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pressures that were being placed on the Polish population. Even as Józewski persisted in his efforts
to build stronger political relationships with certain groups within the Ukrainian elite, most notably

through the 1935 normalization agreement with the Ukrainian UNDO party, he recognized that older

phrases about Poles being under siege in their own land—“Poles in a Ukrainian sea” and “weak

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islands of Polishness”—were beginning to reemerge. Echoing arguments made by the Endecja after

the disastrous 1922 elections—that the fault for the success of the National Minorities Bloc lay not

simply with the national minorities themselves but with the Polish politicians who had empowered

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them—more and more voices came out against Józewski. If Poles were assumed to be the historical

civilizers in the kresy, the fact that they were being demographically overpowered by an uncivilized

non-Polish mass could be construed only as self-induced political failure.

NATIONAL INDETERMINACY AS POLITICAL STRATEGY

One way out of this difficult situation came through reviving another tenet that had long been

fundamental to those on the right—that the majority Slavic populations in the east lacked a fixed

national identity and should not be referred to as “Ukrainian” at all. This idea struck at the heart of

Józewski’s approach. As we saw in the previous chapter, the Volhynian regional experiment had

been premised not merely on the acceptance of Ukrainians as a national group, but also on the

16 As Thum and Reinkowski have shown, imperialists often develop more radical solutions to perceived problems as
they focus on what they perceive as their own “helplessness” on the ground. See “Helpless Imperialists:
Introduction,” 7-20.
17 “Sprawozdanie obrazujące sytuację województwa wołyńskiego” (November 1935), BUW Manuscript Collection
MS 1549/50. Any cooperation between the “Polish village” and the “Ruthenian village” was sporadic, he reported,
with Poles often feeling that their Ruthenian counterparts were actually more organized than the Poles. See also
“Zbiór reportaży nie ustalonego autora o osadach wojskowych i cywilnych na Wołyniu, ich specyfice, stosunkach
ludnościowych, gospodarce i zwyczajach, przeznaczony do druku najprawdopodobniej w prasie warszawskiej (ok.
1936)” “Charakterystyka wsi wołyńskiej,” 21-22. BUW Manuscript Collection, Rękopis nr. 1773 (BUW), Akta 270-
a.
18 “Sprawozdanie obrazujące sytuację województwa wołyńskiego” (November 1935), BUW Manuscript Collection
MS 1549/50 and 27; Tadeusz Krzyżanowski, Polskie siły społeczne na tle stosunków narodowościowych na
Wołyniu: Referat wygłoszony na Wołyńskim Zjeździe Wojewódzkim Polskiej Macierzy Szkolnej w Równem w dn.
13.III.1938r (Warsaw, 1938), 7; “Plan pracy Powiatowego Związku Osadników w Zdołbunowie na roku 1938/39,”
DARO 223/1/26/1-1od.

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