Orszańskie impresje

• Authors: Stanisław Rakusa-Suszczewski

Title variants

EN

Impressions from Orsza

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

I have been able to find in Minsk some court documents concerning the story of my family since 1563. After Ivan the Terrible captured Polotsk, King of Poland Sigismund Augustus granted the surviving Poles, including Aleksy Rakusa and his wife Apolonia, some land near Orsza and Czausy. Roots put down in Suszcze on the River Basia bore fruit in the form of successive generations of my family. We were Roman Catholic Poles living on the border between Poland and the Grand Duchy of L ithuania, a region plagued by wars, raids and plunder. The family had a turbulent history. It is in these documents that we find names like Podbipięta and Kmicic, though we had our own daredevils as well. After the partitions military service in the tsar’s army was compulsory for the landed gentry. The military men in the Rakusa-Suszczewski family included a major general, co-creator of the weaponry of the imperial army; my grandfather, a lieutenant in the Russian fleet, but also a Decembrist clubbed to death. After the Revolution and loss of the family estate, part of the family escaped to Poland, and part remained in Russia. My grandfather and his two sons defended Poland in 1920 against the Bolsheviks. I was born in Warsaw and this is my place on Earth. Translated by Anna Kijak

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 251 - 258

Contributors

author

Stanisław Rakusa-Suszczewski