Page 234 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

But if such characteristics may superficially have implied that Karaites were Asiatic aliens in this

Slavic borderland, Zajączkowski claimed that “oriental peoples”—a group that encompassed

Armenians, Tatars, and Karaites—had long been an important part of the ethnographic makeup of the

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town. In 1936, the Volhynian Society for the Friends of Science, which Jakub Hoffman had helped
to establish the previous year, also made contact with Karaite centers in Łuck through Mardkowicz,

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with the aim of carrying out its own research into the group from an “ethnographic” perspective.

EXOTIC, NOT BACKWARD: VOLHYNIAN TOURISM

If many of the regionalist forums explored thus far—the exhibition, the provincial museum, the

yearbook, and the teachers’ course—sought to convince a primarily local audience of the benefits of

Polish rule, there were also moves, both beyond and within the region, toward marketing the

province as a destination for tourists. Admittedly, the results of these attempts to build up a tourist

industry in Volhynia were limited, even by the late 1930s. While the number of visitors to Volhynia

certainly increased during that decade, the province’s poor transportation networks and lack of

obvious attractions meant that it never proved as popular as the Polish Carpathian region, with its

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dramatic mountains and unique folk cultures. But if articles about Volhynia were few and far

between on the pages of national tourism journals like Tourism (Turystyka) and Tourist in Poland

(Turysta w Polsce), the ways in which Polish elites framed tourist projects shed light on the ongoing

83 Ibid., 149, 174.
84 “Praca etnograficzna Wołyńskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk,” Wołyń, May 3, 1936, 3. On Hoffman’s role,
see Anna Milewska-Młynik, “Jakub Hoffman — Wołyniak z wyboru, społecznik z powołania,” Wrocławskie Studia
Wschodnie (2010), no. 14, 148.
85 On the terrain of the Łuck school district, there operated nine school shelters for touring, while the number of
school excursions had increased between the years 1931 (when there were five hostels used by 808 people) and
1935 (by which point 2,220 people used seven available shelters). See “Możliwości rozwoju Turystyki na Wołyniu,”
Wołyń, May 12, 1936, 12. Articles in the interwar tourist journals Turystyka and Turysta w Polsce suggested that the
more southerly regions, with their grape-growing areas, mountains, traditional Hutsul folk festivals, and enviable
climate, were more attractive to visitors. The poor railroad network in Volhynia also led proponents of tourism to
conclude that revisions to the train timetable would have to be made. See “Możliwości rozwoju Turystyki na
Wołyniu,” 12.

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