Page 288 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

CONCLUSION:
ENDINGS AND AFTERLIVES

The main narrative of this book ends in September 1939, with the destruction of both the Polish state

and the interwar world in which that state was firmly embedded. On September 1, Luftwaffe bombs

rained down on Warsaw and Wehrmacht tanks rolled across Poland’s western border; on September

17, the Red Army moved westward into eastern Poland, occupying the erstwhile Polish kresy. As

agreed in the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, which had been signed between the

Soviet Union and Nazi Germany on August 23, the Polish state was divided and destroyed. Volhynia

was occupied by the Red Army and underwent intense processes of Sovietization until Hitler broke

the terms of the pact and launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941. As had been

the case for much of Volhynia’s history, political boundaries ebbed and flowed, lands changed hands,

and multiple constituencies competed for power and influence. The consequences for Volhynia’s

civilian population were deadly.

The perception of the Second World War as an ending, or rather as a series of endings, to the

rich and diverse world of the Second Republic has informed the content, tone, and moral implications

of the stories told ever since. While it is important not to read the events that occurred after

September 1939 back onto our analysis of the prewar period, it is also true that we cannot fully grasp

the significance of the story told here unless we move beyond the book’s immediate chronological

parameters and reflect briefly on three questions: To what extent can the events of the war be

explained by dynamics during the prewar period? How have narratives of interwar Volhynia, and the

kresy more generally, been recast in subsequent moments of drastic political change? And in what

ways can our approach to Volhynia help us to think more clearly about two global moments—that of

the interwar period and that of the present-day? As we think through these issues, we gain greater

insights into how interwar Polish approaches to Volhynia reverberated throughout Europe’s

tumultuous twentieth century—and how they continue to have relevance.

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