A szibériai hadifogság és Petőfi
Petőfi as a Siberian Prisoner of War?

Summary/Abstract: Occasionally, the question arises whether the Russian army that suppressed the 1848-49 Hungarian Revolution might have taken Hungarian prisoners of war with them, including Petőfi. Society, having experienced the suppressed history of Soviet Gulags, is receptive to these suggestions. According to the Russian-Austrian agreement of 10 June 1849, as supported by extensive research based on Austrian, Russian, and Polish archival sources and literature, the contracting parties reciprocally returned each other's subjects who had fallen into captivity. This is attested, for example, by the documents regarding the extradition of the former Imperial and Royal officer Stanisław Jan Szydlowski, who was the commander of the fortress in Braşov/Brassó. These documents are held in the Russian State Military Historical Archives in Moscow. Hundreds of subjects of the Russian czar participated on the side of the Hungarians in the War of Independence. These were the Poles who had fled to Hungary from the territories annexed to the Russian Empire following the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian state. If captured, the Austrians handed them over to the Russians, many of whom were subsequently sentenced to Siberian exile. During the Polish uprising of 1863-64, the Habsburg Empire participated with volunteers, and those who were captured were subsequently exiled to the interior of Russia or Siberia. The number of their subjects affected approaches 2,000. Among them were also Hungarians who were able to return home in the late 1860s and 1870s. Their hardships were regularly covered in the contemporary press. None of them knew anything about the exiled Hungarians from 1849 or their memory.

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