Page 272 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

argued as early as 1919 that “Ruthenized Poles” could be brought back into the national fold, while

that same year, the statistician Edward Maliszewski had suggested that some Orthodox Christian

populations were actually descendants of the old déclassé Polish nobility whom the imperial

authorities had deprived of their privileges. While they had subsequently become economically

indistinguishable from the peasantry, Maliszewski argued, they might “return to Polishness”

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(powrócić do polskości), given the proper conditions.
While these “petty nobles” (known in Polish as szlachta zagrodowa or szlachta zaściankowa)

had thus long been a source of curiosity for Polish national activists and scholars alike, the mid-

1930s saw the beginnings of state-initiated schemes to convince them of the political expediency of

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“returning” to their correct national path. According to a Ministry of the Interior report, the
majority of the petty nobles were “normal peasants” who could be identified not by their great wealth

or status, but rather by more subjective feelings. They were also, the report’s author argued, under

threat. While they “feel that they are Poles,” they could “easily become Ukrainians or Belarusians [if

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they are] left under the influence of foreign propaganda without Polish care.” In Galicia, the
formerly Austrian region to the south of Volhynia, state-supported efforts to “re-Polonize” petty

nobles serving in the army began as early as 1934 and developed into schemes for the Polonization of

the wider population through the work of the Petty Nobles Union (Związek Szlachty Zagrodowej),

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which attempted to separate “the noble element” from “the foreign environment.” In order to

further the national revival of what they estimated was a population of between 800,000 and one

million people in the kresy as a whole, the Committee for the Affairs of the Petty Nobility in Eastern

71 Maliszewski, “Żywioł polski,” 621.
72 Ibid., 621.
73 “Zagadnienia Ziem Wschodnich w swietle bezpośredniej obswerwacji terenu” (Warszawa, 1935), AAN MSW
946/25.
74 For policies towards the petty nobles in Galicia, see Stawecki, Następcy komendanta, 179-83; Hryciuk, Przemiany
narodowościowe, 123-129; Kacprzak, Towarzystwo Rozwoju Ziem Wschodnich, 98-104; Tomaszewski, Z dziejów
Polesia, 134-5.

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