Page 47 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

and during the Great War—the head of the Borderland Guard in Volhynia, Stefan Kapuściński, was

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just 22 in 1918, while his deputy, Antoni Zalewski, was a year younger still. Most had participated

in conspiratorial student groups in the Russian empire, such as the Union of Polish Youth (Związek

Młodzieży Polskiej, better known as Zet) and the Organization of Nationalist Youth (Organizacja

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Młodzieży Narodowej), and some had even fought in the Piłsudski-led Polish legions. Educated in

urban centers and accustomed to military-style organization, they believed themselves to be the

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educators of “the people” (lud) in whose name democracy had been declared. And yet these
formative experiences also meant that their definition of democracy emerged not from a political

education in liberal institutions, but rather from a belief in abstract values of social equality and anti-

imperialism.

In order to justify their role, the Guard’s instructors attached the organization’s mission to the

global shift away from imperialism and toward the more “civilized” form of democratic rule that

Poland was ready to take on. In his report on the situation in Łuck county in October 1919, for

instance, Zalewski, then the head instructor for the county, stated that the “current international

situation” meant that the incorporation of the kresy could occur only “with the consent (zgoda) of at

least the significant part of the population and the absence of opposition openly expressed by the

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remaining part.” But while the instructors appealed to what they called the “Great Western
Democracies” in resolutions made at local meetings of Polish delegates, winning consent entailed

translating these global ideas into concepts that they believed ordinary borderland inhabitants would

understand and support. Guard activists therefore explicitly contrasted democracy with both the

36 Nowacki, ZET, particularly 132; for potted biographies of many of the major instructors, see 544-568.
37 On the changes to ZET (which was originally a pro-Endecja organization) toward the Piłsudskiite line of
nationalism, see Janusz Rakowski, “Zetowcy i Pilsudczycy (2)” Zesztyty Historyczne (1981): 3-94.
38 As Brian Porter pointed out, in Polish the word lud (“the people”) is a singular noun, which suggests its “unified
and undifferentiated” quality. The late nineteenth century, in particular, saw the beginning of efforts by members of
the Polish intelligentsia to incorporate the lud into their political visions. Porter, When Nationalism Began to Hate,
14.
39 “Memoriał w sprawie położenia na Wołyniu,” AAN TSK 217/89.

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