Page 302 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

missions in which they cast doubt on the extent to which their nominal compatriots would prove to

be civilized (and Polish) enough. The ideological categorization of non-Polish populations can,

therefore, be understood only within the context of local, and frequently anxiety-ridden, discussions

of what it meant to be Polish on the civilizational fringes. Adopting this perspective helps us to see

how the dichotomy of “inclusive” and “exclusive” Polish nationalism was both utilized and

undermined in the borderlands. Rather than labelling visions of the nation as unproblematically

inclusive, we should ask about the precise terms on which inclusion is permitted.

With questions of where the borders around the nation should lie once again at the fore, Poles

find themselves reinterpreting their own turbulent history, with some returning to the idea that Poland

constitutes history’s eternal victim. But these questions also place that country at the center of

broader global discussions about national belonging and the hardening of borders, both figurative and

literal. Volhynia’s experiences in the 1920s and 1930s do not hold the key to understanding our own

moment. But they do allow us to raise and debate new questions and notice characters whose

perspectives and actions we might otherwise overlook. As the legitimizing political rhetoric of the

world order changes in front of our eyes, and as politicians in Warsaw, Washington, and beyond

draw upon and foster new norms, it is worth opening our ears to the voices of the local brokers of

state projects. In today’s Poland, as in modern states more generally, it is these people who provide

critical answers to the ever-contested questions of what it means to be a member of the nation, who

gets to integrate whom, and where the borders of inclusion end. Tracing the stories of these people in

the interwar Polish state throws their modern-day counterparts into the limelight, reminding us that

the contours of the nation are never simply shaped at the state’s center of power. Instead, they are

endlessly remade somewhere else entirely—on the edge.

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