Page 132 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

Already by the mid-1920s, a propagandistic image of the KOP soldier was widespread—he

was a masculine civilizer who would both shore up the power of the Polish state and improve the

lives of local people by putting his psychological and physical health on the line. And yet the border

guards were forced to confront the same dilemma as other self-declared Polish civilizers who arrived

here: how could they get close enough to local populations in order to spread civilized values, while

simultaneously avoiding potentially damaging exposure in this backward environment? In this sense,

their work was a test not simply of any individual soldier’s mettle, but also of the strength and

effectiveness of the Polish state’s civilizing mission as a whole.

***

On one level, the story of the Polish-Soviet border in the early-to-mid-1920s was part of what

Annemarie Sammartino has called Europe’s “crisis of sovereignty,” as states sought to deal with the

millions of people who found themselves on the move at the end of the First World War. 105 Like their

counterparts across the continent, Polish elites hoped to promote the inviolable nature of state borders

in an attempt to keep out undesirables. As they fretted about the need to create a Polish nation-state

with as few unwanted “minorities” as possible, Polish leaders in Warsaw also resurrected older ideas

about the nation’s historical role as a physical barrier against an uncivilized East.

At the same time, the idea that policing the border was simply about keeping non-Poles from

entering the state during the immediate postwar crisis remains incomplete. By moving away from

Warsaw and following in the footsteps of Polish policemen and border guards, we have traced a

range of responses to the imposition of the border well into the 1920s, from local inhabitants and

Polish state personnel alike. In Volhynia, ordinary people found that they had to adapt to the new set

105 Sammartino, The Impossible Border, 1-17.

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