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important ways. First, they argued that the national government in Warsaw was not only dominated

by supporters of Józef Piłsudski but was also run by officials who were lower down on the

civilizational hierarchy than their Poznanian counterparts. These Endeks (as supporters of the

Endecja were known) argued that Varsovians exhibited signs of the corruption and incompetence that

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were typical byproducts of backward Russian rule. When the National Democrat Stanisław Kozicki

claimed that Poznań had closer links with Western European civilization than did the nation’s capital,

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he therefore drew on a broader set of rhetorical opposites. If Poznań, with its brick buildings,
legacies of efficient German administration, and high literacy rates, could claim to be European,

Western, and civilized, then the formerly Russian-ruled areas, including Warsaw, were anarchic,

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politically incompetent, and backward. As they competed for power, representatives of Poznań
proposed their own civilizing mission in the kresy, one that superseded and bypassed that emanating

from Warsaw. Indeed, even before the eastern border had been set, plans were made for kresy

populations to travel to the Poznań region in order to learn about the more sophisticated agricultural

techniques that were practiced there, while both policemen and wagons of food made their way in the

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opposite direction.

The second—and related—argument that was central to the Poznanian view of the post-

imperial Polish state was that Jews, with their allegedly tight connections to the Russian empire,

constituted an uncivilized and non-Western foreign influence on Poland, particularly in the eastern

borderlands. With Poznań’s Jewish population hovering at just over 1% in 1921, municipal leaders

73 On Roman Dmowski’s position, see Dmowski, “Społeczeństwo Poznańskiego i Pomorza w odbudowanej Polsce,”
Głos Lubelski, December 9, 1925, 2. On Poznanian regionalism against Warsaw, see Barbara Wysocka, Regionalizm
wielkopolski w II Rzeczypospolitej 1919-1939 (Poznań, 1981), 21-22; Moskal, Im Spannungsfeld von Region und
Nation, 40.
74 Kozicki, Pamiętnik, 468.
75 Moskal, Im Spannungsfeld von Region und Nation, 36.
76 On the visit, see the letter from the Towarzystwo b. zaboru pruskiego dla kresów połn.-wschodnich z siebiba w
Poznaniu to Ministerstwo Dep. Rolnictwa i Dóbr Państwowych w Poznaniu (April 3, 1920), APP MbDPwP
53/295/0/1/80/40. On police, see “Protokuł Zjazdu Instruktorów Straży Kresowej Okręgu Wołyńskiego z dnia 5/V
1920 r.,” AAN TSK 240/21; on wagons, see “Raport tygodniowy za czas od 16/X do 23/X.1919” (Kowel, October
23, 1919), AAN TSK 214/12.

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