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recent history of the region had been characterized by injustices inflicted upon the Polish nation—

and that those injustices needed to be redressed. Indeed, the very term “revindication” suggested that

the Polish state harbored no desires to aggressively Polonize genuinely Ukrainian populations, but

only to right an historical wrong against “Ruthenized elements” (zruszczone elementy) whose real

identities had become buried under layers of foreign influence. And yet, this shared sense of imperial

injustice is where the similarities between regionalists and those who supported the revindications

ended. Indeed, even if only a very small percentage of the Orthodox population in Volhynia

converted to Roman Catholicism in 1937-9 (less than half a percent), the new approach formed part

of the broader conceptual shift that involved unfixing Ukrainian identity and claiming that a large

proportion of local people represented little more than a human reservoir of Polishness (and

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Catholicness).
Predictably, these schemes antagonized representatives of the Ukrainian nationalist cause,

with Volhynia’s Ukrainian members of parliament emphasizing that the conversions were carried out

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under duress. The Orthodox clergy, who saw their flocks taken away and their own movements
curbed, also reacted negatively. In May 1938, the Orthodox consistory in Krzemieniec sent a

delegate to parishes in Równe county, who gave sermons urging the population to persist in their

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Orthodox beliefs. Similarly, some Orthodox populations condemned the revindications, such as in
Dubno where a report from 1938 indicated that the actions had created an anti-Polish mood and only

78 See Snyder, Sketches, 163.
79 Mykola Kuczerepa, “Polityka narodowościowa Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej wobec Ukraińców w latach 1919-1939,”
in Polska-Ukraina: Trudne Pytania, t. 1-2, Materiały II międzynarodowego seminarium historycznego “Stosunki
polsko-ukraińskie w latach 1918-1947” Warszawa, 22-24 maja 1997 (Warsaw, 1998), 33.
80 “Miesięczne sprawozdanie […] za m-c kwiecień 1938r [.…]” (May 12, 1938), DARO 448/1/1/142od. Polish
reports also alleged that Orthodox priests in Sarny and Kostopol counties threatened people who expressed an
interest in converting to Catholicism in the summer of 1938, prompting KOP to assert that the removal of the priests
was necessary for the “return of Russified Poles to the motherland.” “Meldunek sytuacyjny,” Sarny (June 30, 1938),
ASGwS 541/648/35-35a.

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