Welcome to the second edition of Memories of Siberian Deportees. A Collection of Source Texts, Part Two.
Originally published 16 years ago in 2010 by the Bystrzyca Kłodzka Branch of the Association of Siberian Deportees, it met with considerable interest. Complimentary copies were distributed to nearly 300 libraries in Poland and abroad. The firsthand accounts of survivors of the tragic events of the 20 th century contained in the first edition are frequently cited in scholarly literature and serve as the basis for student projects. Importantly, the publication also encouraged many more deportees to share their memoirs, documents, and photographs, and to consent to interviews for publication.
The funds gathered with considerable effort enabled the publication of 1,000 copies, a print run that has since been exhausted. At the same time, recent technological advances created new possibilities for dissemination, and so in 2025, we released the first part as a free e‑book. It has been downloaded largely outside Poland. The blog of the Bystrzyca Association for the Memory of Siberia and the Victims of Repression attracts readers worldwide, with 80 per cent of visits originating abroad. These circumstances led to the decision to publish all subsequent editions in electronic form, globally and freely accessible.
This edition appears on the seventieth birthday of Yuri Dmitriev, a historian from Petrozavodsk who researches Stalinist repression in Karelia. He was sentenced, on the basis of fabricated evidence, to fifteen years in a high‑security penal colony. A similar fate befell Aleksandr Gabyshev, a shaman from Yakutia who openly opposed Kremlin dictatorship and was subjected to imprisonment and compulsory psychiatric treatment, echoing Soviet‑era practices. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, sentences for even minimal expressions of opposition against the war or the Russian dictatorship have become commonplace. The Memorial Society estimates the number of political prisoners at approximately 1,400
(as of January 2026).
In the face of ongoing war (in Ukraine) and rising aggression and intolerance around the world, a pessimistic question arises: have all our efforts to commemorate the war victims and uphold human rights and tolerance been in vain?
Despite imprisonment and repeated punishment by solitary confinement, Yuri Dmitriev remains an optimist and wants us to know it. I quote the closing words of a letter from February 2024: “I am absolutely certain that after February, March will come and then Spring will follow. This year it will be a real one. There will be the breaking of the ice, storms, and downpours that will wash away all the accumulated debris.”
Bystrzyca Kłodzka, February 2026
Janusz Kobryń
Translation: Halina Kobryń
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