Relacje międzyludzkie w świecie zesłania. Analiza antropologiczna
Interpersonal Relations in the world of exiles: an anthropological analysis

Summary/Abstract: In the years 2002-2005 I pursued a research project with main aim to collect autobiographical narratives from people sentenced during the period 1940-1941 to detention in various parts of the USSR. These people belong to a historical community of many thousand of Polish exiles to the East and are referred to, in accordance with a national linguistic and cultural tradition, as Siberian deportees. I conducted my research in the area of Łódź and its immediate vicinity. The article aims to elaborate one of the most important issues in the stories collected, namely the problem of interpersonal relations in the world of exiles; their form, character, their variable dynamics and their influence on my interviewees’ deportation biographies. Having chosen an anthropological point of view, I am not interested in objective facts and events from the past recorded in autobiographical narratives of Siberian deportees but in their own, deeply subjective views and ideas from their lives in exile. From the studies carried out it has become clear that interpersonal relations were vital for survival in the period of exile. At the same time, family relationships were the most important, closely followed by those between friends, acquaintances and neighbours. These relations did not restrict themselves only to people coming from the resettled community circle but often included also people of diffrent nationalities or religions, met in the “inhuman land.”

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