Page 54 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

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horse manure.” The desperate conditions in Volhynia even claimed column space in the New York
Times, with one report stating that there was “scarcely a family in the Kovel [Kowel] district which

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has not typhus, tuberculosis or smallpox.” Indeed, of all Volhynia’s counties, Kowel appeared to be
in a particularly bad state. By the end of October 1919, reports filed by Guard representatives noted

that daily life there had reached “a deplorable state,” characterized by “a complete deficiency in the

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provisioning of salt, sugar, fat, flour, and potatoes.” Across the occupied area, the high price of salt
was even leading to a “salt panic,” as local people lost the means to preserve perishable foods over

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the long winter months. Huge migrations of people who had been displaced during the war—either

forcibly moved by the Russian imperial army or fleeing for their own safety—and who now returned

to the places that they had called home, inevitably brought more pressure on already scarce local

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resources.
While Polish elites on the global stage argued that Poland was the only state capable of

bringing aid and good governance to a region now threatened by the menace of Bolshevism, the

desperate material situation created a series of local conflicts that both cut across and ran along

national lines. Indeed, attempts to implement the Guard’s version of democracy in the occupied zone

became complicated by the inexact but significant overlap between the proclaimed nationality of

Volhynia’s diverse inhabitants and the social and economic roles that these people continued to play

within local communities. Russian-speaking landowners and members of the Polish-speaking landed

gentry (ziemianie) owned most of the land, with the countryside dominated demographically by

Ukrainian-speaking Orthodox peasants, a smaller number of Roman Catholics who spoke Polish, and

54 William Grove, War’s Aftermath (Polish Relief in 1919) (New York, 1940), 72.
55 “Hunger and Disease Grip Eastern Poland,” New York Times, April 12, 1919, 4.
56 “Raport tygodniowy za czas od 22.X. do 29.X.1919 r.,” AAN TSK 214/15.
57 “W sprawie soli dla kresów,” Wschód Polski, January 1920, 34.
58 On the movement of people in the western borderlands, see Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The
Campaign against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge, MA, 2003), 121-165; Peter Gatrell, A Whole
Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington, 1999), 15-32; Joshua A. Sanborn,
“Unsettling the Empire: Violent Migrations and Social Disaster in Russia during World War I,” Journal of Modern
History 77, no. 2 (2005): 290-324.

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