Page 255 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

Władysław Wielhorski, argued, for instance, that while large parts of the population had not yet

gained a national identity, it was only a matter of time before the forces of modernization (and, by

implication, nationalization) caught up with them. As he wrote in a report sent to the Ministry of

Foreign Affairs in 1934, “apart from the individuals who have already undergone a phase of national

self-determination, there are millions of others in which the component of culture of their psychology

is currently, as it were, solvent.” They were, he went on, “an amorphous mass in terms of ethnicity,”

but one in which “supposed candidates for future membership of the Ukrainian and Belarusian

29
nations” could “enlarge the army of Poles if they are brought up suitably.” With its emphasis on the

state’s need to control this process and to steer populations away from a path toward non-Polish

nationality, Wielhorski’s language corresponded with that of many members of the Polish elite who

were becoming increasingly skeptical about the tired language of an internationally guaranteed

minority rights regime. If the Polish state got to these people first, it could ensure that when their

nationality finally became fixed, they would simply become Poles. As was so often the case in the

eastern borderlands, however, what this would actually look like on the ground remained unclear.

CREATING TRANSITIONAL SPACE

The increased focus on national indeterminacy was reflected in the decision to create research

clusters at the Commission for Scientific Research into the Eastern Lands around specific

geographical areas in the kresy. While the government was less interested in those parts of eastern

Galicia or southern Volhynia where Ukrainian national consciousness was believed to have

hardened, it focused the state’s resources on areas in which the processes of national crystallization

remained in their infancy. Studies of the Lemkos, Boikos, and Hutsuls, ethnographic groups that

lived in the picturesque and sparsely populated southeastern lands of the Carpathian mountains,

29 “Myśli przewodnie przy studjach Kresów Wschodnich,” AAN MSZ 5219/28.

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