Page 165 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

in 1927, the state’s task was to take economic measures that would “draw the non-Polish population

3
into the orbit of state interests and cooperation with governing agents.” The man who succeeded him

in 1928, Henryk Józewski, concurred. Rather than focusing on the political slogans of which peasants

were so suspicious (and of which they couldn’t possibly make sense), Józewski argued, the state

4
should concentrate on “responding to the real needs and complaints of everyday life.”

For Józewski, this approach meant upending the traditional practices of the Volhynian

countryside. As this chapter will show, he aimed to do nothing less than replace an imperial-feudal

system that lingered in both economic practices and peasant mentalities, promote the role of the

modernizing state by raising civilizational levels for everyone, and eradicate political agitation once

and for all. In taking this approach, Józewski’s supporters also sought to resolve the tension that had

been central to Polish rule in the borderlands from the very beginning—as a minority population,

Poles had to show that they were civilizationally superior (and therefore had a clear basis for rule in

an age of national self-determination) without looking like arrogant colonizers or imperialists.

Józewski himself was conscious of the challenge. “Our administration in the kresy should represent

strength, authority, and professionalism,” he declared in 1933, “but at the same time state workers

5
cannot emphasize their strangeness and complete separateness from local life.”

This chapter will trace the attempted depoliticization of the Volhynian countryside through

the work of a plethora of groups. From rural engineers, healthcare workers, and teachers to

participants in women’s associations, military settlers, and border guards, these people drew on

broader European discourses (which were employed both within and beyond the borders of nation-

states) about the benefits of rural modernity for an uncivilized peasantry on the state’s eastern

3 “Protokół z zebrania naczelników władz administracyjnych II instancji, odbytego w dniu 5 maja 1927 r. w
Urzędzie Wojewódzkim Wołyńskim w Łucku,” AAN MSW (Part 1) 69/25.
4 “Memorandum Wojewody Wołyńskiego w sprawie wyborów do ciał ustawodawczych w roku 1928,” AAN PRM
(Part 4) 56/8/37.
5 “Sprawozdanie z sytuacji na Wołyniu, wrzesień 1933,” AAN UWW 83/7.

165