Page 52 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

project. Across the region, various proclamations of loyalty to Poland were circulated back to literate

members of the population via the press. When Volhynia’s Commissioner General entered the town

of Włodzimierz in July 1919 as part of an official visit, for instance, one town councilor greeted him

by making a speech in the “Ruthenian language,” only to then invite him to partake in the traditional

local ritual of eating bread and salt. During a banquet held that evening, representatives of the town

council (rada miejska) also expressed their desire that Volhynia would be “joined to the fatherland”

and praised Poland’s “lawful” war in the borderlands as one that pitted the forces of order against

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those of eastern anarchy. Similar sentiments were expressed the following January when Piłsudski

arrived in the town of Kowel to be greeted by representatives of the Roman Catholic and Orthodox

churches and the Jewish religious community, as well as secular delegates from the Polish,

Ruthenian, Czech, and German populations. In his speech, the president of Równe, who was also

present, contrasted the “Western” values that Poland represented—peace, order, law, and culture—

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with the despotism, disorder, madness, and cruelty than emanated from “the East.”

INTRA-POLISH CONFLICTS

The Guard’s assumption was that mutual cooperation, rather than acrimonious conflict, between

Volhynia’s diverse populations would characterize the process of creating democracy in a region that

had long been the victim of an uncivilized empire. But as we move closer to the ground, away from

the simplified stories told in Paris, Warsaw, and even on the pages of the Guard’s local newspaper,

we see how attempts to transition from one way of organizing political space to another created not

the harmony and stability of return, but rather a series of conflicts about who would benefit (and who

would lose power) as the basis of sovereignty shifted. In fact, the Guard’s attempt to import its

version of democracy into local communities was fundamentally shaped by economic, social, and

50 “Pobyt Komisarza Generalnego Ziem Wschodnich na Wołyniu,” Ziemia Wołyńska, July 13, 1919, 3.
51 “Naczelnik Państwa Józef Piłsudski na Wołyniu,” Ziemia Wołyńska, January 10, 1920, 1-4.

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