The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia, 1863-1880

Download or read book The Mass Deportation of Poles to Siberia, 1863-1880 written by Andrew A. Gentes and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-10-20 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concerns the mass deportation of Poles and others to Siberia following the failed 1863 Polish Insurrection. The imperial Russian government fell back upon using exile to punish the insurrectionists and to cleanse Russia’s Western Provinces of ethnic Poles. It convoyed some 20,000 inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland and the Western Provinces across the Urals to locations as far away as Iakutsk, and assigned them to penal labor or forced settlement. Yet the government’s lack of infrastructure and planning doomed this operation from the start, and the exiles found ways to resist their subjugation. Based upon archival documents from Siberia and the former Western Provinces, this book offers an unparalleled exploration of the mass deportation. Combining social history with an analysis of statecraft, it is a unique contribution to scholarship on the history of Poland and the Russian Empire.