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changes too. The Civil Administration was dissolved in September 1920, the Volhynian province
was created in February 1921 as an administratively integral part of the Second Republic, and the
Guard transformed itself into the Society for the Borderland Guard (Towarzystwo Straży Kresowej),
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whose influence decreased dramatically after the 1922 parliamentary elections.
But while the Polish military occupation of 1919 and 1920 may appear at first glance to form
the wartime preface to the history of the interwar province, the end of formal conflict marked less of
a break and more of a continuity. In a place where land and food remained scarce and sought-after
resources, where the perception that foreign imperial legacies lingered on, and where memories of
violence and political upheaval were recent and raw, the Polish state struggled to maintain, or even
gain, control over local people. Positioning themselves between broader geopolitical shifts and local
exigencies, a new wave of civilizers entered the chaotic world of Volhynia in the early 1920s. It is to
their stories that we now turn.
90 See Zielińska, Towarzystwo Straży Kresowej, 191. The TSK leadership split with Piłsudski in the run-up to the
elections. Schenke, Nationalstaat und nationale Frage, 73-4.
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