WACLAW SIEROSZEWSKI’S SCIENTIFIC AND LITERARY ACTIVITIES IN THE SIBERIAN EXILE AND ITS CONDITIONS

Abstract

The beginnings of the scientific and literary activity of an ethnographer and writer, Waclaw Sieroszewski (1858–1945), which are the subject of the article, are closely related to his exile in Siberia in the 1880s and early 1890s. The image of Siberia dominated in the Polish literature in the 19th century as a land of suffering and a place of exile for thousands of Poles. Sieroszewski wanted to show his compatriots a different, unknown face of this land, especially its eastern part – Yakutia. This prompted him – apart from existential and emotional conditions (the sense of loneliness, the doubt in the meaning of life) and practical ones related to the attempts to escape from the exile – to successively get to know the Yakuts, their geographical, natural and socio-cultural living environment. Yakutia and the Yakuts became the subject of his scientifically reliable, extremely suggestive and artistic and at the same time not marked by sentimentality or pathos interdisciplinary studies. They resulted in literary works, scientific articles published in Russian magazines and a comprehensive, one-of-a-kind monograph on the Yakut community. The appearance of the Yakuts in 1896 was a scientific event of world importance. The great scientific value and importance of the publication was evidenced, among others, by the fact that the author was awarded the gold medal of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society and after some efforts he was allowed to return from exile to his homeland.