Page 185 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

concerning the Volhynian countryside indicated that even into the 1930s, populations still lived in

unsanitary conditions, had little access to healthcare, and were regularly subjected to outbreaks of

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infectious diseases associated with poor living standards, such as dysentery and tuberculosis. Much
of this situation could be blamed on systematic state weaknesses. Volhynia’s provincial health

department was chronically understaffed (so much so that by 1929, there was still only one doctor for

every 47,000 people in Włodzimierz county), while the few doctors that did practice in the province

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rarely ventured into villages because of the awful condition of rural roads. At a meeting of state
officials in Luboml county in 1929, the county head laid the blame on local district councils, arguing

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that they disregarded sanitary standards. And yet, as they had done in the case of land reform

policies, authorities attributed failure not simply to state weakness but also to what they framed as the

ignorance, stubbornness, and even cunning of rural populations who neither respected laws and

decrees that came down from the state authorities nor cared about the health of their community.

In ways that mirrored the language of other European state officials in their civilizing

missions at home and abroad, Polish health care professionals complained about the masses’

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superstitions and proclivity for medical quackery. When the head of the agency of bacteriological

diagnostics, a certain Doctor Przesmycki, visited Volhynia during an outbreak of dysentery in the

summer of 1934, he stated that although the health authorities had issued notices for infected

75 “Sprawozdanie Wojewody Wołyńskiego o ogólnym stanie Województwa, działalności administracji państwowej
w r.1932-ym i ważniejszych zamierzeniach na przyszłość,” AAN MSW (Part 1) 111/828-830. See also “Stan
Szpitalnictwa w RZPP w 1926/27r.,” AAN MSW (Part 4) 70. Significantly, however, in his 1929 report on
Volhynia, Joachim Wołoszynowski argued that Volhynians were less likely to die of infectious diseases than the
average citizen of Poland. See Wołoszynowski, Województwo wołyńskie w świetle liczb i faktów, 162.
76 Even Dr. Riabczenko, a well-respected Dubno county doctor who was said to enjoy the good opinion of local
people after 40 years of work in the region, spent little time in the countryside. “Sprawozdanie Dr. W.
Hryszkiewicza, Inspektora Państwowej Służby Zdrowia, z inspekcji władz administracyjnych sanitarnych
Województwa Wołyńskiego w dn. 22-26 lutego 1927r.,” AAN MOS 825/16.
77 “Protokuł zebrania perjodycznego kierowników Władz I Instancji, odbytego w dniu 16.II.1929 r. o godz. 12 w
lokalu Starostwa Lubomelskiego,” AAN MSW (Part 1) 87/58.
78 On superstitious beliefs, see “Osadnictwo cywilne i wojskowe,” BUW Manuscript Collection, MS 1174/9. See
also Garczyński, Wołyń naszą ojczyzną, 63. On comparisons with European colonies, see Conklin, A Mission to
Civilize, 61.

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