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fell, noted with alarm that “when compared to the results of the census from 1921, the data shows

that the natural growth of the Ukrainian population is proportionally stronger than that of the other

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nationalities in Volhynia.” The TRZW also chimed in, reporting on the dangers of Polish
demographic losses in relation to non-Polish Slavs in the eastern borderlands. In an undated

memorandum that they sent to the Ministry of the Interior, the TRZW’s leaders justified the group’s

mission by making stark claims about “weaker rates of natural growth” among Poles when compared

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with other Slavic minorities. Demonstrating how demographic studies had become ubiquitous by
the mid-point of the decade, a 1936 article in the pro-Józewski Volhynian Yearbook stated that while

the towns in Kowel county had become more Polish (at the expense of Jews, who were beginning to

constitute a smaller proportion of the urban population), the overall percentage of Ukrainians in the

11
county had increased by almost two percent—from 71.1% to 72.9%.
Numbers certainly mattered. But Polish elites were concerned about the quality, as well as

the quantity, of the kresy’s population. When they spoke of national “elements” (using words like

elementy, żywioły, and cyznniki in their reports), researchers and politicians tapped into a broader

European discourse in which human beings were imagined as little more than raw material to be

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mobilized in the interests of the state. As they brought observations about civilizational quality and

national identity together, the eastern borderlands quickly became the epicenter of their anxieties. In

Volhynia, where the population grew by a third (around half a million people) between the censuses

9 “Meldunek Dowódcy Okręgu Korpusu Nr. II do I Wiceministra Spraw Wojskowych w sprawie konferencji z
wojewodą wołyńskim z 10 kwietnia 1935 roku,” reprinted in “Materiały z Konferencji dowódcy Okręgu Korpusu nr
II Lublin z wojewodą wołyńskim w sprawach bezpieczeństwa województwa wołyńskiego,” Biuletyn Nr. 25
Wojskowej Służby Archiwalnej (2002), edited by Zdzisław G. Kowalski [no page numbers].
10 “Memorjał Towarzystwa Rozwoju Ziem Wschodnich,” AAN MSW (dopływ) 1113/1.
11 Edward Rühle, “Studium powiatu kowelskiego,” Rocznik Wołyński (1936-7), 349.
12 In her work on the eugenics movement in Poland, Magdalena Gawin points out that the use of such terms
indicated the more general rationalization and technologizing of daily life in interwar Poland. See Gawin,
“Progressivism and Eugenic Thinking in Poland, 1905-1939,” in Blood and Homeland: Eugenics and Racial
Nationalism in Central and Southeast Europe, 1900-1945, edited by Marius Turda (Herndon, VA, 2006),
particularly 178. On the broader idea that populations were raw materials that states could use to their advantage
through the framework of migration, see Zahra, The Great Departure.

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