Page 157 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

shunned in one context as “uncivilized” was embraced temporarily as part of the Polish civilizing

mission in another. Or, to put it a different way, state officials imagined a reversed process of center-

periphery relations by which the semi-urban periphery might assist with the broader attempt to

“civilize” a largely Jewish urban center.

The paper trail that went back-and-forth between Warsaw and the Volhynian state

administration indicates the various contexts in which arguments about civilization, modernization,

and nationalism came together. In 1930, two of Józewski’s allies—Jerzy Bonkowicz-Sittauer, the

head of Łuck county, and Józef Śleszyński, who was acting as the provincial governor during

Józewski’s brief stint as the Minister of the Interior—submitted memoranda to Warsaw in support of

extending Łuck’s boundaries. In his letter, Śleszyński repeated well-established arguments about how

the physical location of the town had limited urban development and led to building restrictions,

meaning that the colony for state officials and several government buildings had been constructed

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beyond the town’s borders. But Śleszyński made his case around more than just the need for land,
stating too that an expansion of administrative borders would also increase Christian representation

on Łuck’s town council (which was made up of 24 councilors, 19 of whom were Jewish) and arguing

that the council’s current opposition to the plan could be explained by the fact that these Jews feared

losing seats to Christians. This convergence of anti-Jewish and pro-Polish civilizing rhetoric

persisted, even after the borders were changed. Following a decree from the Council of Ministers in

Warsaw, which officially extended the borders of Łuck, local state officials and journalists praised

the effects of urban expansion and stated that the process had contributed to the Europeanization of

the town. Implicitly, moving closer to what the author of one article called an increasingly “Western

European appearance” was linked to a reduction in the town’s “Jewishness” and an increase in the

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number of Christians, although not necessarily Poles.

62 Letter from Józef Śleszyński to the Ministry of the Interior (February 11, 1930), AAN MSW (Part 1) 299.
63 “Z Całego Wołynia,” Przegląd Wołyński, December 14, 1930, 4.

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