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had managed to change the composition of urban government in favorable ways, but Volhynia’s

towns still needed to become “centers of Polish and Western culture,” a mission that continued to be

based on reducing the role of the “Jewish element” and eliminating the “Russian element”

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altogether. Both here and in a report the following year, the governor referred to the planned “de-
Jewification” (odżydzenie) of urban spaces, thus utilizing a term that was more readily associated

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with the anti-Semitic right but that also reflected the Sanacja’s modernizing approach. Meanwhile,
the orderly planned streets, neat houses, and cultural facilities of Janowa Dolina, a newly built and

almost exclusively Polish settlement for workers at the state quarry near Kostopol, suggested an

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alternative type of urban space, one unburdened by imperial history—and by Jews. None of this

should surprise us. If the rhetoric toward Poland’s minorities softened and the anti-Semitic National

Democratic vision of Poland faced vocal critics within governing circles after 1926, debates around

the development of Volhynia’s towns reveal that the purported turn away from anti-Jewish sentiment

needs to be interrogated further. In fact, by looking at what was occurring on the ground, it becomes

increasingly clear that Piłsudski’s supporters constantly contrasted Polish “modernity” with Jewish

“backwardness,” even as they valorized national inclusivity.

As had been the case in earlier years, however, the problem of towns as “Jewish” spaces

remained fundamentally entangled with a broader set of anxieties among state-centered elites about

the role of people whom they identified as Polish in the eastern borderlands. In 1933, a front-page

article in Volhynia stated that while Jews were uninterested in the community life of the towns,

lacked an attachment to their physical environments, and had little aptitude for local government, the

behavior of the Christian populations continued to reflect their sense of temporariness. Even twelve

74 “Sprawozdanie z sytuacji na Wołyniu, Wrzesień 1933r.,” AAN UWW 83/10.
75 “Sprawozdanie z sytuacji na Wołyniu, Wrzesień 1934r.,” AAN UWW 83/36.
76 On Janowa Dolina, see “W Janowej Dolinie,” Wołyń, June 23, 1935, 6; Jacek Maria Orlik, “Skalna Kraina nad
Cichą Rzeką,” Wołyń, September 27, 1936, 4-5; Bogusław Soboń, Wołynski życiorys: wspomnienia i refleksje
(wokół kopalni bazaltu w Janowej Dolinie pow. Kostopol) (Warsaw, 1999).

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