Russian Warsaw. We've only just begun to explore the physical manifestations of Russian influence on the Polish cityscape. Everyone knows about Stalin's gift to the Poles -- the huge "wedding cake" Palace of Culture that sits right in the middle of the city. But there's more.
In 1830, the Poles were ready to throw off the tsarist yoke in Warsaw once and for all. The revolt was started by local Polish army cadets and carried out in November. Fighting continued through October of 1831, but in the end the Poles were vanquished.
And reprisals rained down on those rebellious Poles. The tsarist government, not willing to give up this European outpost of empire, lay the foundations for a great citadel, intending to house troops in the city to keep a better handle on the population and to have somewhere to house the many intransigent Poles who would never really accept Russian rule (and who would continue to rise up in coming years). The cornerstone was set in place by Ivan Pashkevich, military successor to the famed General Alexei Ermolov, bloody conqueror of the Caucasus who himself built the original fortress at Grozny. Pashkevich and his Russian forces had put down the revolt, and he won the prize.
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| Main entrance to the Citadel, built 1835 |
Thus the Russians made their first real architectural mark on the former Polish capital.
The Citadel occupies an enormous territory (officially 36 hectares or almost 90 acres) in the north portion of the city overlooking the Vistula River. Its prison held over 40,000 Polish political prisoners over the course of the final period of Russian rule. Several hundred of them were executed on so-called Execution Hill after walking themselves along the path of the condemned. Famous prisoners included romantic dramatist Apollo Korzeniowski (better known as the father of Joseph Conrad), founder of the Cheka Felix Dzerzhinsky, and revolutionary Rosa Luxembourg.
No wonder Russians felt the need to keep their eyes trained and guns ready in Warsaw. Some of those prisoners were transported to Siberia in the famed
kibitka, one of which is now on display on the grounds of the Citadel:
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| Kibitka |
Others were executed outside the walls on the hill overlooking the Vistula, and today that hill is lined with crosses to commemorate the deaths of patriotic Polish martyrs. Those crosses are still tended today, decorated with the glass memorial lamps one sees in Polish graveyards and churches. I've heard them described as "votive lights" -- halfway between candles and oil lamps, their colored glass brightens up a grave on the grayest day and makes visitors feel that the site is cared for.
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| Commemorating Fallen Martyrs |
It may be that the lights remain from All Saints Day on November 1, but regardless, they gave a homey feeling to the otherwise stark hillside.
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| The Execution Walk |
Those votive lights were the only thing that made my daughter and me think that anyone had been there in years. The day we visited the Citadel was a cold, raw Saturday in April, when everyone all over Poland was tired of the snow and wondering if the winter of 2012-13 would ever end. We climbed the hill from the Vistula and wound our way along the Execution Walk (going backward, which seemed less grim than the other direction...). We entered the Citadel through a gate in the brick wall and found ... no one. Although in theory the museum was open until 4, in fact there was no one in sight -- no people, no cars, not even a guard dog. Since the museum grounds were set up to evoke tsarist times, I couldn't help peering into every Nicholas I-era sentry box, but those were empty too (thank god, I suppose!).
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| A Sentry Box in the Snow |
We had the place utterly to ourselves, which in a way was enchanting. The trees date from the 1870s; the buildings are gray and grim and also date from the mid-nineteenth century, and the central territory of the Citadel looks completely abandoned: surrounded with barbed wire, the hillocks seem like they might be training grounds of some sort (Wikipedia tells us that the site belongs to the Polish army), but I'm not sure how much training they've seen of late.
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| Military Area: Keep Out (in four languages!) |
Why does this site seem so abandoned? The problem, perhaps, is that they are too many Polish uprisings to worry about, and too many martyrs. Our walk preceded only by a few days the enormous rallies near the Presidential Palace on Krakowskie Przedmestie (next to the building where I work) on April 10. The Russian domination from the 1830s isn't as stark a memory as the more recent tragedy of the plane crash near Smolensk three years ago that killed almost 100 people, including the Polish president. The demonstrators are quite certain that the Russians were to blame for that crash, and indeed that in its wake Putin installed a puppet government in Poland and is pulling the strings from afar.
MIght that happen in today's world? The Russian army isn't what it used to be, and marching on Warsaw the way Pashkevich's troops did might not be as effective now as it was almost two hundred years ago. But still -- with the commemorations of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising approaching on April 19, and the paranoia of current Polish politics focused on Tusk as "Putin's mongrel" (another great piece of graffiti near our home that I will need to go document), the violations of Nicholas I's regime have receded.
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| The Citadel from the walking park to its north |
It seems that some 15,000 people were displaced when the Citadel was built -- and it remains an enormous piece of property in an increasingly crowded city. History is history, and this fortress -- supposedly completed as a gift for Alexander II's 18th birthday -- has survived several occupying regimes, including the Nazis, who left it only partially damaged. But with so many other Polish martyrs preoccupying those who want to mourn, perhaps this site will remain forgotten until it falls to pieces? If so, it will be claimed by pigeons and other wildlife -- at which point some prime real estate will open up in the northern part of the city.
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| Pigeons roosting in the entryway to the Citadel cooed so loudly it seemed there might be someone nearby after all. |
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