uprising. Russification methods After the failure of the Uprising, the Russian authorities began to implement a severe policy of Russification, supplanting things which were not Russian. Elderly people were asked to record their recollections of that time, but as the majority were illiterate, younger literate townspeople often had to transcribe oral recollections of their elders. The war interrupted these efforts. The persecution of the Uniates was dramatic. An elderly peasant from Zurawnica told of a frightful scene, when one of his neighbors, a Uniate, agreed to accept the Russian Orthodox faith. The protests of his wife had no effect. Everything was arranged, all the formalities settled, but when the peasant was about to begin the communion ceremony, his wife went mad from mental confusion, and attacked the priest. This had a fearful effect on her husband, who refused to complete the ceremony. Being much taken by these tales, effort was made to assemble details about the Uniates in Szczebrzeszyn. A notice from the year 1843 announces that the parish of the Uniates was very poor, because it had 'a small number of adherents to the Szczebrzeszyn church (tserkva).' In December 1877, the priest, Aleksander Górski—who, it appears, did not belong to the resistance fighters—signed his letter as the 'Rector of the Szczebrzeszyn Orthodox Parish.' It was at that time that the Uniates and the Greek Catholic Church were liquidated, and was transformed into a Russian Orthodox church. Later on, the priest Timofei Tracz came as Rector, and a sorrowful era was initiated for the Polish Catholics, particularly the Uniates. Although the Rector himself was once a Uniate priest, he voluntarily converted to the Russian Orthodox church and became an ideological Russifier and disseminator of his new faith. He led an ascetic existence, and his activities had a fanatical character. Over time, he became extremely influential as he became known to the highest institutional authorities. Everyone in the Zamość region feared him. He met with little resistance in his efforts to spread the Russian Orthodox faith, and he used any method necessary: promises, chicanery, threats, and violence. Documents in the Zwierzyniec archives confirm that there never were any Russian Orthodox faithful residing year-round in Szczebrzeszyn, with the exception of officials, who would sometime spend time here. Apart from the Russian Orthodox church, which had been transformed, as previously mentioned, from a Greek-Catholic church, the Catholic Church near the hospital was remade