Page 44 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

parliament declared during a debate in April 1919, Polish colonization could not be regarded as

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imperialism because it was simply a natural extension of Poland’s historical eastward push.

INTO THE BORDERLANDS

While Volhynia appeared as a place on a map in the faraway corridors of Paris in early 1919, the

leaders of the emerging state in Warsaw had to decide precisely how they would implement the

kresy’s transition from the Russian empire to the emerging democratic nation-state of Poland.

Significantly, the importation of democracy into this region did not initially occur through the

centrally mandated creation of liberal-democratic institutions (as was occurring in other regions of

the new state). When, in January 1919, eligible Polish citizens—those over the age of 21 and of

either sex—flocked to polling stations to vote for members of the new constitutional parliament, the

inhabitants of the kresy did not join them. Instead, millions of people in these contested lands found

themselves under a Polish military occupation regime whose leaders had their own ideas about what

democratization should look like under the exigencies of war.

If adherents to Roman Dmowski’s National Democrats constituted the dominant Polish voice

in Paris and if the movement’s political party, the right-wing Popular National Union (Związek

Ludowo-Narodowy), garnered the highest proportion (29%) of the vote in the 1919 elections, it was

the supporters of Józef Piłsudski who attempted to control the nature of the Polish occupation. In

February 1919, Piłsudski created a Civil Administration for the Eastern Lands (Zarząd Cywilny Ziem

Wschodnich; hereafter, the Civil Administration) in order to administer occupied territories that were

about to grow substantially. Between December 1918 and May 1919, some 5,000 Polish troops

pushed the fledgling Ukrainian People’s Republic out of the western part of Volhynia, and by the end

of August, following the Polish capture of the towns of Krzemieniec, Dubno, and Równe, the area

27 Sprawozdanie stenograficzne z 24 posiedzenia Sejmu Ustawodawczego z dnia 3 kwietnia 1919 roku, 32.

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