Page 14 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

largely isolated marshlands of northern Volhynia just before the outbreak of the First World War,

characterized local populations by their crippling backwardness. They were socially and religiously

passive, cunning and crafty, and lazy and superstitious, Frankowski argued; indeed, they even

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believed that he was the anti-Christ who had come to draw out their souls with an invisible magnet.
How, elites wondered, could these people be brought into the civilized world? Could a modern nation

ever be crafted from people who displayed such irrational and anti-modern behavior?

These comparative acts, which pitted the kresy against both the countries of western Europe

and other areas of partitioned Poland, only intensified after the advent of statehood in 1918. When

Polish officials went to survey Volhynia, they found a province that was one of the most “backward”

in the entire state—roads and railroad lines were far less common here than they were in other parts

of the country, the ratio of paved to unpaved roads was low, agricultural techniques were less

mechanized, and towns lacked sewage and water supply systems. While the types of buildings varied

from area to area, depending on which raw materials were available, both rural and urban

constructions tended to be made of wood, in contrast to those areas further west where the more

durable brick or stone were common. Industry was virtually non-existent. Despite some limited

developments in forestry, sugar refining, milling, and distilling, only 4% of the population of

Volhynia was employed in industry, a world away from the rapid changes that were taking place in

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more westerly cities like Warsaw, Poznań, and Łódź. Moreover, even by 1927, illiteracy rates—

another way of measuring the population’s levels of civilization—stood at more than 74% in the

Volhynian countryside, in stark comparison to the much more encouraging figure of 3.7% in the

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province of Poznań. Population density also remained low, with an average of just 26 people per

17 Eugeniusz Frankowski, “Z Polesia Wołyńskiego,” Ziemia, March 26, 1914, 196.
18 Papierzyńska-Turek, Sprawa ukraińska w Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej, 33.
19 J. Kornecki, “Stan kultury Polski w świetle cyfr,” Oświata Polska: Organ wydziału wykonawczego Zjednoczenia
Polskich Tow. Oświatowych, no. 2/3 (1927), 88.

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