This book concerns the mass deportation of Poles and others to Siberia following the failed
1863 Polish Insurrection. The imperial Russian government fell back upon using exile to punish
the insurrectionists and to cleanse Russia's Western Provinces of ethnic Poles. It convoyed
some 20 000 inhabitants of the Kingdom of Poland and the Western Provinces across the Urals to
locations as far away as Iakutsk and assigned them to penal labor or forced settlement. Yet
the government's lack of infrastructure and planning doomed this operation from the start and
the exiles found ways to resist their subjugation. Based upon archival documents from Siberia
and the former Western Provinces this book offers an unparalleled exploration of the mass
deportation. Combining social history with an analysis of statecraft it is a unique
contribution to scholarship on the history of Poland and the Russian Empire.
