Siberia is a myth of a boundless, alien and wild, yet fascinating, expanse. In the popular imagination, this concept has encompassed a wide variety of regions – from Yakutia, Transbaikalia and Kamchatka, to the steppes of Kazakhstan, the deserts around the Aral Sea and the Karatau Mountains .

Nowadays, the term is sometimes used ambiguously. In Polish literature and historiography, it is often used alongside the term ‘Sybir’, which derives directly from Russian, and also refers to sites of martyrdom located outside geographical Siberia, such as Vorkuta or Perm .

Administratively, this area comprises 27 constituent entities of the Russian Federation (republics, territories, oblasts and autonomous districts). These belong to three federal districts: the Siberian, Far Eastern and Ural districts. Federal districts are auxiliary units, established by presidential decree, and do not constitute an independent level of territorial administration.

Geographically, there is also no single definition of Siberia. Its western boundary – the Ural mountain range – and its northern boundary – the coast of the Arctic Ocean – are generally accepted . The eastern boundary is defined less clearly: broadly speaking, Siberia extends to the Pacific Ocean ; in a narrower sense, it reaches the watershed separating the Arctic Ocean and Pacific Ocean catchment areas.

The southern boundary is also unclear . It is often conventionally assumed to run along the Russian border, which allows culturally distinct regions, such as part of Manchuria, to be included within Siberia. On the other hand, due to their ethnic and natural distinctiveness, certain areas, such as Tuva, Buryatia, Southern Chukotka and Zabaykalsky Krai, are associated with Central Asia . The geographical affiliation of parts of northern Kazakhstan, historically situated within the zone of Russian colonisation, is also problematic.

Traditionally, a distinction is made between Western Siberia , extending to the Lena River, and Eastern Siberia , encompassing, amongst others, Yakutia, Transbaikalia, Kamchatka and Chukotka.

For the purposes of this text and the website , a broad definition of Siberia has been adopted, in line with the Western perspective, as the Asian part of Russia. Although this approach may raise some doubts, it seems to best correspond to the common perception of the region’s location.

The presence of Poles in Siberia, though most often associated with the dramatic fates of exiles, was not limited to the experience of martyrdom. It also encompassed intellectual, documentary and artistic activities, as well as the work of technicians, engineers, architects and entrepreneurs. At the same time, the material traces of this presence that have so far been documented constitute a relatively modest collection. , the majority of these are gravestones and symbolic memorial sites.

The colonisation of Siberia and the first Poles

The Russian colonisation of Siberia was a long-term process. Its origins date back to the late 16th century, when the Cossacks, led by Yermak, began subjugating the Siberian Khanate. Shortly afterwards, fortified settlements and towns began to be established, such as Tyumen (1586), Tobolsk (1587) and Tomsk (1604) . By the early 17th century, the Russians had reached the Yenisei River, which opened the way for further conquests as part of the so-called second wave, all the way to the Lena River, on which Yakutsk (1632) was founded .

In the mid-17th century , the Baikal region was brought under control and Irkutsk (1652) was founded, whilst by the end of the century Russian expansion had reached Kamchatka. The 18th century saw the consolidation of these territories, whilst the 19th century brought the occupation of further areas along the Amur. If one considers the entire Asian part of Russia to be Siberia, the symbolic culmination of this process was the incorporation of the Tuva People’s Republic into the USSR in 1944.

From the very beginning, Siberia was used by Russia both as a place of political exile and as a place to serve sentences for common crimes. Fugitive serfs and people marginalised by the state also ended up here, as did those who voluntarily undertook the hardship of settlement. One of the strongest incentives was the prospect of profit from the fur trade. As early as the mid-17th century, the first Poles also arrived: fugitives and prisoners of war, as well as exiles, who were often conscripted into the Russian army.

This was the fate, amongst others, of Adam Kamieński Dłużyk ( c. 1635–c. 1676), a Lithuanian nobleman taken prisoner in 1657 during the Polish–Russian wars. Together with his fellow captives, he was conscripted into the Russian army and exiled to Yakutia . Upon his return to Poland, around 1672, he wrote *Dyaryusz więzienia moskiewskiego, miast i miejsc* (*Chronicle of the Moscow Prison, Towns and Places*), though it was not published until the second half of the 19th century. It is the oldest Polish account of Siberia , rich in unique geographical and ethnographic observations concerning, amongst others, the Yakuts, Cheremis and Tungus.

Dłużyk was not, however, the first Pole in Siberia. The first prisoners from the lands of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth are said to have been sent there as early as the 1580s, following the Livonian Wars. In historiography, they are referred to as the Lithuanian nobility (the so-called ‘Lithuanian register’), but there is no doubt that at least some of them were Poles. At the beginning of the 17th century, another group of nobles from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth arrived in Tomsk. One of them was Ostafij Michałowski ( d. 1642), co-founder of the Kuznieck fort, who was subsequently appointed governor there. He later became famous, amongst other things, for his role in the battle against the Kyrgyz in 1635. In 2018, he was commemorated on the monument to the city’s founders. Sources also mention the names of other newcomers, including Piotr Sobański, Jerzy Sobolewski and Mateusz Chodziński. In the mid-17th century, the number of Poles in Siberia was estimated at several hundred.

Nikifor Czernichowski ( d. 1675) was a remarkable figure, who, after killing a Russian voivode in an act of revenge, fled in 1665 with a group of Cossacks and founded the fortress of Jaxa on the Amur River , situated in what is now the Russian-Chinese border region. He pursued a quasi-state policy, and conducted part of his diplomatic correspondence with China in Polish. Ultimately, however, he was forced to recognise Russian sovereignty.

Among the exiles was Ludwik Sienicki ( 1677–1755), who, in 1707, after being taken prisoner by the Russians, was exiled to Tobolsk and Yakutsk. After more than ten years, he returned to Poland, and towards the end of his life, in 1754, he published his memoirs of Siberia. Also of interest are the story of Ivan Petrovich Kozyrevsky , a man of Polish descent and the discoverer of the Kuril Islands.

Many Poles were conscripted into the Russian army following the fall of the Bars Confederation , and were subsequently sent to Siberia. Maurycy Beniowski (1746–1786) was part of this wave ; his memoirs focus primarily on Kamchatka and Chukotka, that is, the regions of the Russian Far East. Karol Lubicz Chojecki (c. 1740–after 1790) also had similar experiences ; he was the author of the account *A Polish Confederation Member Taken via Moscow to Siberia*, published in Supraśl in 1790. Some of the exiles were also forced to take part in the fighting over the annexation of Manchuria.

A particularly large wave of exiles followed the January Uprising. It is estimated that over 6,000 people were exiled to the Tomsk Governorate alone. Further large waves of exiles occurred during the First and Second World Wars.

The Gateway to Siberia

The ‘Gateway to Siberia’ is a term used to refer to the border region between the European and Asian parts of Russia, which historically served as a gateway to Siberia – both for settlers and for exiles. Cities such as Tyumen , the first Russian town founded in Siberia in 1586, and Yekaterinburg , situated on the eastern slopes of the Urals and forming a symbolic boundary between Europe and Asia.

In this context , Tobolsk is also frequently mentioned , where, amongst others, the well-known exile and Siberian explorer Józef Kowalewski – a pioneer of Mongolian studies – was active. From the 17th century onwards, Tobolsk served as the administrative and religious centre of the region. In nineteenth-century imagination, passing through the ‘Gateway to Siberia’ signified leaving the familiar European world and entering the unknown realm of exile, suffering, but also spiritual transformation.

This motif recurred in Polish Romantic literature as the dividing line between freedom and bondage, and also as a threshold for metaphysical reflection on the fate of the nation. Today, the term ‘Gateway to Siberia’ is also used in the contexts of tourism and education. In Yekaterinburg and Tyumen, monuments have been erected and plaques installed to mark the supposed boundary between the continents. In this area, in the small town of Talica , there was also the ‘Siberian Atlantis’, that is, the Koziełł-Poklewski economic empire .

Polish painters of Siberia

The first half of the 19th century marked a period of artistic exploration of Siberia by Poles. Diaries, sketchbooks, landscapes and series of drawings were produced at that time, documenting not only the topography but also – as it was written – “the spirit of the place”. Joanna Woch wrote about the first artistic ‘explorers’ of Siberia, recalling, amongst others, figures such as:

• Jan Krzysztof Damel ( 1780–1840),
• Leopold Niemirowski ( 1810–1883),
• Bronisław Zaleski ( 1820–1880).

These three exiled artists developed distinct strategies for visually narrating Siberia and the steppes of Central Asia. Their works were among the first Polish studies with anthropological ambitions concerning these regions.

Jan Krzysztof Damel, a graduate of Vilnius University, undertook one of the most distant artistic expeditions deep into Asia, travelling via Irkutsk to the border town of Kiachta and the Chinese town of Maimachin (now Altanbulak in Mongolia). His drawings and watercolours, now held in the Print Room of the National Museum in Warsaw, depict not only panoramic views of cities such as Tobolsk, Omsk and Irkutsk, but also vivid portraits of representatives of the Siberian peoples: Kyrgyz, Tatars and Samoyeds. did not view Siberia as a ‘wilderness’, but as a space of cultures worthy of exploration, and his work combined documentary precision with the lyricism of romantic observation.

Leopold Niemirowski, on the other hand , a participant in the November Uprising, found himself in Siberia as an exile. Thanks to his artistic talents, he was assigned to a scientific expedition to Kamchatka and the Lake Baikal region. During the expedition, he produced dozens of drawings and watercolours depicting the rugged natural landscape of the Sayan Mountains, Buryat yurts and scenes of everyday life. His style was akin to a realist landscape – one that did not idealise but reconstructed reality with remarkable fidelity.

The artist, writer and explorer Bronisław Zaleski travelled furthest south ; together with Taras Shevchenko, he journeyed deep into Kazakhstan, to the Aral Sea and the Mangyshlak Peninsula. He left behind an outstanding collection of etchings, *La vie des steppes Kirghises*, published in Paris in 1865. In it, he depicted the lives of nomadic peoples not through exoticisation, but with empathetic understanding and subtlety.

The works of these three artists are not only priceless documents of the era, but also testimonies to personal experiences, reflections and a fascination with the unknown. Thanks to their work, Siberia and the steppes of Central Asia have become entrenched in the Polish collective memory as ambiguous spaces: places of exile and spiritual initiation, landscapes of suffering and fascination, scenes of discovering ‘the Other’ and one’s true self. The works they created are housed in Poland and therefore do not fall within the scope of the documentation included in the catalogue of Polish studies.

Among the painters of Siberian origin, it is worth mentioning Kazimierz Zieleniewski ( 1888–1931) – born in Tomsk, active mainly in Paris, and who died in Naples. In 1917–1918, he returned to Tomsk for a time, where he held three exhibitions. He was also one of the organisers of the Siberian People’s Academy of Art and the Art Gallery.

An interesting fact is that in the 19th century, one of Bernardo Bellotto’s ( 1722–1780) paintings – a view of Rome, commissioned by King Stanisław August Poniatowski – found its way to the eastern edge of geographical Siberia. The work is currently in the collection of the museum in Khabarovsk, as discussed in more detail in our article on Bellotto’s paintings .

The collection of the Tyumen Regional Museum of Fine Arts includes an oil portrait (63.5 × 50 cm), dated around 1790 and attributed to Giovanni Battista Lampi the Younger . It came to Tyumen in 1960 from the holdings of the USSR Ministry of Culture. Initially, it was listed in catalogues as ‘Portrait of an Unknown Man’. In the 1970s, the researcher Natalia Paromova discovered an almost identical version of the painting in the collection of the State Russian Museum. On the basis of technical analysis (crackle), it was established that the Tyumen portrait is the original, whilst the Leningrad one is a copy. Subsequent studies have put forward the hypothesis that it depicts Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz ; however, this identification appears doubtful. Another hypothesis points to Szczęsny Potocki , one of the leaders of the Targowica Confederation.

Regional museums, including those in Yakutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk, also house numerous artefacts relating to the everyday life of Poles in Siberia.

Leszewicz, Orzeszko and other architects in Siberia

In the 19th century, Polish architects played a significant role in shaping the modern face of cities such as St Petersburg, Odessa and Kyiv. The situation was no different in Siberia, where there are over a dozen examples of outstanding design and construction work by Poles. Among the architects working in this region, a particularly interesting figure was Klemens Leszewicz ( 1848–1921), , whose projects were discussed in greater detail by Ewa Ziółkowska in a separate article.

Numerous architects and engineers of Polish origin also contributed to the urban and artistic development of Tomsk at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. One of the key figures was Wincenty Orzeszko ( 1874–1918), the architect behind, amongst other things, the so-called ‘House with Dragons’ (1917), commissioned by the Polish teacher Józef Bystrzycki, as well as his own house at 12 Wierszynina Street. Between 1905 and 1914, he lectured at Tomsk Polytechnic. Another member of the university’s teaching staff was Adam Jensz ( 1866–1920), who was affiliated with the Department of Building Technology and Architecture.

Particularly noteworthy is Stanisław Chomicz ( 1864–after 1914), a provincial engineer and the designer of the distinctive ‘House Under a Tent’ from 1904, which stands out for its fairy-tale architecture. The building was commissioned for Georgy Golavnov, one of the wealthiest Siberian merchants.

Other architects responsible for Tomsk’s wooden architecture included:

• Paweł Naranowicz ( 1852–1894),
• Konstanty Zaranek ( 1862–1893),
• Jan Kalist Nosowicz ( 1862–1929),
• Bolesław Polanowski ( 1839–1902),
• Włodzimierz Suchodolski ( 1820–1850),
• Włodzimierz Suchorowski ( 1870–1917),
• Bolesław Tatarczuk ( 1850–after 1914),
• Karol Turski ( 1832–1837),
• Józef Szrajer ( 1860–1922).

The following figures played a significant role in Tomsk’s administrative structures:

• Alfred Aszemur ( 1834–after 1892), city architect,
• Józef Bukowiecki ( 1854–1892), provincial architect,
• Alojzy Walnicki ( 1839–1877), town architect,
• Narcyz Zbarzewski ( 1821–1863), who also served as city architect.

Between 1864 and 1868 , Stanisław Witkiewicz also lived in Tomsk , having been exiled there with his family as a thirteen-year-old boy. The future founder of the Zakopane style and father of Witkacy left behind memories of his childhood spent in the Siberian city, which left a lasting mark on the rest of his life.

Another interesting figure was Wacław Reutowski ( b. 1853), an industrialist who electrified Tomsk and built the city’s first power station.

Polish architects were also active in Krasnoyarsk. Włodzimierz Sokołowki ( 1874–1959) made a significant contribution to the city’s architecture; he was the architect of historicist buildings, including a Catholic church, as well as Art Nouveau structures . He came from the Vitebsk Governorate, graduated from the St Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers in 1901 and moved to Krasnoyarsk, where he designed around 50 buildings between 1907–1914. In 1909 he also qualified as an architect, and in 1911 became a provincial engineer. After 1918, he worked as a lecturer and designer. A plaque commemorating him has been placed on the house where he lived.

Architects with roots in Polish circles, who often identified to a greater or lesser extent with their Polish heritage, were educated at Russian schools, and it is difficult to detect traces of Polish architectural influence in their designs. The buildings they designed are therefore not so much a trace of Polish cultural heritage as a testament to the presence of Poles in the architectural, cultural and intellectual landscape of Siberia.

Other traces of Polish presence in the urban landscape include buildings which were not erected by Poles but were closely linked to the Polish presence in a given area. It is impossible to document them all. Nor, for that matter, is it necessary. It is, however, worth noting those that played a particularly significant role within individual towns.

Tyumen serves as a good example. At what is now 31 Lenin Street, there was once a shop belonging to the Koziełł-Poklewski family, who came to Tyumen of their own accord, having signed a civil service contract. Alfons Koziełł-Poklewski established a vast commercial enterprise here, comprising several dozen shops and his own production facilities. On the same street, at number 46, a pharmacy run by the Pole Józef Zieniewicz had been in operation since 1913 .

The Trans-Siberian Railway and Polish engineers

The Polish presence in Siberia was also marked by the participation of engineers in the construction of the Trans-Siberian Railway. They are said to have accounted for as much as 20 per cent of its builders. Among them were, amongst others, bridge designers:

• Stanisław Olszewski ( 1858–1929),
• Julian Piotr Eberhardt ( 1866–1939),
• Aleksander Adam Postrokoński ( 1859–1951),
• Stanisław Kunicki ( 1859–1942).

Ernest Bobieński ( 1855–1925) was the construction manager for the section between the Ob River and Irkutsk, whilst Ludwik Wacław Czajkowski ( 1861–1938) supervised the works in the Vladivostok area.

From the 1890s onwards, the firm K. Rudzki and Co. built numerous bridges across Russia. One of the last was the road and railway bridge in Khabarovsk. As in many other cases, the project was managed by a Pole – Antoni Jabłoński. A plaque on the bridge referred, amongst other things, to the Polish company’s involvement. The bridge underwent a major reconstruction in the late 1990s.

Poles also took part in the construction of a railway branch line leading to China – among them was Teofil Hirszman, the construction manager for the southern line from Harbin to Port Arthur.

Siberian churches

Former Catholic churches scattered across Siberia, including those in Kirov, Tobolsk, Tyumen and Vershyn ( in this village, a cross has also been erected to commemorate the arrest of 30 people in 1937). Some of these churches no longer exist, such as the church in Siberian Białystok, formerly an important pastoral centre, which burnt down in 2017.

The first brick Catholic church in Siberia was built in Tomsk in 1833 on the initiative of the Bernardine friar Remigiusz Apanasiewicz, with the support of Catholic exiles, the majority of whom were Poles.

In Irkutsk there is the modern Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary . The cathedral was designed in 1999 and was consecrated on 8 September 2000. The cathedral was designed by the architects Andrzej Chwalibóg (born 1946), D. Łuniewski, J. Zalewska and M. Matyszczyk. The interiors and sculptures were created by Professor Wincenty Kućma (b. 1935), whilst the detailed design was drawn up by the Russian architects W. Stiegajło and A. Baduła. The furnishings include, amongst other things, a baptismal font by Professor Kućma, created in collaboration with Wojciech Kurdziel and Wiesław Motyka. It is made of patinated bronze and is approximately three metres high. Adjacent to the church stands the Chapel of Peace and Reconciliation .

Among other churches, it is worth mentioning the Church of St John the Baptist in Biysk, founded by local Catholics, the majority of whom were Poles. Among those who served there was Father Antoni Żukowski (d. 1937). In Barnaul , too, there was the Parish of Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, whose activities were supported and partly funded by the Polish community of exiles.

The Catholic church in Tyumen was built between 1903 and 1906. The construction was financed by local Catholics, largely Poles. During the Soviet era, the church was closed; it was reopened in 1993.

Cemeteries and memorial sites

Interest in Polish graves in Siberia dates back to the mid-19th century. In 1864, Agaton Giller ( 1831–1887) published a pioneering pamphlet in Kraków ‘Polish Graves in Irkutsk’ , which is one of the first documents reflecting Polish contemplation of the fate of their compatriots in Siberia and their material heritage.

However, contemporary research is of crucial importance for the documentation and preservation of Polish graves and cemeteries. Among those engaged in this work is Professor Sergiusz Leończyk, who has located and described a significant proportion of Polish cemeteries in the Urals and Siberia.

The largest Catholic cemeteries in Siberia – namely the cemetery in Tomsk and the Catholic Jerusalem Cemetery in Irkutsk – were devastated during the Soviet era. In Tomsk there is also a plaque commemorating those buried in the Catholic cemetery next to the Church of the Ascension.

There are reports of preserved original Polish stone graves dating back as far as the 19th century, in smaller settlements such as Wierszyna ( Irkutsk Oblast), founded by Polish settlers in 1910, and those mentioned by Professor Leńczyk: Aleksandrówka, Wilenka and Kanok ( Krasnoyarsk Krai), Białystok ( Tomsk Oblast) and Despotzinowka ( Omsk Oblast). Polish cemeteries also remain near the now-defunct villages of Mińsk-Dworiańskoje, Botwino and Hryniewicze (Omsk Oblast), Polozovo ( Tomsk Oblast) and Polski Wysiełok ( Krasnoyarsk Krai).

The catalogue of war cemeteries available in the Polonika database also includes contemporary, symbolic commemorations relating to events of the 19th century. These include a memorial in Miszisha ( at the grave of Poles who fell during the Trans-Baikal Uprising ) and a cross in Tunka dedicated to Polish exiles. At the cemetery in Tobolsk , where a few Polish gravestones have survived, there is also a cross commemorating the exiles. Not far from the settlement of Piwowarycha lie the graves of victims of mass executions carried out by the NKVD in 1937–1938. In Kemerovo there is a memorial to the victims of the labour camps from 1945–1947 – one of the few physical reminders of the post-war fate of Poles in Siberia.

Plaques, monuments, obelisks

Plaques, monuments and obelisks also serve as reminders of the fates of the exiles and the former Polish inhabitants of these lands.

At Kazan University there is a commemorative plaque dedicated to Professor Jan Niecisław Ignacy Baudouin de Courtenay ( 1845–1929), a Polish linguist who was a professor at the university from 1874 to 1883, as well as a lecturer at other European universities. He became renowned as a defender of the rights of national minorities in Russia, for which he was arrested in 1914. After Poland regained its independence, he returned to the country and became associated with the University of Warsaw, as well as with the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków. The plaque was unveiled in 2011; it features a relief portrait of the professor and inscriptions in Polish, Russian and Tatar.

In the Krasnoyarsk Region, in Malaya Minusa , on the village administration building – which housed an orphanage for Polish children between 1942 and 1946 – a commemorative plaque was installed, whilst in nearby Minusinsk , a monument to Polish mothers and children has been erected in the Old Cemetery. Around the year 2000, six gravestones bearing Polish inscriptions were restored there, and in 2025 another monument was discovered and cleaned.

In the Tomsk Oblast , in the village of Polozovo ( which no longer exists), and in Białystok , there are memorials to Polish men and women murdered in these places between 1937–1938 as part of the NKVD’s ‘Polish Operation’. The monument in Polozovo was destroyed by ‘unknown perpetrators’ in December 2022.

In Tomsk itself, a monument commemorating the parish priests of the Tomsk Catholic parish was erected in 2012, and on the site of the former Ministry of Internal Affairs prison, a monument to the Polish men and women murdered there.

In Biysk ( Altai Krai), there are two monuments: one commemorating Polish exiles and another dedicated to Władysław Jaruzelski (1889–1942). Both are situated in the Zarieczenski Cemetery, although Poles were originally buried in the Catholic section of the Pokrovsky Cemetery, which was closed down in the 1950s. These memorials are symbolic in nature.

In the Altai Region, there are also other traces of Polish exiles – mainly from the 1940s – such as a cross and graves in the now-defunct settlement of Yuzhny , as well as memorials in the villages of Zagaynov, Soloneshnoe, Chervianka and Pokrovskoye. In Norylsk, within the ‘Golgota Norylska’ cemetery , a monument designed by Stanisław Gierad was erected in 1996.

Unfortunately, memorials to Poles in Russia are increasingly being removed by the authorities for political reasons. In Tyumen, such a monument was dismantled in 2022. A similar fate befell the monument in Yakutsk, which was removed in 2023.

Polish cultural artefacts in Irkutsk

The largest number of Polish artefacts is found in the Irkutsk Oblast. One of the most valuable is Witold Pruszkowski’s painting ‘The Death of Anhelli’ , interpreted as an artistic reflection on the fate of the exiles. The Irkutsk Art Museum also houses a collection of works by Polish artists, including:

• Leopold Niemirowski ( 1810–1883),
• Stanisław Wroński ( 1848–1898),
• Piotr Krzyżanowski,
• Wojciech Koperski ( c. 1845–1919),
• Józef Berkman ( 1838–1919).

These are works by painters, printmakers and sculptors who created their art locally or were exiled there following national uprisings. The collection also includes works by Poles who did not reside in Siberia, but whose works found their way into local art collections.

Individual works of art can also be found in other museums, such as the terracotta bas-relief ‘View of the Akatuja Mine’ by Ignacy Julian Cejzyk ( 1779–1857), held at the Irkutsk Regional Museum of Local History in Irkutsk (works by this artist are also held in museums in Tobolsk, Tyumen and Chita). The Irkutsk museum also houses 11 watercolours by Stanisław Katerla ( b. 1835), as well as works by Wojciech Koperski.

The work of Polish artists in Siberia still requires thorough research; an introduction to these works is provided by an article by Ludmiła Sznytko, Bolesław Szostakiewicz and Helena Zubrij on Polish artefacts in the collections of Irkutsk’s museums.

The aforementioned Local History Museum in Irkutsk was founded in 1782 and is one of the oldest museums in Russia. From the 1860s onwards, a group of Polish exiles, who were naturalists, were associated with it. Among them, the following stood out:

• Benedykt Dybowski ( 1833–1930),
• Wiktor Godlewski ( 1831–1900),
• Aleksander Czekanowski ( 1833–1876)
• Jan Czerski ( 1845–1892).

On the façade of the museum building, constructed in 1883, the name of Jan Czerski is inscribed in Cyrillic. A plaque commemorating him has also been preserved .

In Irkutsk, on Dybowski Street, there is a plaque dedicated to Benedykt Dybowski, whilst the museum in Listvanka houses a bust of him. There is also a commemorative plaque to Dybowski in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.

These are significant traces, as both scholars played a key role in researching and describing the natural world of Siberia.

On the eastern frontiers of Russia

Commemorations of Polish researchers and explorers can also be found in Yakutia and the Russian Far East.

In Yakutsk , a monument to Siberian exiles and explorers has been erected . In the settlement of Kolymskoe in Yakutia there is a monument dedicated to the aforementioned Jan Czerski . It is a concrete obelisk unveiled in 1947 on the initiative of the Kolyma River Administration under the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs.

In the Russian Far East, on the border with China and North Korea—and thus in a region lying outside geographical Siberia— but culturally linked to it, stands a monument to the Polish January Insurrection fighter and convict Michał Jankowski, described as the forerunner of Indiana Jones. Meanwhile, in Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on the island of Sakhalin, a monument to Bronisław Piłsudski ( 1866–1918) has been erected.

***

Siberia, commonly said to occupy one-sixth of all landmass – which is somewhat of an exaggeration, as in reality it accounts for less than ten per cent of its total area — appears not only as a geographical territory but also as a space of cultural projection, where the fates of exiles intertwine. However, Polish traces in Siberia are not limited solely to martyrdom. They also encompass art, science and engineering, bearing witness to the multifaceted presence of Poles in these lands. This heritage, though often scattered, allows us to view Siberia not merely as a place of torment, but also as a place of life.