The article sheds new light on the political activity of Apollo Korzeniowski (1820–1869), the father of the writer Joseph Conrad, one of the main organizers of independence movement in the times of Polish January Insurrection, a prisoner of the Warsaw Citadel and an exile to Vologda, as well as on a political significance of his memorial Poland and Muscovy, which characterises Russia (Hosudarstwo) as a menacing despot and dangerous for Poland and European civilisation, and in which memory threads contain new or often misinterpreted pieces of information, inter alia about the attitude of Poles in the Ukraine during the Crimean War.