Tbilisi i jego mieszkańcy w połowie XIX wieku na podstawie relacji polskich zesłańców

Abstract

The authors of the memoirs about Tbilisi are Polish citizens exiled to the Russian army (specifically to the Caucasus Corps) as punishment for participating in the November Uprising and the illegal political organizations that it spawned. The accounts of Kazimierz Łapczyński, Mateusz Gralewski, Michał Butowt-Andrzejkowicz, Jan Załęski and several others refer to their stay in the city of Tbilisi in the 1840s and 1850s, when it was called Tiflis and was, like Georgia, under Russian rule. During the reign of Prince Mikhail Vorontsov, Tiflis expanded and became partly Europeanized (schools, libraries, theaters, new streets, squares, and bridges). However, Polish exiles would dismiss those achievements as Russian influence. Instead, they marveled at the city’s Asian district gathering people of different nationalities (including Georgians, Armenians, and Persians), and narrow, winding, unpaved alleyways teeming with shops, stalls, crowds, and noise, seeing in them the place where Georgian tradition was preserved. They contrasted it with the European part of Tiflis, elegantly built up and inhabited by the rich, which for them was a reflection of snobbery and a threat to Georgian culture. In their accounts, the Georgians themselves are idealized, always praised, and effectively described in terms of their good (honesty, hospitality) and bad qualities (laziness, idleness, extravagance, drunkenness). The Georgians’ customs and numerous holidays are effectively detailed. Gralewski wrote about the city’s Russifi cation, to which the wealthy Georgians were particularly vulnerable. Poles’ friendly attitude towards the Georgians resulted from the two nations sharing a similar history (both were, at that time, under Russian rule). However, the descriptions of Tiflis and its residents lack any romanticized flair for orientalism. The city and its people are shown „from the inside,” in their everyday life because the Polish exiles got to know them well – not as tourists, but as neighbors.