Jak zginął Tadeusz Miciński? O różnych okolicznościach i wersjach śmierci poety

Abstract

The paper contains an overview of the most significant pieces of information concerning the circumstances of Tadeusz Miciński’s death that appeared both in the interwar period and more recently. On the basis of private letters of the period, the author describes the estate of Vydranka, owned by Maria Baranowska-Dohrn. The place had a special significance to Miciński and was the destination of his last journey. In 1920, the press reported that Miciński had been arrested by the Bolsheviks and that he was kept in a concentration camp near Moscow. Rumours were also being spread that the poet had agreed to collaborate with Lenin and was writing a history of the Bolshevik revolution. At the same time, more and more reports were coming that he had been brutally murdered. Writers gathered around the Zdrój [The Spring] magazine and other organised groups of citizens made an appeal to the Polish government to obtain, via diplomatic channels, information about Miciński’s fate and bring his body back to Poland for burial. However, no official report on the circumstances of his death has ever been issued – only the poet’s manuscripts were returned from Moscow. On the basis of reports coming from Poles who at that time stayed in Russia, two prevailing (and partly contradictory) versions of his death emerged. One says that Miciński was killed by bolshevized peasants in the vicinity of the town of Cherykaw, and that this is where he was buried. According to the other version, Miciński was killed by the Bolsheviks in the town of Chachersk, some eighty kilometres from Cherykaw, and that he was buried in the village of Malyia Malynichy near Chachersk. On the basis of reports discussed in the paper, the author concludes that it is very unlikely that the poet was indeed buried in the village of Malyia Malynichy near Chachersk, as is currently assumed; probable place by Maria Baranowska-Dohrn to Paul Claudel, in which she described the estate of Vydranka and her relations with Miciński. The circumstances of her own death have never been established, but it is known that she died in April 1918. This fact provides support to the supposition that Miciński died in April or May 1918.