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“transformations that are taking place in front of our eyes.” Reflecting this need for tangible
information about the daily practices of local people, the questions inquired about patterns of grazing

animals, the nature of animal shelters and their distance from the village, and the ownership of land

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upon which livestock grazed. Another survey asked people to provide details about the natural
environment in which their village was located. “Are there any particularly beautiful natural

places?,” question one read, while question fifteen asked “Are there any rare types of animals?” and

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suggested a list of possible answers that included bears, lynx, elk, beavers, and eagles. Literate
villagers returned their surveys with either handwritten or typed answers inserted next to the

questions. In the district of Białokrynica in Krzemieniec county, for instance, a local clerk included

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information about the hundred hectares of pine trees, as well as the old oak trees, around his village.
From the district of Wiśniowiec, also in Krzemieniec county, the survey was returned with notes

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about the ways in which local people used flowers to treat disease. While the medical professionals

whom we encountered in the previous chapter would have been skeptical about these homegrown

rural remedies—were they not more evidence of peasant irrationality and resistance to modern

medicine?—here they constituted evidence of a deep-rooted regional culture.

It was this kind of hyper-local tradition, observed at the level of the village, that so fascinated

Jakub Hoffman, the head of the Union of Polish Teachers in Volhynia. Hoffman was very much a

man of the borderlands—he had been born in Kołomyja (Ukrainian: Kolomyja), a town that had been

part of Austrian eastern Galicia prior to the war, was a convert from Judaism to Roman Catholicism,

and considered himself a Polish patriot in the more Romantic tradition of Piłsudski and Józewski. It

33 “Odezwa Zarządu Związku N.P. Okręgu Wołyńskiego,” Dziennik urzędowy kuratorium okręgu szkolnego
wołyńskiego 8, no. 10 (November 1931), 298.
34 Ibid., 299-300.
35 “Kwestionariusz w sprawie pasterstwa,” DARO 184/1/3/10-10od.
36 Questionnaire response from Józef Hubicki, village clerk from Białokrynica gmina, Krzemieniec county, DARO
184/1/3/26.
37 Questionnaire response from Borys Romanów-Głowacki, farmer from Wiśniowiec gmina, Krzemieniec county,
DARO 184/1/3/32.

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