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Polish rebellion against Russian imperial rule, the museum issued an appeal to local people,

especially members of the older generation, requesting information about the names of Volhynia’s

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“hitherto unknown heroes.” Those who did not convey family stories were invited to donate
physical artifacts instead. Indeed, by the mid-1930s, the museum’s supporters claimed that they had

quickly amassed materials in the ethnographic section as a consequence of “the unusual generosity of

Volhynian society, which sends in donations,” and boasted that society was “committed to the

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museum in Łuck becoming a proud picture of the folk culture of Volhynia.” By advocating for
public participation in the creation of museum collections—rather than simply the public

consumption of displayed objects—regionalists attached value to members of the lud, whom they

saw as repositories of older pre-partition traditions.

At the same time, however, gathering information by no means suggested the equality of the

various groups that inhabited the land. As is the case with all museums (and all presentations of

knowledge, for that matter), Volhynia’s regional museum was curated by individuals who sought to

present a particular historical narrative—and therefore had to decide what to put on display and what

to leave out. Even as they invited participation from the public by attempting to discover the local

heroes of the November Uprising, for instance, the very solicitation of such stories betrayed the

museum’s attempt to write a Volhynian regional episode within a heroic, Polish national history, one

that continued to cast Poles as the first among equals. As one vocal proponent of the museum argued,

its collections would not simply lead to the dissemination of more knowledge about the area but

would also serve as a “lasting memorial to the creative efforts of Poland” in its historical mission “of

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cultural uplift in the eastern borderlands.”

29 “Odezwa Dyrekcji Muzeum Wołyńskiego,” Przegląd Wołyński, January 19, 1930, 4.
30 “Prace etnograficzne Wołyńskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk,” Wołyń, May 3, 1936, 3.
31 Ludwik Sawicki, “W Sprawie Utworzenia ‘Muzeum Przyrodniczo-Krajoznawczego’ na Wołyniu,” Ziemia, March
1, 1928, 75.

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