Page 100 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

integrated its borderlands formed a powerful and politically expedient myth. In reality, a diverse

range of organizations and personnel from across Poland scrambled for power and influence at the

moment when the post-imperial state was taking shape and when the precise nature of that state

remained unclear. In asserting that they were the natural and necessary representatives of a wider

mission to transform the people and places of the east, these men competed not simply against non-

Polish groups (like Jews and Russians), but also against fellow Poles whom they labeled as

“foreigners” in the borderlands. Indeed, rather than bringing Poles together, the dawn of independent

statehood led them to reinforce and reemphasize the borders of empire, recreating narratives that

relied on older assumptions about the existence of civilizational hierarchies between the partitions.

The question of who was foreign remained a point of contestation that was never fully resolved.

By thinking about foreignness as a construct, however, we must also remember that for a

large proportion of Volhynia’s population, it is unlikely that any of these self-declared Polish

civilizers represented a legitimate center that was simply reabsorbing the borderlands. However

powerful these historical narratives may have proved for some Poles, in the eyes of local people,

agents of the state were unlikely figures of continuity. Even after the kresy had been formally

incorporated into the Polish state, reports indicated that local people failed to “recognize” that “the

eastern borderlands will remain in Polish hands” and instead spread rumors that the “foreign” Polish

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occupation would soon be replaced by the rule of an independent Ukrainian state. Considering the

history of multiple occupations here, the locals had good reason to think that incoming Poles were

simply the latest in a long line of outsiders who disrupted everyday life—and would soon be gone

again. Nowhere was the disruption more apparent than in spaces near the newly established border

97 For examples of reports about local people’s suspicions that Polish rule was not permanent, see “Protokuł zjazdu
Instruktorów Rolnych Okręgu Wołyńskiego z dnia 23/V 1921 r.,” “Protokuł zebrania Instruktorów Wydziału
Rolnego Straży Kresowej w Lublinie 2 i 3-go marca 1921 r.,” “Protokuł zjazdu Instruktorów Rolnych Okręgu
Wołyńskiego z dnia 23/V 1921 r.” All documents can be found in AAN TSK 637.

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