Kazan in Polish Historical Consciousness: Prisoners and Orientalists
50th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Kazan 2007
The presentation of this vast topic cannot be on this place exhaustive and it will be confined to three points: political contacts with the Kazan Khanate, role of Kazan in the national martyrology of the Polish deportees, and contacts with the Kazan University in the domain of Oriental studies.
The existence of a powerful fortress and city erected by the Tsar on the Volga river against the Tatars was deep-rooted in the minds of the Poles starting from the second half of the sixteenth century whereas political and military problems of the Tatar Khanate had their place of importance still earlier in the policy of the Polish, then Polish-Lithuanian State. The Polish kings keenly observed in this context the activity of Moscovite princes and Tsars, to mention Ivan III, Vasiliev III and Ivan IV, aiming at the creation of their poweful empire. Many historical reasons caused that throughout several ages Kazan was widely known in Poland not only as a strong fortress and port, but also as a great handicraft and commercial centre, an imposant bazaar between Asia and Europe.
At the same time, starting approximately from the 18th century, Kazan gained among the Poles an additional, this time mournful, fame of a cruel Tsarist prison for Polish patriots. It is general knowledge that the Russian prison Kazanska peresil’naja tiur’ma (the buildings of which have existed up to the present day) was during several ages a place of punishment for Polish prisoners of the Tsars’ despotism and a halting place where political exiles were selected and deported to other places situated as a rule far away in Siberia. It is interesting to know that notwithstanding all difficulties and atrocities manacing the fugitives, many prisoners of war and deportees were persuaded that the escape from Kazan was possible and took a decision of breaking jail. Owing to a detailed monography, lately published by Wiktoria Śliwowska, we are able to learn the circumstances of those escapes and names of the Polish runaways from Kazan. The first of them was famous Maurycy Beniowski who in 1769 succeeded in escaping from the Kazan prison.
Sometimes the deportees themselves were allowed to choose the place of their future settlement. That was just the case of a group of Polish students who in the twenties of the 19th century desired to live and study in Kazan. The question is of a group of students of the Vilnius University who were all close friends of Adam Mickiewicz. They were arrested, interrogated by a very strict commission under the leadership of Nikolaj Nikolaevič Novosiltsov and sentenced. Some of them asked the permission to settle and study Oriental languages in Kazan. They were: Józef Kowalewski (1801–1878), Felix Kółakowski (1799–1831) and Jan Nepomucen Wiernikowski (1800–1877). They were remarkable figures in the history of Polish Oriental Studies and, at the same time, merited scholars at the Kazan University. Worldly known is Józef Kowalewski, professor of Mongol and Tibetan studies who worked for many decades in Kazan ahd only at the end of his life returned to Poland and lectured in Warsaw.
Władysław Kotwicz published, in 1948, several letters of Józef Kowalewski dating back to the beginning of his sejourn in Kazan. Written in Polish to his best colleages and friends with much sincerity and a dose of humour, they contain keen observations and first impressions of young Poles confronted with nice, imposant but also exotic and strange city. It has been known that the beginnings of the newly-founded Kazan University in 1804 (but actually opened in 1814) were difficult. Just in the letters in question we find affirmation of those difficulties, mainly concerning the shortage of indispensable books.
You will find in the paper an English translation of three letters in question.