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servitude, an appeal on the newspaper’s front page stressed that the Polish army entered Volhynia

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under “the banners of fraternal unity,” rather than as an aggressive occupying force. The

assumption behind such statements was that the peoples of the east would voluntarily opt into a

Polish-led polity, based on the myth that everyone had consented to an earlier version of a Polish

state in the shape of the Commonwealth.

In line with this emphasis on popular consent, celebrations in the Volhynian towns of Łuck,

Kowel, and Włodzimierz provided opportunities for the editors to emphasize the practical and

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emotional participation of local people in the revived Polish-led experiment with democracy. In

Łuck, where the streets had been decked out in flags and a beautiful outdoor altar had been decorated

with flowers, women appeared on the streets to collect money for Polish schools. As the military

orchestra played, the newspaper reported, “the crowd of many thousands with a feeling of the highest

happiness [and] with a feeling of relief and satisfaction looked on the beautiful two-color symbol of

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Polish power, flying over the town” (a reference to the red and white of the Polish flag). Emotion,
not reason, carried the day, with tears said to be flowing from the eyes of townspeople as they

recalled the “injustices and persecutions” that Volhynia’s Polish inhabitants had been forced to

endure under the harsh conditions of the Russian empire. In the smaller town of Włodzimierz, where

near-constant rain forced the religious service to be held inside the church instead of around an

outdoor altar, the newspaper reported that the weather had done little to dampen people’s spirits.

Rather, the townspeople had flocked to take part in the celebrations, having already decorated the

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streets with greenery and national flags and created patriotic displays in their shop windows. This

43 “Wielki święto Wołynia,” Polak Kresowy, June 9, 1919, 1.
44 On the use of celebrations in disseminating Polish narratives during the period of the partitions, see Patrice M.
Dabrowski, Commemorations and the Shaping of Modern Poland (Bloomington, 2004). On the links between
nationalism and participatory commemorations in eastern and central Europe more generally, see Maria Bucur and
Nancy M. Wingfield (eds.), Staging the Past: The Politics of Commemoration in Habsburg Central Europe, 1848 to
the Present (West Lafayette, 2001).
45 “Obchody narodowe na Wołyniu,” Polak Kresowy, June 22, 1919, 3.
46 Ibid., 4.

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