Page 66 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

hierarchical logic that had long been central to Western civilizing missions. Even those who rejected

Polish national chauvinism and anti-Semitism and fostered interethnic cooperation believed that

Poles were the sole political and civilizational leaders in the region.

While battles over Volhynia occurred between states and proto-states on this global level,

members of the Borderland Guard who attempted to import their version of democracy into the

occupied territories simultaneously shaped and were shaped by a much messier set of local realities.

Their unpublished sources, which constituted speculative musings at a time when state borders were

in flux rather than a comprehensive vision of nationality policies, reveal important dynamics that are

overlooked if we focus solely on top-down discussions of Polish nationalism. Not only can we see

how the flexible language of civilizational hierarchies at a local level gave emerging stakeholders in

the Polish state project a way of promoting their own political visions against those of others (Polish

or otherwise), but we can also trace the emerging alternatives to the official policy of minority rights.

Far from simply taking on the idea that had been enshrined in Poland’s Minority Treaty—that non-

Polish populations were legally equal citizens whose rights as minorities the state was obligated to

respect—Polish elites experimented with criteria that simultaneously included and excluded the

diverse populations that came under their rule. As it turned out, class and economic realities always

interacted with imaginative local constructions of national groups.

The Polish occupation did not last for too much longer. In April 1920, the leaders of the

Polish state and its new and soon-to-be-defunct Ukrainian counterpart agreed to cooperate militarily

in order to push the Bolsheviks back toward the east and allow for the establishment of a Ukrainian

state that would act as a Polish-supported buffer against Russian aggression (while keeping the

Polish-occupied areas of Volhynia as part of the Polish state). The initiative failed. Following the

collapse of the Kiev offensive, the Red Army advanced as far as Warsaw in the summer of 1920,

only to retreat through the region after the Battle of Warsaw, leaving more destruction in its wake.

The transition from occupation to state administration was marked by significant institutional

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