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regionalist Kazimierz Moszyński, who was also based at the Jagiellonian University and had

similarly traveled to Volhynia with Sawicki in 1926 in order to record ways of life in these remote

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regions before they disappeared forever. In addition, the group included the language specialists
Iwan Ziłyński and Kazimierz Nitsch, the latter of whom spoke about the influence of Ukrainian on

the Polish language by detailing recent changes in word pronunciations in one particular village. In

short, they were each engaged in efforts to record multiple aspects of everyday life in an

ethnographically rich region.

None of their work can be understood outside of the prevailing political climate. While they

prided themselves on their professional standards, these men simultaneously recognized the

economic benefits and prestige that came with state patronage and they well understood that their

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research could not be divorced from the Sanacja’s civilizing mission in the kresy. Wiktor Ormicki,
who like Hoffman was a Polish patriot of Jewish background, wholeheartedly expressed his support

for the Sanacja’s state-centered approach in what he called the “last outpost (placówka)” of “Western

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European culture.” On the first page of his habilitacja, Ormicki wrote in typically nationalistic
terms about the explicitly Polish character of the kresy. “In [both] free and unfree Poland,” he

informed his readers, “the concept of the eastern borderlands—the symbol of Polish cultural activity

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on the border of two worlds—was never lost.” But this belief in Poland as the civilizationally
superior power in the eastern borderlands was balanced with an inclusive, even “democratic,”

53 Moszyński believed that enthusiasm for regional folklore should be inculcated among wide swaths of the
population who had previously shown little interest in the subject. See Moszyński, “Regjonalizm wobec Etnografji,”
Ziemia, January 1925, 11-16. On the 1929 trip, Moszyński took participants to witness a wedding, spoke about
wedding rituals and costumes, and documented the disappearing culture of the Volhynian village.
54 Olga Linkiewicz, “Applied Modern Science and the Self-Politicization of Racial Anthropology in Interwar
Poland,” Ab Imperio 2 (2016): 153-181.
55 Ormicki, Życie gospodarcze, 7. Such remarks echoed those made by Ludomir Sawicki about the need to blend
together professional and political duties when he reported on his 1926 research trip around the kresy. “We must lift
the material and cultural life of these vast areas that stretch from the borders of Małopolska to Latvia,” Sawicki
wrote, adding that their job was to inspire society, raise cultural levels to those of western Europe, and carry out a
defined plan based on an understanding of the local population. Sawicki, Eskapada samochodowa, 5.
56 Ormicki, Życie gospodarcze, 5.

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