Page 120 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

[INSERT FIGURE 3.1]

Figure 3.1: The Polish-Soviet Border at Zinki and Chodaki. Source: Excerpt from Mapa Taktyczna
Polski 1:100 000 (Wojskowy Instytut Geograficzny, 1927). Accessed at: mapywig.org (from the
collections at the Jagiellonian University Digital Library).

While Polish policemen at the border could, in some cases, prevent peasants from watching

and listening to Soviet celebrations, they found it more difficult to eliminate rumors that spread

across the border via personal and familial connections. In the early 1920s, as people crossed the

sporadically guarded border from Poland to the Soviet Union and back again in order to trade in

towns on the Soviet side or see members of their families, local authorities worried about the precise

content of their conversations and the destabilizing effects that rumors would have on Polish state

63
authority. “In local society, there have recently been in circulation many versions of news from

64
across the eastern border,” the Volhynian state police reported with alarm at the beginning of 1924.
Many of these rumors involved the idea that a war would shortly break out. According to reports

made by the Równe county state police in January 1924, new arrivals from the Soviet Union who

were detained by the Polish police “talked about the mass arrests of Poles by the Soviet authorities

and their expulsion into the depths of the Russian interior, allegedly with the aim of holding hostages

65
in case of a war with Poland.” By March of that same year, rumors were also circulating about the

movement of Red Army troops toward the borders of Poland and Romania, implying again that war

66
was imminent. In the eyes of the state police, the danger of rumors lay in the fact that backward and
ignorant local people easily succumbed to agitation, rather than in any sophisticated appreciation

among the peasantry for the political ideology of Marxism. This ignorance, however, was itself

63 “Sukcesy Korpusu Ochrony Pogranicza,” Przegląd Wołyński, December 17, 1924, 4.
64 “Sprawozdanie miesięczne z ruchu zawodowego i społeczno-politycznego na terenie Województwa Wołyńskiego
za m. styczeń 1924r.” AAN UWW 4/1-2 [document page no.; note that all subsequent quotations also use document
page no.]
65 Ibid., 2.
66 “Sprawozdanie miesięczne z ruchu zawodowego, społecznego, i politycznego na terenie Województwa
Wołyńskiego za m. marzec 1924r.” AAN UWW 4/1.

120