Page 57 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

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that their “great and noble Polish culture” was connected to “imperialism and violence.” But the
landowners also recognized that the democratizing language of the new state and the accompanying

promises of land reform threatened their privileged political status and they did what they could to

prevent a loss of local power and influence. The Guard certainly complained that these men filled

administrative positions within the Civil Administration, including that of the county head (starosta),

sought to prevent the execution of certain decrees, violently requisitioned goods from local people,

and did not punish fellow landowners when they ordered gendarmes to beat people who had taken

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timber from Volhynia’s forests. For the Guard, such behavior only further undermined the idea that

Poland as a whole was acting in the interests of ordinary people and instead convinced peasants that

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the new state was nothing less than an extension of rule by the “lords of the manor” (pany). As one
report noted, local populations were offended by the “all-too-obviously undemocratic attitude of the

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administration toward the people.”

INCLUDING AND EXCLUDING: DEMOCRACY AS HIERARCHY

The Guard believed that class interests were trumping those of Polish national solidarity in the

borderlands. But a closer reading of the local contexts also reveals how the assumption that

Piłsudskiite traditions were simultaneously democratic and nationally inclusive needs to be

reassessed—or, rather, that the precise conditions of democratic inclusivity need to be carefully

64 For landowner claims, see “Protokuły posiedzeń zjazdu polaków Ziemi Wołyńskiej w Łucku dnia 12, 13 i 14
kwietnia 1920 roku,” AAN MRiRR 732/9; “Odezwa do Ziemian Polaków Wołynia od zjazdu ziemian w Łucku w
dniach 12, 13, I 14 kwietnia b.r.,” AAN MRiRR 732/15. On the attitudes of Polish landowners more generally, see
Włodzimierz Mich, Ideologia Polskiego Ziemiaństwa, 1918-1939 (Lublin, 2000), 122-123. Large landowners in
interwar Czechoslovakia also used nationalism as a way to maintain their power. See Eagle Glassheim, Noble
Nationalists: The Transformation of the Bohemian Aristocracy (Cambridge, MA, 2005), particularly 50-82.
65 Włodzimierz Mędrzecki, Województwo wołyńskie 1921-1939: elementy przemian cywilizacyjnych, społecznych i
politycznych (Wrocław, 1988), 120; Gierowska-Kałłaur, Zarząd Cywilny Ziem Wschodnich, 329.
66 In debates in the Polish parliament, landowners were accused of using the Polish army to “settle accounts” with
local peasants, thus undermining the initial enthusiasm with which local people had allegedly greeted the Polish
army. Sprawozdanie stenograficzne z 106 posiedzenia z 19 grudnia 1919, 41-42.
67 “Wyciągi,” AAN TSK 201/109.

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