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toward the border, coming to a halt on the bridge that divided Zinki from the Polish village of

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Chodaki. While an interwar map (Figure 3.1) represented the border with a line of thick black bars

that cut across the meandering, marshy river, in reality there was little separating the neighboring

settlements, which had, until very recently, been part of the same state. Now, Polish state

representatives perceived the voices from Zinki to be ideologically destabilizing. As part of the

commemorations, Soviet representatives made speeches that criticized the Polish state and accused it

of exclusively serving the interests of the bourgeoisie, the landowners, and the police. On the Polish

side of the border, local people came out to see what was going on.

What did the police make of such behavior? The reports suggest that they interpreted the

movement of people toward the border as indicative of an almost childlike sense of peasant curiosity,

rather than any organized attempt to challenge the state on ideological or political grounds. The

latter’s reports stated that peasants who “came out of their houses in order to see the Soviet

celebrations” were “naturally lured by the sound of the music,” rather than by any political sympathy

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toward the Soviet cause. Attempts to dissuade peasants from viewing the Soviet commemorations
in order to shield them from corrupting ideological influences were also noted in reports made by

other police units. Just as policemen prevented the villagers of Chodaki from gathering at the border

to further witness events on the other side, that same day their counterparts in Ostróg county

intervened in a similar situation, stopping peasants from going to the border to witness a funeral

procession in which a military platoon, a civilian orchestra, and a small number of Soviet civilians

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participated.

60 “Sprawozdanie miesięczne z ruchu zawodowego, społecznego i politycznego na terenie województwa
wołyńskiego za miesiąc luty 1924r.,” AAN UWW 4/34.
61 Ibid., 34.
Ibid., 35.
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