 43 and Verkholensky - 66, and in total - 2778 people.

Many Poles were engaged in hard hard labor. In the statement of political criminals located in the village of Listvennichnoye (Usolye?) in charge of the ordinary centurion P. Popov on 03.01. 1866 206 Polish surnames and given names. In the list of political criminals who are working at the Petrovsky Ironworks for the September third of 1865, there are 160 Polish names (L. 11-14). There are 90 Poles in the Troitsk Salt Factory. The conduit list for political criminals located in Muravievskaya harbor and the city of Sretensk - 177 Poles (L. 16-20). Each surname has a mark for behavior. Basically, in the case of writing: "good behavior", but there is also "impertinent" or "generally bad behavior." The list of political criminals in the village of Sivakova (Nerchinsk District) contains 903 Polish surnames. (L. 89-107).

Local residents willingly hired political exiles for service: "politicians" were literate, did business honestly, were obligatory and executive, and cost less. Here are the lines from the letter of P.D. Ballod, who served hard labor at the Alexander Plant A.S. Faminitsin dated July 3, 1870, “I am writing this letter to you from the Embassy, ​​where a sick person brought me from Verkhneudinsk. And I have been sitting here for the third week and waiting for some ship or steamer to come here and take me across Baikal. When I was leaving the Alexander Plant, I was offered several places by merchants and various entrepreneurs with a decent salary, and even one Buryat, from whom I bought cattle, said to me: “Friend, stay here, I will give you 3 rubles. a month of salary and just 500 bulls, and you trade as you know. Of course, for me, the direct calculation was to stay there, but according to the rules in the Trans-Baikal region, none of the state and political criminals can be left. [Political exile in Siberia. Nerchinsk penal servitude. - Novosibirsk, 1993. - Issue. II. - T. 1. - S. 217-218.]

If the Russian criminal or political exile rushed from Siberia to European Russia, considering the exile as a temporary removal from the familiar environment, then the Poles on the site of the settlement immediately put down strong roots - they acquired a solid estate, livestock, actively sought employment for their abilities. Here they created families, raised children, engaged in entrepreneurship, and made careers.

Often, the exiled Poles took such a strong liking to the Siberian land, acquired a household, that they could not give it all up and immediately return to their homeland. Here, for example, is the indicative petition of F. Dalevsky N.P. Ditmar, written after “the highest permission of May 25, 1868, to alleviate the fate of political exiles: “Since I, having my own soap factory and horses and bulls for its servants, was forced to make a supply for the winter, namely hay and firewood, which I bought from the surrounding residents, then I humbly ask, Your Excellency, to leave me for a settlement in the Transbaikal region. If it were possible, then leave me for at least one year. [Political exile in Siberia. Nerchinsk penal servitude. - Novosibirsk, 1993. - Issue. II. - T. 1. - S. 213.]

The order of distribution and the conditions of stay of the Polish insurgents in the Siberian exile had their own characteristics. So, according to the "Rules for the organization of the life of political exiles exiled to Eastern Siberia from the Kingdom of Poland and the Western provinces", the Poles "in terms of providing for their life, were distributed according to the approval of the head of the province, applying to the occupation of each." The exiled Poles, who wished to engage in agricultural labor in the places of settlement, were endowed with land. A separate paragraph of the rule was supposed to "settle Poles-artisans, craftsmen and others in state-owned and all private factories in the provinces." Those who set up their own household, "with good behavior" could remain in the places of placement even after the end of the sentence.

Such an exclusive attitude towards the Poles was dictated, on the one hand, by the chronic lack of skilled workers in Transbaikalia, and, on the other hand, by the predominance of such scarce working professions among the exiles. Here, for example, is a list of Poles who expressed a desire to stay after the end of their exile in Transbaikalia, compiled in April 1873. There are 54 names on the list. Most of the Poles "asked for permission" to settle near Chita, as well as at the Nerchinsk factories. Nine people intended to stay in Western Transbaikalia: Artetsky Konstantin - soap maker - Verkhneudinsk; Brudnitsky Ivan - sausage maker - Verkhneudinsk; Dreysonten Yan - sawyer - Petrovsky Zavod; Zhokhovsky Ignatius - soap maker - Verkhneudinsk; Kovalsky Nikolai - tailor - Petrovsky Zavod; Ignachevsky Joseph - locksmith - Tarbagatai volost; Molienko Joseph - shoemaker - Petrovsky Zavod; Prushinsky Joseph - shoemaker - Petrovsky Zavod; Sinder Noheim - baker - Petrovsky Zavod.

As you can see, people of “simple rank”, working professions and specialties, strove to remain in the Armed Forces. It is no coincidence that the arrangement of the Poles in the mines of the region was simplified as much as possible: those wishing to work in gold mining, for example, needed only one guarantor, who was willing to act as the owner of the mine, as well as the permission of the bailiff. At the same time, moving from mine to mine within the same company, even if they were hundreds of kilometers apart from each other, also did not require special permission, which the Poles widely used, moving with one “ticket” throughout the region. [GAIO. F. 24. Op. OC. D. 814. L. 2v.]

Despite such a liberal attitude, the law also provided for serious restrictions on Polish exiles. They did not have the right to engage in private transportation, raising children, “teaching sciences” and arts, maintaining pharmacies, photographs and lithographs, selling wine, and holding any positions in government institutions. However, a feature of the Polish exile was that the Polish exiles were always successful in all of the above. For example, Peter Borovsky, after the Nerchinsk penal servitude, was engaged in gold mining, had his own mines, where he willingly provided work for needy Poles; Iosif Valetsky made soap and candles; Franz Vardynsky, Julian Jordan, Karol Ruprecht served in gold mining companies, Aloysius Venda managed an oil factory; Mechislav Zarembsky had a land plot, led Agriculture, was recorded in the merchants of the third guild; Karol Podlevsky supplied grain to the mining department; Alexander and Felitsian Karpinsky founded a factory for the production of Swiss cheeses in the Verkhneudinsky district; K. Savichevsky founded a factory where he annually produced soap for 12 thousand rubles and 3.5 thousand pine nut oil, conducted a large trade in Kyakhta; Ivan Orachevsky was engaged in medical practice. [Timofeeva M.Yu. - Chita, 2001.].

Of course, the history of Siberia and the Baikal region is replete with examples of the scientific creativity of the Poles. In the second half of the 1880s, B. Schwarze and Af. Mikhailovich turned to the director of the Irkutsk Magnetic Meteorological Observatory with a request to allow them to organize permanent meteorological observations in Tunka. The director, having met this proposal with approval, “humbly” requested the provincial government and received a response in December 1887 signed by the Irkutsk vice-governor: “... I find it quite possible to allow meteorological observations in the village of Tunkinsky to be supervised, since such an occupation is not excluded by the meaning The highest approved on March 12, 1882 Regulations on police supervision and, moreover, will save these supervised from idleness, which has a disastrous effect on the morality of their condition. [GAIO. F. 25. Op. OC. D. 5. L. 3.]

Most of the exiled Poles from the peasants settled in the villages of the Baikal region became Russified already in the third generation. They put down strong roots on the Siberian land, replenishing the taxable estates. The Polish nobility, on the contrary, after the amnesty in most cases left for their homeland.

Our contemporary, Professor of the University of Wroclaw A. Kuczynski, pointing to the creative, active way of life of the exiled Poles, wrote about the work of the Poles: “They were looking for some meaningful place in this new space for them, a place not only in the topographic sense, because such was appointed by him by a royal sentence, but places of meaningful fulfillment of his life in exile, often free from prison companies, shackled hard labor or ridiculous closure in prisons and Siberian garrisons. Some of these exiles found such a place by taking up various occupations - merchants, gold digging, crafts, agriculture, but there were also those who filled the meaning of exile existence with cognitive activities in the field of geographical, natural history and ethnographic research. The preferences they brought to their life in exile marked in some way a new horizon of their existence beyond the borders of the fatherland. [Kuchinsky A. Polish news about the Buryats and their cognitive value (translated by B.S. Shostakovich) // Siberian-Polish history and modernity: topical issues: Sat. mat-lov intl. scientific conf. - Irkutsk, 2001. - S. 287.].

What is the socio-cultural role of the Polish exile? If we, studying the political exile, for example, the exiled Bolsheviks, speak primarily of the role of revolutionizing, then the role of the Poles here in Siberia is primarily a socio-cultural one. What are the quantitative components of this contribution?

Today it must be stated that until now the huge scientific problem as a Polish exile to Siberia or Siberia remains unexplored and is illustrated by the example of several dozen enterprising Poles. Yes, we know that he had candle factories, were great musicians. And how did thousands of unknown Poles live in Siberia, what did they do. Yes, even quantitative indicators have not been established. We know quite clearly that there were so many exiled Social Democrats, as well as Socialist-Revolutionaries. And how many Poles were in the first half of the 19th century, then in the second. This data is not available. Rather, they are, but lie in the archive. For example, only one case out of 24 GAIO foundations that I reviewed recently yielded the following figures:

And how many Poles were there, for example, after the uprising of 1863? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to rewrite dozens of volumes of archival files with article lists. Then we will know at least the number, year of birth, social status, geography of settlement and occupation. While there is no data, the history of the Poles in Siberia is still being studied through memoirs based on the fate of several dozen Poles.

In this direction, one should only welcome the publication of the book Exiled Poles in Siberia in the 17th and 19th centuries, published jointly by the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the State Institute of Architecture and Architecture. The work contains hundreds of names of exiled Poles. This provides material for generalizations. The weak side of the book is just the lack of generalizing material, scientific tasks following from a detailed historiographical review. This, of course, impoverishes this study.

As good example one can also note the work of Marina Yulianovna Timofeeva “Participants of the Polish national liberation movement in the Trans-Baikal exile 1830–1850. The author cites several tens or even hundreds of names, but mostly these are well-known faces. Book Gaponenko and Semenov Polish political exiles in the economic and cultural life Transbaikalia in the first half of the 19th century. Series Poles in Buryatia 5 volumes.

Poles– West Slavic people, the main population of Poland. In the Irkutsk region, the diaspora was formed over several centuries in the course of repressions and migration. According to the All-Russian population census of 2002, 2,298 Poles live in the region.

Settlement of Poles in Siberia

The beginning of the exile to Siberia was laid in 1593 by the inhabitants of the city of Uglich, who were involved in the case of popular indignation connected with the murder of Tsarevich Dmitry. The city of Pelym, which received them, became the first exile-settlement Siberian prison. It is significant that along with the first exiles from Uglich, a copper bell weighing 19 poods 20 pounds also fell, and, as the chronicle testifies:

"... with an ear cut off, as a punishment for the indignation of the inhabitants of Uglich at the death of Tsarevich Dmitry (May 15, 1591)..."

The bell was installed in the city of Tobolsk - the gateway to the Siberian country. The exiled bell perished in one of the fires in Tobolsk.

It is known that the Poles were among the Cossacks who went beyond the Urals with Ermak Timofeevich. Survivors of them in many battles and the harsh conditions of the Siberian campaigns achieved considerable military successes, they themselves became real Siberians, and some of them became Cossack chieftains. But there were very few of them.

In 1668, the Siberian order registered 22 gentry with their families sent to serve in Siberian cities. In 1775, peasants appeared in the Selenginsky district, exiled at the behest of the landlords along with runaway schismatics from Poland, and who received the name here “Semeisky” or “Poles”. There were already 1660 revision souls.

The real, albeit forced, but still, the influx of Polish culture into Siberia and Irkutsk, in particular, fell on the second half of XIX v. after the suppression of the uprising of 1863-1864. Most of the slaves of this period were nobles and only a small part were peasant soldiers. Some of them left Siberia under the amnesties of 1841 and 1956. According to various sources, from 18 to 22 thousand Polish patriots were sent to Siberia in three years. Some of the exiles served their sentences in Eastern Siberia, in particular, in the Nerchinsk penal servitude, and then went to a settlement in Western Transbaikalia.

Half of the exiles received a punishment in the form of “placement”, the rest went to hard labor (3894), settlement (2153), “to live” (2254). Together with the exiles, 1830 people arrived. So, the wives of Klechkovsky, Lyuri, Sokolsky, Sosnovsky, Khlusevich, Doller, Yastremsky, Gedeonovsky and others went into exile.

The exiled Poles often protested against hard labor. So, in November 1865 in the village. Sivakova on Ingoda, they participated in unrest among the exiles. In July of the following year, the Poles raised an uprising on the Circum-Baikal Road, which was followed by an order from the Governor-General of Eastern Siberia M. Korsakov to resettle the Polish exiles in the most remote places of the province. The facts of disobedience, protests, escapes, political agitation became more frequent. Polish exiles in the “Proletariat” case (1884) took Active participation in the Carian rebellion.

The arrival in Siberia of the participants of the Polish uprising of 1863 marked the beginning of the Narym exile, where several dozen rebels ended up. Many of them died unable to withstand the difficult conditions, others fled or left after serving their term of exile, a small number fell under the amnesty of 1883, while some, from among the enterprising ones, remained in Narym. The amnestied, having stayed in their homeland for several months, having gone bankrupt, returned to Siberia, moreover, many exiled Poles were already married to Russians.

The grandchildren of the former Narym exiles - Zavadovsky, Rodyukov and others - continued the work they had begun and traded here, having shops of colonial goods. They bought furs from the Ostyaks and Tunguses for nothing, meat, fish, pine nuts from local peasants and sent them to Tomsk and Tyumen. From the end of the 1880s. the entire Balagansky district (left bank of the river) was known for the largest entrepreneurs, and in the past the Polish rebels Herman and Mayevsky. Their influential intercession, which the police officer had to reckon with, helped many political exiles in the region. Not far from them, on the banks of the river. Angary, settled after leaving hard labor, was opened by a "drinking establishment" a former passionate fighter for the independence of Poland, Wojciech Komar.

Settled in Verkholensk in the 1880s, and then in Irkutsk, another Polish political exile, Yuzefat Ohryzko, actively engaged in exploration of new gold-bearing regions. This Polish rebel in 1864 was sentenced to death, then replaced by 20 years of Siberian hard labor. For many years he was in complete isolation, first in Akatuisky, then in Vilyuisky prison and was the only prisoner of this prison castle until the end of 1871. To free up space for N.G. Chernyshevsky, who arrived here, Ohryzko was transferred to a settlement.

Polish colony in the Irkutsk province

A large colony of Polish exiles formed in Irkutsk. According to the memoirs of Agathon Giller, there were at least 150 Poles in the city. In 1868, out of two large carpentry workshops for the production of furniture, one was Robert Reichart, a political criminal. There were 7 carpenters, turners and apprentices working here. Among the three dyeing establishments in the city, one belonged to the political criminal Osip Krulikovsky.

Location map of Vershina village. Territory of the Sharaldaevskaya rural administration of the Bokhansky district of the Ust-Ordynsky Buryat Autonomous Okrug

At the Verkhinsky cemetery. Photo by Y. Lykhin, 2005

Residential building in Vershina. Photo by A. Vishnevskaya, 1997

The history of the Top, or how the Poles ended up in Siberia

Hearing the Polish greeting “Den of kindness” and not “Hello”, I ask myself the question, am I really in Siberia, 130 kilometers northwest of Irkutsk, on Russian soil? And until the moment I arrived here, everyone said that. So who are these people?

In 1996, when I visited Vershina for the first time, I did not plan to come here - the organizers of the tourist route to Baikal prepared several surprises for us. One of them was a visit to a village.

Outwardly, this village is not very different from the many thousands of others scattered throughout both the European and Asian parts of Russia. But already after a few minutes of being among the inhabitants of Vershina, a Pole feels almost like in Poland. Why? Thanks to this "day of kindness". However, the knowledge of the Polish language by Verkhinets does not end there. The descendants of Polish economic emigrants of the first quarter of the 20th century largely preserved the language of their fathers, and, despite numerous Russicisms, the friendly hosts can be easily understood.

The top appeared as a place of settlement for Polish miners who came here at the beginning of the 20th century under the reform of Pyotr Stolypin from the Dombrovsky coal basin. The tsarist authorities needed to develop the Siberian lands, and in 1906 the Minister of the Interior P.A. Stolypin began a reform, according to which the peasants could leave the community and settle in new, sparsely populated by that time territories, while receiving land for cultivation. Those wishing to leave western regions empires (they were promised state assistance for resettlement) settled in Asian territories. Here appeared special warehouses with agricultural equipment, points for immigrants, barracks, schools, hospitals. In addition to 15 tithes of land (1 tithe was then equal to 1.0925 hectares), the settlers received 100 rubles of one-time material assistance and a discount on railway tickets.

Until 1918, Poland was divided into territories of influence, and the settlements (Blendow, Olkusz, Chubrovitse, Sosnowiec and Khrushchobrud), from which the Verkhinska settlers came, lay within the borders of the Russian Empire. Those of the inhabitants of the Dombrowski basin who were attracted by the promises of various assistance from the state and decided to become immigrants, a few months earlier sent their representatives, the so-called walkers, to Siberia to choose a place for settlement. The territory for the settlement was determined in 1908. The great interest of miners in resettlement is due to economic reasons. A difficult social situation, when, for example, according to the data of 1911, within two years, earnings decreased by 10%; occupation-related illnesses, as well as a lack of hope for a better future, all pushed for resettlement. More prosperous peasants, moreover, saw this as an opportunity to get rich quickly.

Although Vershina was one of the many settlements that appeared under these conditions, its phenomenon lies in the fact that only here the Poles, despite significant integration into Soviet society, have retained to this day an awareness of their origin, the language of their ancestors (albeit with the addition of Russian words) as well as religious distinctions. All this has for them great importance.

However, despite the government's promises, the magazines of that time evaluated the resettlement action negatively. This can be seen in the Silesian press, for example in "Kurier Zagłębia Polityczny, Społeczny, Ekonomiczny i Literacki". In 1910, articles talking about emigration and remigration appeared repeatedly, often on the front page, and were not distinguished by optimism. Those who left for Siberia did not feel confident and safe, as they left their former life, left their native places and people among whom they grew up. The fact that, against all odds, they chose to make such a difficult move is a clear indication of the hard life, as well as the hopes associated with resettlement. The people with whom I spoke have a very strong memory of the very first years of the foundation of the village. Memories of this are passed down from generation to generation. Most of the memoirs say that the main reason for moving from Silesia was the difficult living and working conditions.

Part of the dissatisfied with the conditions of the settlers returned to Poland, parting with the opportunity, in general, the only one, to improve their fate. It should be taken into account that only the most hardened and the most prosperous could endure the difficult living conditions in a foreign land and stay here. The uprooting of taiga lands, conflicts with the local population and life at first in dugouts or huts discouraged many people from staying. It was also difficult to return to their homeland, since they had to pay for the move themselves and start life anew. After all, those who left for Siberia probably thought that they would never return to Silesia.

The Polish founders of Vershina found themselves not in a deserted region, but in the neighborhood of the Buryats. In addition to anthropological and linguistic differences, the settlers were also struck by the difference in religious beliefs. For Europeans, the religion of the Buryats seemed exotic. The close and permanent presence of the only until that time the owners of the territory was of great importance for the preservation of the national consciousness and their own, including religious, culture of the Poles.

Due to the fact that the settlers came from different areas, before the resettlement they did not constitute an organized group. There were no traditions of living together over several generations. New public life just had to form.

From the very beginning of the existence of the Peak, in the process of forming and maintaining the self-consciousness of the settlers and their descendants, the Christian faith and Roman Catholic rites were of great importance.

The settlers had to live somewhere, but they could not immediately build houses for various reasons, one of which was the difficult economic situation. Therefore, at a safe distance from the Ida River, along its right bank (the Buryats lived on the other side), they dug dugouts, lining the walls with wood. In order to get land for farming, it was necessary to uproot trees in the forest. Craft workshops appeared. The memory of the first difficult years still lives on.

Immediately after the resettlement, it was decided to build a school and a church, which were erected in 1911-1915. Lessons at the three-year school (including the Law of God) were originally held in Polish. This is well remembered only by the older inhabitants of the Summit, who were students at that time. The teachers were the settlers themselves. Then they continued their studies in Dundai - locality, lying three kilometers towards Irkutsk. This indicates that the Polish settlers were aware of and wanted to preserve the differences in their culture already at the time of settlement. After all, the most significant components of self-identification, taking into account the neighborhood of the Buryats, were language and religion.

During the Great Patriotic War, as a result of internal migrations in the country, representatives of other nationalities appeared in the village, and with them another religion came. I mean Russians, Ukrainians, Tatars, Armenians. But, despite this, the inhabitants of the Top of Polish origin retained their religious values ​​and differences.

As I already mentioned, the settlers from the Dombrowski basin did not initially form a consolidated group. But although they came from different areas, they were all united by a common culture, traditions, origin, as well as the goal and means of its implementation. The situation of emigrants and the settlement of the common territory led to the fact that an organized group was formed from people who did not know each other. On the further development The community was influenced by the need to build houses, the organization of craft workshops, the construction of a school, a church, as well as the neighborhood of people who differed from the settlers in many respects. Initially, walkers enjoyed a certain authority among emigrants. The form of the social structure of the village was influenced both by experience from the history of Polish emigrant communities and by the specifics of Russia and, later, the Soviet Union.

Since the lands for the Poles to live were allocated on the territory of the Buryats, from the very beginning these two different groups came into contact. Land for the settlers was allocated on the high bank of the Ida River, where the Yamatsky stream flows into it. Hence the first name of the settlement - the Yamat-sky site. But in the same year, the name was changed to Trubacheevsky, which was associated with the name of the representative of the Buryat village community Trofim Trubacheev, who opposed the appearance of emigrants here. As already noted, the harsh climate and difficult conditions of the initial period of settling in a new place forced some of the newcomers to return to Silesia. Among them were walkers who, despite the lack of subsidies for the return trip, returned back.

It is known that national, cultural, religious or any other consciousness is almost always strengthened as a result of attempts to eliminate it or unify it with another, for example, with the prevailing one in a given territory. But it also happens that it (consciousness) lends itself to external influence.

In Vershina, the awareness and expression of “Polishness” was greatly influenced by the socio-political situation in Russia, the USSR, and then again in Russia. At the initial stage of the existence of the Polish settlement, there were no restrictions on the expression of Polishness. For example, a chapel for Poles was built, a school where they taught the Polish language. The situation changed radically during the Soviet Union: teaching in the Polish language was eliminated, the church was closed, attempts were made to laicize (rejection of religion) the population. However, the heyday of persecution came in 1937. Then the workers of the NKVD took out and shot thirty people - the most respected people in the village. This tragedy greatly influenced the fate of the survivors, especially women with children. There were no uprisings, rebellions, the usual difficult life continued. But everyone was intimidated, afraid even to teach their children basic prayers. The forced organization of collective farms in the 1930s was also one of the reasons for the impoverishment and fear of the villagers.

For many years the inhabitants of Vershina had no contact with Poland. Immediately after moving to Siberia, the Poles corresponded with relatives and acquaintances who remained in Silesia. But over time, they died, and this made it difficult to maintain a relationship. V last years contacts began to renew. In the 1960s, the village was visited by Hanna Krall, who described Vershina in one of the reports from the east of the USSR, reporters from Polish newsreels also came there. Newsreel reports, which were shown before each screening during the period of socialism, primarily served to indoctrinate (processing in the spirit of a certain doctrine) society.

The establishment of fairly regular relations between the inhabitants of Vershina and their homeland became possible when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the USSR. It was then that Polish missionaries and teachers began to come to Vershina. It was the late 80s - early 90s of the XX century.

During this period, Polish tourists began to visit the village, both individually and in groups. My first meeting with Vershina took place, as already noted, during a tourist trip. Tourists asked residents about the history of the village, customs. These meetings were and are of great importance for the preservation of "Polishness", helping the villagers to look at it in a new way. Suffice it to recall that Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski (his second term of office ends in December 2005) during his visit to Irkutsk in the 1990s, met with representatives of Vershina. This “Polishness” is no longer associated with past persecutions. On the contrary, the Verkhinites understand that by representing a different national group from others, they arouse greater interest in themselves.

The specifics of political and social relations in the former Soviet Union led to a certain unification of the peoples and cultures located on its territory. ), for the most part retained the language and customs of their fathers. If a guest encounters Polish speech immediately upon arrival in the village (and sometimes even earlier - on the bus, when one of the Verkhinites is traveling), then the manifestation of customs is most easily noticed in rituals - both religious and secular, for example, in the celebration of name days ( birthday is celebrated in Russia).

In conclusion, I want to add one thing: although my last visit took place eight years ago (in the summer of 1997), I am sure that the hospitality and friendliness of the Vershina residents to guests from all over the world, and especially to the Poles, is not eroded. It remains for us to live in hope that the youth, as well as representatives of the older generation, know, appreciate and cultivate the heritage of their ancestors.

Translation by N.A. Bartoshevich

LITERATURE

Bazylow L. Historia Rosji (History of Russia). - Wrocław, 1985.

Bazylow L. Syberia (Siberia). - Warzawa, 1975.

Emigracja z ziem polskich w czasach nowożytnych i najnowszych, XVIII–XX w. (Emigration from Polish lands in modern and modern times, XVIII–XX centuries). - Warzawa, 1984.

Emigracje zarobkowe na tle wschodnioeuropejskich i polskich struktur społeczno-ekonomicznych (Economic emigration against the backdrop of Eastern European and Polish socio-economic structures). - Toruń, 1974.

Encyklopedia Powszechna (General Encyclopedia). - Warszawa, 1973. - T. I; 1974. - T. II; 1976. - T. III, IV.

Figura L. Wies Wierszyna. Z problematyki kulturowej polskich mieszkańców Syberii (Vershina village. From the cultural problems of the Polish inhabitants of Siberia): Praca magisterskaprzygotowana pod kierunkiem prof. dr hab. J. Bachorza. - Uniwersytet Gdański, 1995.

Tożsamość narodowościowa w diasporze. Wieś Wierszyna w Obwodzie Irkutckim w Rosji (National Identity in the Diaspora. Vershina Village in the Irkutsk Region in Russia) // Etnos przebudzony. Series: Studia Ethnologica. - Warszawa, 2004. - S. 83–111.

Wiśniewska A. Proces kształtowania się i rozwoju tożsamości etnicznej mieszkańców Wierszyny (Syberia środkowa) (The process of formation and development of the ethnic identity of the inhabitants of the Summit / Central Siberia /) // Etnografia Polska. - T. XLIV, nr. 1–2. - S. 99–114.

Zarobki górników w Zagłębiu Dąbrowskiem (Earnings of Miners in the Dąbrowski Basin) // Kurier Zagłębia Polityczny, Społeczny, Ekonomiczny i Literacki. - 05.30.1911 (nr. 146).

ANNOTATION

Agata Vishnevska. The history of Vershina, or How the Poles were found in the Siberia.

The article of Polish explorer is devoted to the history of the Siberian village Vershina founded by the migrated Poles at the beginning of the XX century. The author considers how the countrymen of Vershina reserved their language, polish culture and national self-consciousness.

Agata Vishnevskaya,
historian,
Warsaw, Poland

Magazine "Taltsy" No. 4 (27), 2005