Page 277 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

to be questioning the authority of the state, local commanders also “encouraged” people to convert

by explaining that 70% of the so-called Ukrainian inhabitants were actually descendants of Poles

from Masuria and could protect themselves from Ukrainian agitation through a return to the real

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identities of their Polish ancestors. In a March 1938 letter to an Orthodox priest in the district of
Dederkały in Krzemieniec county, a colonel involved in the religious conversions similarly asserted

that the army aimed to “return to the Polish bosom all that was once Polish in order to right the

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painful injustice done to Poland and Polish families, the wrong inflicted by the Russian partition.”
Since the army targeted those people whom they argued were denationalized Poles, rather than

Ukrainians, the colonel urged the Orthodox priest not to misinterpret its work as “an action against

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Orthodoxy or our brother Ukrainian nation.”
In other places, villagers were offered money or other material objects as an incentive for

conversion. During the conversion of 56 people from the Lidawka colony near the Polish-Soviet

border in February 1938, for instance, the KOP commander promised to provide financial support for

the village’s school, chapel, and cemetery. In response, the village head specifically asked for

assistance with the construction of a school and with the quest to find a teacher, leading the KOP

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commander to declare that a 200 złoty donation would be made to fund school construction. In a

KOP report that documented work in Zdołbunów county during the summer of 1938, it was similarly

noted that children of converts were provided with clothes, while the converts themselves received

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help finding employment.

87 Matwiejew, “Akcja ‘Rewindykacja’,” 691. The events in Hrynki are recounted in Kęsik, Zaufany komendanta,
143-144.
88 Letter to Orthodox priest in Dederkały district from Stanisław Gąsiorek, ppłk (March 9, 1938), DARO 160/1/69/9.
89 Ibid., 9.
90 “Posterunek Policji Państwowej w Majkowie powiatu rówieńskiego: Ruch religijny” (February 22, 1938), DARO
86/2/756/60od.
91 KOP, Pułk Zdołbunów, “Meldunek sytuacyjny – przedstawienie” (September 24, 1938), ASGwS 541/648/25.

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