Travels from Dostoevsky’s Siberia. Encounters with Polish Literary Exiles

Travels from 
Dostoevsky’s 
Siberia
Encounters with Polish
Literary Exiles

Studies in Comparative Literature and Intellectual History
Series Editor
Galin Tihanov 
(Queen Mary, University of London)

BOSTON
2019
Travels from 
Dostoevsky’s 
Siberia
Encounters with Polish
Literary Exiles
ELIZABETH  A.  BLAKE

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941831
© 2019 Academic Studies Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN 978-1-64469-021-5 (hardcover) 
ISBN 978-1-64469-022-2 (paper)
ISBN 978-1-64469-023-9 (electronic) 
Cover design by Ivan Grave. 
Book design by Lapiz Publishing Services.
Published by Academic Studies Press in 2019.
1577 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA 02446
press@academicstudiespress.com
www.academicstudiespress.com 

To my mom, Eleanor, and my grandpa, Bill, for their 
love surpassing understanding

We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the 
nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the 
propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must 
be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and 
denounced.
—Frederick Douglass
We must publicly condemn the very idea of certain peoples’ slaughter of 
others! Being silent about vice—driving it into your core only so that it 
does not protrude outward—we are implanting it, and it will rise up still а 
thousand fold in the future. 
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
ix
A Note on the Text
xi
Introduction
1
27
29
40
129
131
137
148
155
157
165
1. A Siberian Memoir about the Dead House
A Few Words on Józef Bogusławski
A Siberian Memoir of Józef Bogusławski
2. Omsk Affairs
An Introduction to Rufin Piotrowski
“Arrival in Omsk” from Memoirs from a Stay in Siberia
“The Martyrdom of the Prior Sierocinski”
3. Beyond Omsk
Notes on the Lives of Bronisław Zaleski and Edward Żeligowski 
“Polish Exiles in Orenburg”
Correspondence about the Petrashevsky Affair
202
Index
208

Acknowledgments
As is frequently the case with my larger writing projects, this book is the 
result of a collaborative effort put forth over several years, so I wish to 
share my appreciation for the research support extended to me by the 
international academic community. It was many years ago that Caryl 
Emerson saw the value of Józef Bogusławski’s remembrances and thought 
that I should translate them, but it was Robert L. Jackson who pointed out 
to me that the manuscript lay in Jagiellonian University’s library. Having 
received a professional development leave from the Department of 
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures under the direction of Annie Smart 
at Saint Louis University, I conducted research at Jagiellonian University, 
the Czartoryski Museum, and the National Museum in Krakow, with 
the support of Krzysztof Frysztacki and in consultation with Henryk 
Glębocki and Janusz Pezda. A Fulbright-Hays U. S. Department of 
Education grant and a Mellon grant from Saint Louis University’s College 
of Arts and Sciences supported research in Russia at the manuscript 
division of the Russian National Library and at the Dostoevsky Museum 
in St. Petersburg, where consultations with the Deputy Director, Boris 
Tikhomirov, advanced my research on Siberia. Support from American 
Councils in the form of an Advanced Research Fellowship for Russia and 
Poland, funded by the U. S. Department of State (Title VIII) allowed me 
to conduct further archival research and to consult with a Dostoevsky 
scholar specializing in his Siberian period, Viktor Vainerman. 
Summer housing grants at the Summer Research Laboratory on Russia, 
Eastern Europe, and Eurasia at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
allowed me to obtain background research on Dostoevsky’s Siberia and 
Polish resources with the aid of Slavic Reference librarians Joseph Lenkart 
and Jan Adamczyk, with whom I have consulted for many years on translation issues, locating resources, and obtaining access to materials. This 

Acknowledgments
x
project grew out of research undertaken in connection with presentations 
at Washington University in St. Louis, at the invitation of Nicole Svobodny 
and Anika Walke, as part of the Eurasian Studies Divan and the workshop 
“On the Move: Migration and Mobility in East and Central Europe and 
Eurasia.” The Center for Intercultural Studies at Saint Louis University 
under the leadership of Michał Rozbicki has supported the dissemination 
of this research in lectures and publications. I also greatly appreciate the 
funding for research and the subvention offered by Dean Chris Duncan 
and Associate Dean Donna LaVoie of the College of Arts and Sciences at 
Saint Louis University as well as the University’s provost leave granted by 
Provost Nancy Brickhouse. The following have also helped connect me with 
valuable resources in the field: Ivan Esaulov, Timothy O’Connor, Valentina 
Gavrilova, Jarosław Moklak, and Jacek Lubecki. In addition, I would like to 
thank the readers of my manuscript with Academic Studies Press as well 
as the editors who worked with me, since their comments led to improvements in the initial submission.
As always, I wish to express my great appreciation for my loving husband Ruben, who has supported me personally and professionally, through 
separations for research trips and many bends in the road for almost thirty 
years. Finally, I must extend a big thank you to my amazingly strong, resilient, and intelligent daughter Isabella for her forbearance during the long 
periods of traveling, writing, and translating as well as to her brother, my 
sweet Raphael, whose sense of joy, humor, and generosity are completely 
incommensurate with the suffering he has borne in his short life. I dedicate 
this book to two family members whose positive influence I appreciated too 
late—my mother Eleanor J. Blake and my grandfather William H. Blake—
whom I have in some sense lost but who remain with me in my work, partly 
because of their loving attention to my education.