Pojęcie ‘Syberii’ w narracjach dziewiętnastowiecznych polskich zesłańców

This paper aims to investigate, on the one hand, how the concept of 19th‑century Siberia was constructed by three Polish political prisoners in their private documents. On the other hand, the significance of the “Siberian triangle” (consisting of essential ideas of “Polishness”, “Russianness”, and “Easternness”), in the construction of Polish exiles' identity. Siberia never existed, or did it? Apart from the vast territories named Siberia, there was also the abstract category of Siberia, consisting of parameters and charts, plans and maps, sustaining the development projects, and images, stories, and texts, in which usually imagined Siberia went beyond the geographical Siberia. Taking this into account, in this paper, I would like to look at the three‑dimensional construction of Siberia. Namely: an imperial attitude, defending its political and economic prerogatives; the interests of the indigenous peoples who gradually had been losing their rights to the pastures and whose voice was the least heard among others; as well as the view of Polish exiles, sent to the eastern territories of the Russian Empire against their will. To paraphrase Edward Said, we can state that the strategies of the conquest of Siberia directly impacted its perceptions, narrative constructions, and later reconstructions of the 19th‑century Siberian realities. Three case studies will serve me as illustrative material: Adolf Januszkiewicz, Bronisław Zaleski, and Seweryn Gross.