Page 53 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

political conflicts. Their experiences both bolstered and belied the idea that Poles were qualified as a

nation to act as the conduits of European civilization and democracy.

As it turned out, the region was not a blank canvas onto which nationalists could simply paint

their visions of harmony. For one, ongoing warfare meant that even in those areas that were not

immediately on the front line, inhabitants continued to experience chaos and disorientation. Like the

whole of the contested area that had made up the western borderlands of the Russian empire,

Volhynia was beset by competitions over territory and resources that did not map precisely onto the

military, national, and diplomatic battles that were being discussed at the same time in international

circles. As old empires collapsed, it was not simply that full-fledged states emerged in the void, but

rather that a vast array of sometimes quite disorganized groups sought to push for their own local

agendas. The Polish army, which constituted more of a paramilitary force than a formal state

institution, was devoid of a clear hierarchy, while rival military formations sprung up in confusing

52
ways at the level of the village, only to be dispersed. In fact, the whole of the Eastern Front was
characterized by what the historian Jochen Böhler has called “warlordism, peasant uprisings, [and]

53
the forming of bands of marauders and other gangs.” People often did not know who was in

charge—and, if they did know, they wondered how quickly things would change again.

Day-to-day existence in the region was also harsh. The drawn-out experiences of warfare in

Volhynia, along with the other areas east of the Bug river into which the Polish army moved in the

spring of 1919, had created a humanitarian disaster zone in which food and other resources were

increasingly scarce. Representatives of fledgling international organizations, most notably those that

came under the umbrella of Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration, described disease-

ridden, starving populations who were reduced to eating tree bark and “picking undigested oats from

52 Julia Eichenberg, “Consent, Coercion and Endurance in Eastern Europe: Poland and the Fluidity of War
Experiences,” in Legacies of Violence, edited by Böhler et al., 246.
53 Jochen Böhler, “Enduring Violence. The Post-War Struggles in East-Central Europe 1917-1921,” Journal of
Contemporary History 50, no. 1 (2015): 63-64.

53