Page 106 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

half of this territory and several former counties of Russian Volhynia being split between the two

emerging states (only around half of prewar Ostróg country became part of the Second Republic, for

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instance). Even after it had been delineated on a map, the border’s precise location on the ground
remained unclear. When a group of experts led by the politician Leon Wasilewski arrived in the area

to mark out the border during the summer of 1921, not only did they find that the maps provided by

the Russian authorities were incorrect, but they even “discovered” settlements that the imperial

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surveyors had failed to include. In many places, Polish officials marked the border simply with four-
meter-tall wooden border posts, since transportation difficulties did not allow for the initial erecting

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of anything more permanent. Often cutting through open fields, it became known as zielona

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granica—the green border.
The way in which the border was laid down certainly contributed toward its permeability, not

only as a line across which people might pass once (most threateningly in a westerly direction), but

also as a site of constant and multiple crossings, back-and-forth. When a representative of the British

Foreign Office visited Volhynia in the spring of 1921, he reported that people were moving across

the border from Bolshevik Russia into Poland with impunity. During a stop in Korzec, a town

situated in close proximity to the state’s eastern border, he was told “that the frontier is practically

unguarded and that frontier guards on both sides are stationed only in villages and towns,” a situation

that helped to explain why “large numbers of refugees from Soviet Russia cross the frontier

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unmolested with their carts, luggage, etc.” In particular, the mass return of people who had been

deported during the First World War and now found their way back to the province, either to settle or

on their way further west, caused overwhelming problems for Polish state officials who worried

8 Mielcarek, Podziały terytorialno-administracyjne, 27.
9 Leon Wasilewski, “Wschodnia Granica Polski,” Bellona 17, no. 1 (January-March 1925): 130.
10 Leon Wasilewski, “Sprawy techniczne w traktacie pokoju z Rosją i Ukrainą,” Roboty Publiczne: Organ
Ministerstwa Robót Publicznych (May 1921): 164.
11 “The Polish Marches,” Times (London), August 1, 1930, 15.
12 “Report on Visit to Volhinia [sic] and Eastern Galicia” (May 1921), NAL FO 417/10/191.

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