„Panny polskiego pochodzenia” — siostry Berinda-Czajkowskie i ich dziedzictwo epistolarno-pamiętnikarskie

• Authors: Natalia Matchanowa

Title variants

EN

“Young ladies of Polish origin” — the Berinda-Czajkowski sisters and their legacy of letters and memoirs

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

Scholars studying the Polish community in Siberia in the 19th century usually focus on the fate of political exiles, paying little attention to those Poles who worked there voluntarily. The author of the present study presents the story of one family: a Polish civil servant, Sebastian Józefowicz Berinda-Czajkowski, who came to Siberia and married a local girl, Tatiana Florentevna Bulatova. Their four daughters, known as “young ladies of Polish origin”, were closely linked to the revolutionary movement, even though they were not descendants of political exiles. Their relatives included P.A. Kropotkin, A.A. Slepcov, N.N. Muraviov-Amurski and other prominent Russian social and state activists. The girls were brought up under a strong influence of their mother, a well-read, courageous woman, who was friendly towards the Polish exiles she met through her Polish husband. Her four daughters, too, had a good education, which enabled them not only to earn their living but also to establish various and numerous relations. Thanks to this we now have at our disposal as many as 1500 letters exchanged between family members and friends; there are also memoirs, diaries and autobiographies. This whole “literary legacy” is an invaluable source of information about the everyday life of Polish families in Siberia as well as the specific relations between Polish officials and the state administration. Their value to scholars varies: some of them include reliable and detailed descriptions of real situations, others have features typical of fiction, and there are also those that are records of reminiscences of third parties or are based on second-hand stories. However, all of them paint a broad and quite detailed picture of the situation of Poles in Siberia. The present article also tells us about the misfortunes of the young Polish intellectuals after the October Revolution: these well-educated, modern women could not find a place for themselves in the new reality, and the difficult living conditions were just one of the challenges they had to face. Translated by Anna Kijak

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Wrocławskie Studia Wschodnie
• Year: 2012
• Volume: 16
• Pages: 219 - 232

Contributors

author

Natalia Matchanowa

• Nowosybirsk (Rosja)