| Author | Zbigniew Opacki (Gdańsk) |
|---|---|
| Title | A Russian province in the light of Henryk Kamieński’s letters to his sister Laura |
| Keywords | Russian province in the first half of the 19th century, living conditions of a wealthy Polish exile in a place of forced settlement, pictures from the life of the social elite. Wiatki in the 1840s. |
| Pages | 107–127 |
| Full text | |
| Volume | 20 |
Henryk Kamieński, participant in the November Uprising and the interstate conspira-cy, was sent to the provincial town of Wiatki, by order of the administrative governor of the Polish Kingdom, Ivan Paskevich. He stayed in it from September 1846 to the end of April 1850, less than four years. The trip to exile and stay in the province center, on the eastern part of the European part of Russia, allowed him to make a series of observa-tions referring to the residents’ living standards, social strata, affluence, customs, norms of behavior in social life and the intensity of cultural life. Observations and elevated ex-perience from immersing in the social and cultural life of the city influenced the change of his ideas about Russia and its society, which are derived from stereotypes functioning in Polish society.