Sybiraki
In the winter of 1769, Brigadier Suvorov was awarded the rank of major general for his brilliant success in defeating the Polish confederates, who advocated the independence of Poland from Russia. The matter could have been resolved by political maneuvers, because the king of Poland, Stanislaw August himself, was more likely on the side of the Russians, he was ready to equalize the rights of Polish Catholics and Orthodox. He even signed a treatise on “eternal friendship” between the Commonwealth and Russia. But, as practice shows, it is after the signing of such documents that the most bloody wars begin.
Proud Polish Catholics rebelled against their own king and the Russian protectorate. The civil war began. And the complex “Polish knot” Catherine II preferred not to unravel, but to cut it, sending troops to the neighboring country. France, Saxony and, finally, Turkey intervened on the side of the recalcitrant Poles, for which the outbreak of the war cost the most – she lost the Crimea. In 1774 the campaign ended in complete defeat for both Turkey and the Polish confederates. The first (but far from the last) division of the Commonwealth between Prussia, Austria and Russia took place.
And where there is defeat, there are prisoners.
Hundreds and thousands of Poles who participated in the rebellious “Bar Confederation” wandered through the stages, clinking their shackles. Most of them – for a long time or forever – had to move to the region, about which gloomy legends circulated in Europe as a place to live absolutely unbearable. To Siberia.
However, it soon turned out that noble origin (and among the exiles there were representatives of noble Polish families, students, scientists, priests) and the gentry’s vital strength did not allow them to disappear without a trace in the Siberian hinterland. Many in the new wild place settled down quite well, got a household, gave lessons, married Russian beauties. Some were even accepted into the military. So, the confederates of the Tobolsk battalion were included in the troops that took part in the suppression of the Pugachev uprising – but, however, several dozen Poles fought on the side of the “Pugachevites”.
One way or another, from Krasnoyarsk to Yakutsk, an original Polish diaspora began to form, which year by year was replenished with new settlers. Poland rebelled against the Russian Empire that had fallen on it – and the best representatives of Polish society ended up in Siberian exile. After the Kosciuszko uprising (1794), 5 or 6 thousand Poles ended up in Siberia, after the first Polish uprising (1831) – more than ten thousand, and after the bloody suppression of the second Polish uprising in 1864, the new “harvest of exiles” reached 20 thousand. Moreover, the majority settled in large cities – Minusinsk, Tobolsk, Krasnoyarsk, Yakutsk, where it was easier to supervise them.
And this almost instantly made the Poles a “highlight” of the Siberian secular society. Beautiful, well-educated, imposing… What else does a foreigner need to succeed in Russia? And if it is also Siberia, where 99 percent of the exiles are criminals, only slightly diluted with elderly Decembrists and their elderly wives … It is clear that the Poles had a resounding success. And many, even having the opportunity to return to their homeland, preferred to stay in Siberia.
Even the governor-general of Eastern Siberia, Nikolai Muravyov Amursky, wrote to the emperor with some concern that one should not gather a bright and “explosive” Polish diaspora in Siberian cities, but since Siberia at that time was considered by the Russian authorities as an ideal prison, these fears went past the tight imperial ear . The Polish “sybirak” (“Sibirak” – this is how the exiled Poles and relatives who came to them in Siberia called themselves) felt free and confident. So freely that when, in the early 60s of the 19th century, the Krasnoyarsk governor P. Zamyatnin, in desperation, decided to expel the exiled participants in the Polish uprising from the city as “dangerous enemies of female virtue” and issued a special order for this, he did not succeed.
On the other hand, Siberia itself did not let the Poles go. So, for example, the completely philanthropic proposal of the Tobolsk governor with the wonderful surname Despot-Zenovich, who proposed to quickly return to Poland at least children of 15-16 years of age who came to Siberia without parents, and women who voluntarily came for their husbands, also failed. death of the latter. In St. Petersburg, his proposal, as they say, “was put on the back burner.”
No one knew when these bureaucratic boxes would open. Under what emperor, under what power? And we had to live here and now.
And they lived.
Peasants worked on the land, merchants opened their own business, merchants traded. Scientists “on the new material” continued the work that they had begun in European universities. Geologist Alexander Chekanovsky explored the Lower Tunguska, geographer and paleontologist Ivan Chersky studied the Irkutsk province, zoologist Viktor Godlevsky compiled catalogs of the fauna of Eastern Siberia …
But they all continued to dream of a free Poland. And many thought that the fate of their homeland largely depends on the changes that will take place in Russia. An empire can collapse – if it is destroyed from within. And maybe it would be worth starting from Siberia, which is overflowing with political exiles.
Indeed, by the mid-60s, the number of not only exiled Poles, but also Russian “political” here numbered in the thousands. Even under the watchful supervision of the police, they were drawn to each other, organized circles and secret societies – so far quite harmless, but numerous. All this was reminiscent of well-prepared fuel for a revolutionary fire, to which it is enough to bring a match to start a fire.
And in 1865, a man with a speaking surname Serno-Solovyevich tried to become such a match.
Dream of Liberty
His life began without clouds. Nikolai Serno-Solovyevich was born in 1834 in St. Petersburg, in the family of an official of the military ministry, he studied at the famous Larinsky gymnasium, and then at the Alexander (former Tsarskoye Selo) lyceum. And then everything went according to the schedule of “good families”: after graduating from the lyceum with a silver medal, the young man entered the civil service, as a clerk in the office, where he served on the committee on peasant affairs. There, work was underway with documents to prepare for the abolition of serfdom, and Nikolai plunged into it with his head. Yes, so deep that he did not emerge.
Learning more and more about the real situation of the peasantry in Russia, he was filled with indignation. First, it splashed out in a memorandum to Alexander II, which he personally took to Tsarskoye Selo – and where radical measures were proposed to free and improve the life of the peasants. The tsar ignored the note, but the ardent young man was immediately transferred from the office to the Zemsky department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and then completely assigned to the committee for organizing peasant life near Kaluga. Like, if you want to do good for the peasants – please! But only strictly according to the regulations, and keep the “ideas” to yourself.
However, the Decembrists Batenkov, Svistunov, Obolensky and Petrashevite Krashkin were living in Kaluga, with whom Serno-Solovyevich became friends almost instantly. A year later, he was already a radical revolutionary, composing angry articles and appeals, and in 1860 he committed an act of “revolutionary initiation”, almost obligatory in those years for fiery fighters against tsarism: he went to London, where he made close acquaintances with Herzen and Ogarev.
Returning from England, Serno-Solov’evich immediately resigned from the civil service, but began to write even more articles and proclamations, and almost went into hiding. That is, by the age of 25, there was nothing left in him from a boy from a decent bureaucratic family, but the “secret” revolutionary glory was growing rapidly. Soon he made a close acquaintance with Chernyshevsky, who (although he was 7 years older and had already become famous as one of the editors of Sovremennik), wrote with admiration in a letter to Dobrolyubov: “Rejoice! I am in bosom friendship with Serno-Solovyevich!”
In the autumn of 1861, Nikolai, together with his brother Alexander, took part in the creation of the revolutionary organization “Land and Freedom” and became a member of its Central Committee. And a month later, in Berlin, his pamphlet “The Final Solution of the Peasant Question” was published, criticizing the reforms of Alexander II, which became fundamental for a couple of generations of Russian revolutionaries.
It is not surprising that for the tsarist secret police, Serno-Solovyevich was seen as a figure as dangerous as Chernyshevsky. Therefore, in 1862 they were arrested at the same time. Under investigation, they also “sat” side by side, in the neighboring cells of the Alexander Ravelin. From there, by the way, letters to London easily reached, and in one of them Serno-Solovyevich wrote to Herzen: “I would curse the hour when I became an atom of this mindlessly vile people, if I did not believe in its future.” That is, a serious passion boiled in him, and no prison could extinguish it.
In 1864, both Chernyshevsky and Serno-Solovyevich were sentenced to civil execution and exile to Siberia. True, Chernyshevsky’s sentence was harsher: 12 years of hard labor and eternal exile in Transbaikalia (only before his death did he manage to return to his homeland, to Saratov). Serno-Solovyevich was also initially sentenced to hard labor, but almost immediately it was canceled, leaving only an indefinite exile to Siberia. On June 27, 1865, he was sent to Tobolsk, and from there to Krasnoyarsk. They say that on the way, Russian and Polish revolutionaries from “Land and Freedom” tried to arrange an escape for him, but unsuccessfully.
But in Krasnoyarsk, where about three thousand Russian and Polish “political” exiles lived in 1865, Nicholas was almost eagerly awaited. Resolute people gathered there, not theoreticians, but practitioners of the revolutionary struggle. For example, Pavel Lyandovsky, the son of a doctor who, as a young man, became famous as the head of the Warsaw “shtiletniki” (political assassins, among other things, who staged assassination attempts on the Grand Duke Konstantin and the governor of the Kingdom of Poland, F.F. Berg). Or – Valentin Lewandowski, an active participant in the Polish uprising with vast combat experience. They were ready for a conspiracy, the soul of which Serno-Solovyevich became in a few months.
By January 1866, a military organization had formed in Krasnoyarsk, the goal of which was a full-scale Siberian uprising. A territorial system of combat detachments was established. The province was divided into districts, districts – into volosts. Each volost had to give at least a hundred rebels. The plan extended not only to the Yenisei province. In Tobolsk, Xavier Alexandrovich was appointed head of the insurgent detachment, in Omsk – Yuzef Kostelkovsky, in Irkutsk Gustav Sharamovich headed the Eastern Revolutionary Committee.
The uprising was to begin simultaneously at the Nerchinsk mines, and in Western Siberia, and in the Kansk district, and at the Troitsky salt plant. The goal of the uprising – no less – was the creation of a new free state throughout Siberia, which, at the suggestion of Serno-Solovyevich, they decided to call Svobodoslavia. Its provisional government was to include Chernyshevsky (whose plan for liberation was already being developed by the Ishustin circle in Moscow), the publicist of Sovremennik Mikhail Mikhailov, the publisher of the opposition newspaper Slovo Iosofat Ogryzko, and Serno-Solovyevich himself. Moreover, when plotting this new state, the conspirators had in mind that Siberia should be freed from the colonial yoke, as the North American United States and some countries of Latin America had already done.
It sounds, of course, crazy – but the plan was quite serious, and it relied mainly on the support of many thousands of exiled Poles who were ready to start an uprising with weapons in their hands. Subsequent events showed that they really had this determination, only the organization of the conspiracy turned out to be an absolute failure.
Shortly before the appointed date (probably, the rebellion was planned to start at the end of February 1866), Lewandowski and other Polish organizers of the uprising were unexpectedly transferred to Kansk, and Serno-Solovyevich also fell into this stage. The rebel forces were “dispersed”, and in order to coordinate plans, active correspondence was required. Soon one of the couriers taking letters to Krasnoyarsk was arrested, and it became clear that the conspiracy had been discovered. However, he, apparently, was revealed much earlier: the police had an informant who had long been reporting all the plans of the conspirators, and their dispatch from Krasnoyarsk to Kansk was not a mere accident …
All this became clear in early February 1866. But just at that moment, Serno-Solovyevich, unaware of the impending disaster, managed to achieve his transfer to Irkutsk, where he planned to start an uprising. And this trip turned out to be fatal for him.
Accidentally or not, but already at the entrance to Irkutsk, the narrow sleigh on which the exiles were carried fell into a deep hole and turned over. The horses got scared and ran. Serno-Solovyevich fell into the snow, and perhaps he would have survived – but a huge fur coat with wide skirts caught on the runners, and he was dragged along the icy snowdrifts. So he was dragged into the gates of the Irkutsk prison – with broken ribs and a broken head.
They say that the Polish exiles were the first to run up to him, and he still managed to whisper something to one of them. Documents and plans of the conspirators were sewn up in a fur coat – and the Poles, who already knew about the failure, took the fur coat with them to destroy all the papers hidden in it. It may have saved many lives. The Siberian authorities did not fully realize the scale of the conspiracy that was being prepared – and decided not to report it to St. Petersburg, confining themselves to sending the conspirators to different prisons. And a month later, Karakozov fired a shot in St. Petersburg, unsuccessfully attempting on the life of Alexander II, and it became completely inconvenient to report that something was also wrong in Siberia …
Besides, everything seemed to be in order now.
After all, the main leader of the conspiracy, 31-year-old exile Nikolai Serno-Solovyevich, died from his wounds in the infirmary of the Irkutsk prison hospital.
War on the shores of Lake Baikal
Yes, the plot has been uncovered. To many, especially to the Siberian authorities, he seemed absolutely “toy”, too romantic to pose a real threat. But the Poles in Siberia took the rebellion seriously. Some really were going to take up arms – if not for the sake of “Svobodoslavia”, but at least for their own liberation.
And in the summer of 1866, a real uprising broke out at the construction sites of the Circum-Baikal Railway, where thousands of Polish exiles worked. It was headed by the former captain of the Russian army, Nartsiz Tselinsky, and the 30-year-old musician, pianist Gustav Sharamovich, an intelligent and energetic handsome man, a brilliant and passionate speaker. They were not directly related to the Serno-Soloviev conspiracy, but they knew from their comrades that a “Polish revolution” was planned in Irkutsk in the winter, and enthusiastically prepared for decisive action. When it became known that the plot had failed, they decided to act on their own.
The plan was simple and desperate: disarm the convoy, seize the horses, break through the mountains of Mongolia to China, reach the ocean coast – and there negotiate with the British to help them get on ships to America, and from there a free way to their homeland was opened. They did not have weapons – but since the time of the Kosciuszko uprising, scythes, upright planted on poles, were considered the “brand” weapon of the Polish insurgents. Their Baikal conspirators prepared several hundred. Such improvised pikes are weapons, of course, not very lethal, but when there are a lot of them, they look intimidating.
On the evening of June 24, 1866, one of the parties of Polish exiles at the Kultuk station attacked their escorts, took away their weapons and, capturing horses, went further along the highway to the Amurskaya postal station. There, the rebels also disarmed the soldiers guarding her, cut off the telegraph communication with Irkutsk – and, together with the people who joined them, moved on. Along the way, telegraph wires were cut everywhere (that’s what braids were perfect for!) and, if possible, they stocked up on rifles and ammunition taken from soldiers. Within a couple of days, a small Polish detachment with homemade pikes turned into a rather serious combat unit of a thousand people armed with rifles and guns. Almost all of the rioters had been in combat before, so they didn’t need to be taught how to handle weapons and follow orders. But Cossacks and three detachments of infantry, more than 3,000 people, were sent to meet them from Irkutsk and Selenginsk. Forces were clearly not equal.
Soon, the first battle broke out at the Likhanovskaya station: the rebels tried to storm the house in which the station garrison was locked. However, the assault was not successful, because in the midst of the battle, a steamer moored to the shore, on which reinforcements arrived to the besieged. The Poles set fire to the station and retreated.
The united Russian detachments began the pursuit. Sometimes they had to engage in hand-to-hand combat, in which the Polish rebels showed unexpected dexterity and courage. Their “frivolous” pikes made from scythes actually turned out to be dangerous weapons, and the Russian troops began to suffer noticeable losses. In the battles that lasted more than a month, several hundred Poles and at least 30 Russian soldiers died. Ghibli and officers.
So, for example, the young lieutenant Nikolai Porokhov died, who voluntarily joined the expedition in the hope of distinguishing himself in hostilities. Before the campaign, not without coquetry, he wrote in his diary: “I’m going against the Poles. It would be interesting to return slightly wounded.” But it didn’t come easy. They say that with a revolver, he rushed into the thicket, where he came across several “kosiniers”, released all the charges, killing and injuring several people, but was pierced by a pike and died on the spot.
This war might have lasted until late autumn – but after a major battle that took place on July 25 in the valley of the Temnik River, the rebels ran out of ammunition. They were in full view of the Russian shooters, who could shoot them like targets in a shooting gallery. There was nowhere to hide, and Narciss Tselinsky, seeing how his friends were dying one by one, decided to surrender.
More than 600 people were taken prisoner, including the leaders of the uprising. All of them were transported to Irkutsk, where a court-martial was held in October. Seven people were sentenced to death, 60 were sentenced to hard labor, the rest were sent to settlements in remote places in Siberia. The commander of the troops approved the sentence of four suicide bombers – the organizers of the uprising Tselinsky and Sharamovich and two more commanders of the rebel detachments.
The sentence was carried out on 15 November. It was a public execution, and one of its eyewitnesses, exiled Poles, later spoke about it like this:
“… The handsome Sharamovich got off the shameful chariot first, and the priest Shvernitsky, himself a former exile, approached him. The priest was pale, and his hands were trembling. “Father! Sharamovich said. “Instead of strengthening us with the word of God and giving us courage in the last moments, you yourself have lost heart and need support. Calm down and pray not for us, but for the future of Poland. We don’t care where we die for our fatherland – whether at home or in exile. The dream, which has always been our guiding star, will not die after us. This is what strengthens and consoles us.” Having delivered this speech impromptu, Sharamovich embraced his comrades and went to one of the pillars dug into the ground. When they began to put on a shroud, he tore off his hat from his head, threw it up and shouted in Polish: ” Poland hasn’t died yet!”
Shots rang out, and that was the end of the story of the “Siberian Legion of Free Poles” – that’s how Sharamovich and Tselinsky called their small army, which lasted only one month. Apart from this (of course, rather grandiloquent) description of the execution, there are practically no other memories of it left.
Neither the peak nor the homemade flags that fluttered over the shores of Lake Baikal for a whole month have survived. But the slogan written on the flags under which the rebellious Poles went into battle in 1866 had a long life ahead …
The slogan “For our and your freedom” was born in 1831 in Poland, during a demonstration in support of the Russian Decembrists. He became legendary again a hundred years later, in 1968, during the Prague Spring. And, most likely, his time will come again.
Sergey Tashevskiy
