Kotkovsky, Vladislav

He worked as an official of the Warsaw Customs.

Active participant in the preparation of the Polish uprising of 1863. He was part of the "popular gendarmerie of rebels", created to protect the conspiratorial leadership of the national uprising.

November 8, 1862 carried out a successful terrorist action to eliminate Pavel Felkner, head of the secret department of the office of the governor. After the uprising was suppressed, he was arrested, convicted by the tsarist authorities and sent to Kharkov to serve as a soldier in the Russian army.

In 1865, his involvement in the murder of a high Russian official was established, and V. Kotkovsky was imprisoned in the Warsaw Alexander Citadel . By a second trial, he was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor in remote areas of the Russian Empire in Transbaikalia .

In the spring of 1866 V. Kotkovsky found himself in the vicinity of Irkutsk, where he made contact with the Poles conspirators, in particular with Gustav Sharamovich . At this time, Kotkovsky was transferred to a group of 146 Poles from the so-called privileged convicts (consisting of representatives of noble families) and became deputy group leader Jacob Reiner .

In the summer of 1866, part of the Polish convicts working on the construction of the Circum-Baikal Highway plotted and decided to attack the convoy, disarm it and move on to Transbaikalia, with the goal of freeing other Polish exiles, and then flee through Mongolia to China in the hope of finding English ships, to return to Europe through America.

The uprising was led by 48-year-old Narciz Tselinsky , a former captain of the Russian army (previously, under Nicholas I , exiled to the Caucasus), and 30-year-old pianist Gustav Sharamovich. Their assistants were Vladislav Kotkovsky and Jacob Reiner .

On the evening of June 24, 1866, one of the Kultuk parties (48 Poles) attacked their convoys, took their weapons from them, and, seizing the horses, went further along the highway to the Amurskaya post station, where she also disarmed the soldier, ruined the telegraph message from Irkutsk, and with those who joined her people moved on.

During the uprising, V. Kotkovsky commanded a platoon of shooters of the “Siberian Legion of Free Poles” (as the rebels called themselves). On the night of June 27, rebels led by Reiner and Kotkovsky arrived at Likhanovskaya station. The soldiers guarding the station barricaded themselves in the station house and shot back through the windows. Major Rick's detachment (80 men), who crossed the Baikal by boat, came to their rescue. The rebels set fire to the station building and retreated. The soldiers chased the "Siberian Legion of Free Poles" to the Bystroy River, where on June 28 at the bridge near the station. Mishikh there was a decisive battle in which the Poles were defeated, and their individual groups dispersed and wandered around the taiga for three weeks, trying to break through to the Chinese border. Major forces were sent against them, who entered into combat clashes with them ( July 9 in the Temnik river valley, then July 14 in the Urbanuy tract and finally on July 25 again in the Temnik river valley); in the last skirmish, the remnants of the Poles, having shot all the ammunition, surrendered. Kotkovsky was captured by the Cossacks on August 9, 1866.

Arrest and Link

After the suppression of the rebellion, along with 680 other rebels, he was arrested and taken to Irkutsk, where a judicial investigation began on August 16, 1866.

The military trial of the rebels took place in Irkutsk from October 29 to November 9 . In total, 683 people appeared before the court, of which 418 were found guilty. 326 people were ultimately punished: 7 "instigators" were sentenced to death; 197 participants were sentenced to indefinite penal servitude, and the term of penal servitude was increased by 122 rebels. Governor-General of Eastern Siberia M. S. Korsakov approved only 4 of seven death sentences: Tselinsky and Sharamovich as leaders of the uprising, and Reiner and Kotkovsky as “leaders of the gangs” who burned Likhanovskaya. They were shot on November 15 (27), 1866 in Irkutsk ^[1] . In Irkutsk, in the suburb of Ushakovka, at the Yakutskaya fork at the foot of the mountains near the river. Hangars.

According to one version, Korsakov asked Alexander II for permission to pardon those sentenced to death; the tsar gave such permission, but it was late: it came by mail a month after the execution of the first four people sentenced ^[2] .

• Zofia Strzyżewska; Zesłańcy Powstania Styczniowego z Królestwa Polskiego. Wykaz nazwisk z akt w zasobie Archiwum Głównego Akt Dawnych; Wyd. NDAP, Warszawa 2001.
• Władysław Pobóg-Malinowski; Najnowsza historia polityczna Polski, Tom pierwszy 1864-1914, oficyna wydawnicza Graf, Gdańsk 1991