A comprehensive article summarising the Polish presence in Turkestan. The history of early Polish settlement associated with the occupation of Turkestan by Russia is recalled, as well as the development of the region itself and the wave of immigrants from the Kingdom of Poland. The text is richly illustrated, including, for example, a photograph of the plaque commemorating T. Kosciuszko in Tashkent (Source: "Wieści z Polski", Warsaw 1931, R: 5, no. 7-8, pp. 15-18, after: Jagiellonian Digital Library).

A modernised reading of the text

Poles in Turkestan Poles in Turkestan.

A very interesting book entitled "Poles in Turkestan during the World War" has been published by a group of former Turkestanians and through the efforts of the editorial committee (Rev. St. Zelazowski, Eng. W. Bromirski, Maj. T. Wyszomirski, Capt. W. Szlagiewicz, Eng. Maksyś). For historians who in the future will want to deal with the history of our emigration and our dispersion all over the world during the World War, the task will be easier in the case of the Turkestanians, as the book not only contains data concerning the past, but also pictures of the life of the local colony, and, in order to illustrate the whole in detail, even goes so far as to provide minutes of conventions, cash reports, etc.

The history of Polishness in Turkestan begins with the occupation of that country by the Russians. In the conquerors' troops, the percentage of Poles in the ranks reached 50%, while that of officers was about -15. Among them were also the insurgents of 1863, who had been exchanged from prison for service in the ranks among the hot steppes of Tamerlan's land. The veterans of this war later settled down, established farms and families.

A remarkable encounter with such one settler was recounted by the now deceased Col. L. Barszczewski told of. Having ex officio charge of the Pamir mountains and Baluchistan, he was making a tour of these wild areas. When, one evening, he and his accompanying soldiers approached a valley close to the border, one of the soldiers reported to him that he heard Polish singing. The colonel hurried in the direction where the voice was coming from and saw a grey-haired old man ploughing a field with oxen.

This man was singing "The Angel of the Lord". Puzzled by this, the colonel approached the old man with an old Polish greeting: - May he be praised... The Polish speech made such an impression on the old man that he fell to his knees in astonishment and joy and at first could not utter a word. In the ensuing conversation between his compatriots, Colonel Barszczewski learned that he was an insurgent from the 1863 uprising who had been exiled to Siberia. He managed to escape from there to Turkestan, where, hiding his past, he stayed for some time.

However, he was betrayed by a person to whom he had inaccurately told his story. Again he had to save himself by escaping, this time to the Pamir mountains, where he settled and where, remote from people and without fear of pursuit, he made a living by farming. So the pioneers of Polishness were there - soldiers of the Russian army, but when the government set about organising the judiciary and administration, a considerable number of Poles found jobs there. Later, the Orenburg-Tashkent-Samarkand railway was built, and a new wave of compatriots arrived, mostly intelligentsia, although there were also craftsmen and workers.

The Russian government, however, did not allow any Polish association to be founded, so Polish life was limited to social intercourse. On the initiative of the Grzędzińskis, however, weekly meetings were held at their home, and even a mobile library was organised and an amateur show was staged twice. For when news came that a central civic committee had been organised in Warsaw to rescue the country ravaged by war, list contributions were ordered in distant Tashkent in October 1914, approved by the wartime governor of the Syr-Darya region.

Initially this was done under the guise of the Charity Society, which existed at the local Catholic church, but later the Polish colony united to form the 'Polish War Victims Aid Society', and even held a large concert, attended by the governor. The concert, however, ended in scandal: during the singing of the anthem 'Boże, coś Polskę' (God save Poland), the governor ostentatiously left, offended that the anthem of a 'non-existent' state was sung before the anthems of the allied countries. As a result, one of the organisers went to the goat. No one imagined that a wave of visitors from Poland would soon arrive. The first such wave of this river of exiles of various categories to cross Turkestan were civilian prisoners of war from Warsaw and partly from other parts of the Polish Kingdom.

The exiles were kept in terrible conditions, confined to barracks, harassed by caretakers, badly fed, used for the hardest work. The Polish Committee in Tashkent tried as much as it could to alleviate the plight of its compatriots, but it had an extremely difficult task, if only for political reasons. Meanwhile, new clusters of refugees and prisoners of war were passing through the concentration point. Some were transferred to European governorates, others took their place. Relations with the authorities are improving, the committee is working more and more energetically, feeding and teaching children, acting as an intermediary in finding work and so on. The Christmas Eve in 1917 organised by the Polish Society for the colony was moving.

Up to 1,000 people from all over Poland gathered there, from Hel and the Podkarpacie region, doctors and workers, colonels of the Russian army and privates from Poznan or Krakow. Revolutionary times came, discipline among the army began to unravel, captives broke free, then news of the expulsion of the enemy from Poland penetrated, the hardest moments of the Bolshevik upheaval began, executions, re-imprisonment and a persistent thought full of hope: return to the Fatherland's bosom.

It is difficult to summarise briefly all the moments that the Polish colony in Tashkent went through, to describe all the torments of exile under Bolshevik rule and the efforts to get out of this hell. In Tashkent at that time the leadership of Polish affairs rested in the hands of Mr Kazimierz Kaczmarek and Eng Fr Tymieniecki. Other activists did not return to the country: the late Emil Kociszewski was shot, the late Jerzy Wyganowski died. The following were active in Aschabad and Zakaspian country: the Rev. St. Zelazowski, Eng. Waclaw Bromirski.

The military organisation was formed by: chor. Wacław Wróblewski - murdered by the Bolsheviks, and Lt. Tad. Wyszomirski (today Maj. W. P.) and Lt. Tad. Wolski (today Cpl. W.P.) Here is a handful of news about Poles in Turkestan, extracted from the aforementioned work, which also contains a wealth of interesting details about this, so little known country. The book, decorated with many interesting illustrations, is undoubtedly not only interesting, but also constitutes an important and valuable document in the history of Polish emigration.