"Spring and autumn are short here" is a phrase from the memoirs of a participant in the Polish liberation uprising of 1863, exiled to the Siberian village of Tunka (Tunkinskaya Valley, now Buryatia). The book tells about the tragic history of Catholic priests who were exiled by the tsarist regime to Eastern Siberia for participating in the uprising, and after 1866 they were gathered in this village, where they lived under the supervision of a Cossack regiment. In total, there were 156 people there: some died in Tunka and Irkutsk, about 50 returned to Poland, the rest settled in the European part of Russia. The book tells about their difficult life in Tunka and their future destinies.