Page 77 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

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press. As such, the Polish right conceptualized the problem of integrating the lands into the rest of
Poland not simply as casting off the formal chains of Russian imperialism, but also as part of a longer

term process that involved ferreting out the remnants of imperialism and foreignness within

Volhynia’s diverse population. In their eyes, a frightening paradox existed at the heart of Poland’s

relationship with the kresy: the political power of ethnic Poles was being eroded in favor of “foreign”

elements, even now—especially now—that Russian imperialism had been officially dissolved. In

1923, the author of an article in the National Democratic journal National Thought (Myśl Narodowa)

lamented what he saw as the ultimate irony: “These lands are more foreign to us than they were

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before the war.”

Who, precisely, was to blame for this dire state of affairs? When journalists at the leading

National Democratic newspaper, the Warsaw Gazette (Gazeta Warszawska), reported on the fact that

“Ruthenians” in Volhynia had voted for the national minority list, they argued that people’s

discontent with the Polish administration had been exploited very skillfully by Poland’s national

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enemies, namely Jews and Ukrainian nationalists. At the same time, however, the Polish right also
blamed their Polish compatriots on the left, and particularly the supporters of Piłsudski’s “mob rule”

in the east, for the disaster at the polls. Indeed, even after Piłsudski had retired from the political

scene, articles in National Thought continued to depict his supporters as “allying themselves with

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foreign nationals” and destroying the Polish state from within. Echoing Dmowski’s language from

the prewar period—that Poles who opposed the National Democrats’ stance were little more than

“half-Poles” or even “quarter-Poles”—right-wing nationalists argued that the problem lay within the

28 Schenke, Nationalstaat und nationale Frage, 139.
29 Władysław Budzyński, “Kiedy kres tej kresowej gospodarce?” Myśl Narodowa, October 27, 1923, 7.
30 Reported in a special section on “the defeat of Polonism in Volhynia,” in Bulletin périodique de la presse
polonaise du 16 au 30 Novembre (Ministère des Affaires étrangères), December 12, 1922, 21.
31 “Kresy i Wołyń,” Myśl Narodowa, November 18, 1922, 14-15.

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