Page 71 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

province was part of an attempt to formalize and institutionalize the region’s political subordination

to the democratically elected government in Warsaw.

This seemingly organized system masked serious chaos. In fact, the situation in Volhynia

was an exaggerated reflection of the well-publicized political instability of Warsaw, where the

national parliament constituted a cacophonous chamber for a boggling number of political parties.

Between November 1918 and May 1926, Poland’s political disarray was epitomized by the fourteen

governments, mainly right-wing coalitions, that came and went through what must have seemed like

an endlessly revolving door in the nation’s capital, while in Volhynia itself, no fewer than seven

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governors served between March 1921 and February 1925. Across the eastern borderlands, the

persistence of a mish-mash of legislation that had been created by the Russian imperial authorities,

the Polish Civil Administration of 1919-20, and the new parliament in Warsaw did not make things

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any easier for officials who attempted to shore up state power. It was only in 1924 that the President

of Ministers established a commission to standardize laws on issues as diverse and quotidian as

pharmacy regulations, passports and personal documents, building codes, and the roles of night

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watchmen, policemen, and village administrators.

The challenges of administrative, legal, and political integration were exacerbated by the

kresy’s physical and psychological isolation from Warsaw. The distance between the nation’s capital

and Równe, Volhynia’s largest town, was almost 300 kilometers, and the poor state of railroad lines

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meant that the journey took some 12 hours during the early years of the Second Republic. But

Volhynia’s peripherality was not marked by physical distance alone. Even after military conflicts had

officially ceased here, Poles on both the right and the left stated that the news that got back to

7 Eva Plach, The Clash of Moral Nations: Cultural Politics in Piłsudski's Poland, 1926-1935 (Athens, 2006), 3.
8 On the need to regulate the chaotic legal situation in the eastern borderlands, see AAN MSW (Part 1) 674/201;
Stanisław Srokowski, Uwagi o kresach wschodnich (Kraków, 1925), 331.
9 Mędrzecki, Województwo wołyńskie, 20; Schenke, Nationalstaat und nationale Frage, 78, fn. 158. In general, see
the various documents collected in AAN MSW (Part 1) 674.
10 “Koleje na Wołyniu,” Życie Wołynia, February 10, 1924, 6.

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