Page 261 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

future. But 1934 marked the beginnings of intense government-funded research, whereby scholars

were paid to journey into the area to make first-hand observations of peoples and places. For many of

these researchers, geographical Polesie constituted a unique laboratory in which to explore the

creation of modern nationhood in real time. In October 1934, for instance, participants at a meeting

of the Commission for Research into the Eastern Borderlands in Warsaw discussed the location of

the linguistic division between the Polesian and Volhynian dialects of Ukrainian and reported on

research that had been carried out into lexical, morphological, and phonetic characteristics at a local

44
level. Further research from 1935 onward included visits to villages in Sarny and Kowel counties in

northern Volhynia, where researchers collected data relating to the phonetics and morphology of

names from a range of kinship groups and localities, and recorded folk songs, fairytales, and short

45
stories. Most famously, perhaps, a team of ethnographers journeyed into the region under the
auspices of the IBSN, which was working in cooperation with the Commission. The presentation of

their findings indicates how different groups drew their own, sometimes incompatible, conclusions

about the political implications of this transitional space.

Take the work of Józef Obrębski, a young ethnographer, student of the famed anthropologist

Bronisław Malinowski and sociologist Florian Znaniecki, and disciple of the humanistic approach to

research. Obrębski’s fascination with Polesie was reflected in the fact that he carried out two

expeditions there—in 1934, he undertook a trip to northern Polesie, after returning from fieldwork in

Macedonia; a year later, he returned to focus more specifically on the Volhynian-Polesian

borderlands. His work on the ground resulted in several important papers, not least of which was a

1936 article entitled “The Ethnic Problem of Polesie,” which he published in the IBSN’s journal,

Ethnic Affairs. Here, he concluded that the Polesians were indeed a separate ethnic (i.e. non-national)

44 “Program badań zagadnień demograficzno-narodowościowych” (Referat na posiedzeniu Komisji z dn. 8.X.34r.),
AAN MSZ 5219/65.
45 “Sprawozdanie z prac badawczo-naukowych Komisji Naukowych Badań Ziem Wschodnich za czas od 1
października do 31 marca 1935r.,” AAN MSZ 5219/140-141.

261