Following the Partitions of Poland, Russia deported many Poles, political prisoners, members of the secret Polish resistance and insurgents, as well as ordinary criminals, to katorga in Siberia, including Buryatia.

[12] Some Poles came to Buryatia voluntarily, including physician Julian Talko-Hryncewicz [pl], who settled in Kyakhta and also conducted ethnographic and archeological work in the region.

[15] Sizeable Polish communities were founded in Mysovsk, Tankhoi and Vydrino along the Trans-Siberian Railway.

[20] The Polish exiles, insurgents of the Baikal Insurrection of 1866, were commemorated with a memorial in Rechka Mishikha in 2000, which was destroyed in 2023.

The Museum of History of Buryatia in Ulan-Ude contains works of Polish painter and exile to Siberia Leopold Niemirowski.