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measures, Jews duped them into unfavorable financial transactions. In one illustration (Figure 7.3a),

a gullible fisherman handed over his catch to two merchants who were depicted as stereotypical

Jews. Similarly, the guide’s explanation of the need for dairy cooperatives, which involved rural folk

working together in ways that bypassed the pernicious influence of urban-based traders, conjured up

an image of a “petty merchant” from the town who “lurked” on market days, ready to purchase the

goods of the “poor yokel.” The merchant, the booklet’s author claimed, was “most often not a

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Pole.” In another image, a drunken peasant man was slumped face down under a table, as a Jewish
tavern keeper, with coins in his hand, looked on (Figure 7.3b). In short, Jews—always depicted as

male and always out to dupe the simple peasant—were increasingly presented as a fixed population

that stymied the state’s ongoing efforts to modernize the borderlands.

[INSERT FIGURE 7.3]

Figure 7.3: Images from the 1938 KOP guidebook. Source: Ludwik Gocel, O czym mówić z
sąsiadami: Wskazówki dla żołnierzy K.O.P. (Warsaw, 1938).

***

At the beginning of 1939, the Volhynian governor Aleksander Hauke-Nowak stated that it was

necessary to avoid the term “Ukrainian” altogether when describing Orthodox populations. Since it

“strongly emphasizes national separateness,” Hauke-Nowak explained, it was simply incorrect. 115

This chapter has shown how the concept of the Ukrainian—and the regionalist idea that was

premised on the existence of such a national group—was not questioned by the National Democratic

right alone. Rather, it was dismantled by those who espoused technocratic ideas promoted in state-

sponsored scholarly research. Spurred on by their own statistics about the dwindling percentage of

114 Gocel, O czym mówić z sąsiadami, 13.
115 Matwiejew, “Akcja ‘Rewindykacja,’” 688.

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