Page 243 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

the fence with which this chapter began, we can again visualize the borders around the regionalist

project.

Perhaps part of the appeal of multiethnic regionalism to our contemporary sensibilities is the

knowledge of what came next. After all, the regionalist movement was not the final word on how

best to manage diversity in Volhynia. Several years before Fitzke’s article was published, a different

set of ideas, which revolved around more aggressive policies of Polonization and promoted the

advancement of demographic schemes that took little account of the desires of local inhabitants,

began to gain support in Warsaw. Its proponents reconfigured the limits of inclusion once again,

ossifying some borders and blurring others. It is to the story of how Volhynia as Fitzke’s “closed

territorial whole” came under increasing attack that we turn in our final chapter.

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