Sybirak

The Polish term sybirak (plural: sybiracy) is synonymous to the Russian counterpart sibiryak (a dweller of Siberia). It generally refers to all people resettled to Siberia, but more specifically it refers to Poles who have been imprisoned or exiled to Siberia and even to those sent to Arctic Russia and Kazakhstan in the 1940s.

History

Russian and Soviet authorities exiled many Poles to Siberia, starting with the 18th-century opponents of the Russian Empire's increasing influence in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth (most notably the members of the Bar Confederation of 1768-1772).

After Russian penal law changed in 1847, exile and penal labor (katorga) became common penalties for participants in national uprisings within the Russian Empire. This led to sending an increasing number of Poles to Siberia for katorga, they became known as Sybiraks. Some of them remained there, forming a Polish minority in Siberia. Most of them came from the participants and supporters of the November Uprising of 1830-1831 and of the January Uprising of 1863-1864, from the participants of the 1905-1907 unrest and from the hundreds of thousands of people deported in the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.