Page 97 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

If Poznanians represented a notable example of urban elites beyond the borders of the kresy

refashioning themselves as internal civilizational conduits, they were by no means alone in this

endeavor. Political leaders in the city of Lublin in central Poland also used Volhynia, along with the

kresy more generally, as a foil to bolster their position in the emerging Polish state. In many ways,

the claim that Lublin, rather than Poznań, could act as a link between central Poland and Volhynia

was easier to make. After all, Lublin had, like Volhynia, found itself under Russian rule prior to

1914, meaning that the two regions had shared some common imperial experiences that were quite

different from those of their Poznanian co-nationals. Lublin’s proximity to Volhynia also meant that

there already existed a number of administrative and demographic connections between the two

places. Poland’s Military Region Number II, which was based in Lublin, covered the province of

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Volhynia, while the Volhynian court system similarly came under Lublin’s jurisdiction. In addition,
many people from the Lublin province had moved to Volhynia during and after the war, since land

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had been cheaper in the eastern province than it was in other areas of Poland.
At the same time, however, the narrative that was constructed by city leaders in Lublin

during the 1920s, like that put forward by Poznanians, went much deeper than these obvious

connections and instead indicated more imaginative attempts to refashion the city’s image on the

national stage. Most importantly, city leaders argued that the inhabitants of Lublin both understood

the experiences of Russian domination and had stronger civilizational connections to the West than

did inhabitants of the former imperial borderlands, making them well suited to the task of connecting

Volhynia with central Poland. Lublin, after all, suffered from many of the same “civilizational”

deficits as its eastern counterparts, which manifested themselves in poor living conditions and

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underdeveloped municipal facilities like sewer and water-supply systems. And yet the rhetoric that

89 Schenke, Nationalstaat und nationale Frage, 73.
90 According to data from 1921, 13,000 people who originated in Lublin province moved to the new Volhynian
province. Hryciuk, Przemiany narodowościowe, 144.
91 Józef Marczuk, Prezydenci miasta Lublina, 1918-1939 (Lublin, 1994), 5-6.

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