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and experience of farming from home.” 119 As part of the same celebrations, a pro-Józewski

Ukrainian organization, the Volhynian Ukrainian Alliance (VUO in its Ukrainian acronym), also

produced an article in its Ukrainian-language newspaper that valorized the non-colonial nature of the

relationship between KOP and the non-Polish peasantry. In addition to carrying out defensive

military actions, it claimed, KOP “also carries out educational and cultural work among the

population, provides books, organizes exhibitions and parties, [and] gives money to help

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schoolchildren.” Realizing the contributions that KOP made to their lives, Ukrainian populations
were said to be joining in with the anniversary celebrations.

By 1938, a published guide for all KOP soldiers directly articulated the careful balancing act

that these men had to undertake between showcasing their work as rural civilizers and avoiding the

condescending mindset of the outsider. Rather than organizing the kinds of academic lectures that

peasants would not understand, KOP soldiers were urged to lead by example, chatting informally

with locals as they walked around the village, rode on their wagons, met by the watchtower, and

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worked in the fields. While the guide betrayed a certain set of assumptions about peasant hygiene
that bordered on the humorous—for instance, border guards were to encourage people to change their

underwear more than twice a year—it nevertheless constituted a serious program by which subtle

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shifts in everyday life took on profound political significance.
In order to communicate what bad and good peasant behavior looked like in practice, the

guide also featured a plethora of illustrations, many of which betrayed deeply gendered ideas about

the correct path toward rural modernity and indicated how KOP soldiers were to reshape rural

populations in the domestic, as well as the public, sphere. In one image (Figure 5.4a), two women, a

119 Dec, Dobrzy sąsiedzi, 22-23. On the fact that KOP rank-and-file soldiers come from the central and western
provinces of Poland, see also Ludwik Gocel, O czym mówić z sąsiadami: Wskazówki dla żołnierzy K.O.P. (Warsaw,
1938), 34-36, and ASGwS 541/515.
120 “Prosvitians’ki khaty VUO y sviati 10-littia KOP-u,” Ukraïns’ka Nyva, November 25, 1934, 2.
121 Gocel, O czym mówić z sąsiadami, 5.
122 Ibid., 16.

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