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drew on imperial tropes about degeneracy, race, gender, and environmental degradation, while

simultaneously adapting them to the specific situation of an internal and, in their minds, historically

Polish borderland like Volhynia. In short, it offers one way in which historians of eastern Europe can

begin to bridge the persistent gap between the historiographical literature on contested borderlands

within their region and on non-European areas under formal or informal imperial rule, while still

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recognizing the clear differences between these two contexts.
The final terms that deserve a brief word of introduction are civilization (cywilizacja) and

modernity (nowoczesność). There has been a long tradition of viewing east European history through

the lens of what Maria Todorova calls “lag and lack” and, more especially, of viewing backwardness

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as an explanatory device for virulent strains of nationalism and violence. Scholars are now rightly
leery of the normative implications of narratives based on such concepts—in eastern Europe, as well

as in areas that have traditionally been labeled as “underdeveloped” in the Global South—and, in the

Polish case, they have worked hard to explore Poland’s engagement with broader European

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developments in fields like entertainment and academia. In integrating Polish history into the

Wilder, The French Imperial Nation-State: Negritude and Colonial Humanism between the Two World Wars
(Chicago, 2005). Much of the recent literature on Germany has focused on the links between late colonial
acquisitions and policies “at home.” A helpful overview is Andreas Eckert, “Germany and Africa in the Late
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: An Entangled History?” in Comparative and Transnational History: Central
European Approaches and New Perspectives, eds. Heinz-Gerhard Haupt and Jurgen Kocka (New York, 2009), 226-
246; on Italy, see Pergher, Mussolini’s Nation-Empire.
52 As Eric Weitz pointed out, while the Great Powers’ experiments with various ways of managing populations
meant that “their histories are intimately linked,” the literatures have remained distinct. See Weitz, “From the
Vienna to the Paris System,” 1316.
53 Maria Todorova, “The Trap of Backwardness: Modernity, Temporality, and the Study of Eastern European
Nationalism,” Slavic Review 64, no. 1 (2005): 145. Examples of this kind of scholarship include Daniel Chirot, ed.
The Origins of Backwardness in Eastern Europe: Economics and Politics from the Middle Ages until the Early
Twentieth Century (Berkeley, 1989). For some examples of the older historiography on interwar eastern Europe, see
Antony Polonsky, The Little Dictators: The History of Eastern Europe since 1918 (London and Boston, 1975); Alan
Palmer, The Lands Between: A History of East-Central Europe since the Congress of Vienna (New York, 1970); E.
Garrison Walters, The Other Europe: Eastern Europe to 1945 (Syracuse, 1988). On Poland specifically, see, Joseph
Rothschild, Piłsudski’s Coup d’Etat (New York, 1966); Antony Polonsky, Politics in Independent Poland 1921-
1939: The Crisis of Constitutional Government (Oxford, 1972); Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of
Poland. Volume II: 1795 to the Present (New York, 1982).
54 Beth Holmgren, “Acting Out: Qui pro Quo in the Context of Interwar Warsaw,” East European Politics and
Societies 27, no. 2 (2013): 205-223; Katherine A. Lebow, “The Conscience of the Skin: Interwar Polish Memoir and

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