Page 98 - Ciancia, On Civilization's Edge

emerged in the 1920s reflected a concerted effort on the part of the city’s president, Czesław

Szczepański, and the president of the city council, Jan Turczynowicz, to make the case that Lublin

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was ready to resurrect the role that it had played prior to the partitions. It was a narrative based on a
quest to do nothing less than make Lublin great again.

At no time were these dynamics more in evidence than in May 1924, when the city hosted a

meeting of the leaders of towns from the provinces of Lublin, Volhynia, and Polesie. At the meeting,

Turczynowicz encouraged the assembled guests to take a tour of his city, which, he claimed was

packed with buildings of great significance for Polish history. Not only would visitors be able to see

places that were connected to pre-partition history—like the royal castle, where the Union of Lublin

had been signed in 1569, and countless churches—but also those that were linked to the development

of nineteenth-century Polish nationalism, including the residences of the poet Wincenty Pol, the

novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, and the great Positivist writer, Aleksander Świętochowski. After seeing

such sights, the head of the city council argued, “you will be convinced that Lublin is the blood from

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the blood and the bone from the bones of the Polish state.” A newly founded newspaper, the
Lublin-Kresy Review (Przegląd Lubelsko-Kresowy), which was launched on Christmas Eve 1924,

attempted to sell this nationalist narrative of artistic and literary production to a wider public. Here

again, Turczynowicz’s vision for the future role of Lublin was presented as the revival of its

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historical vocation as a “great city,” which allowed it to “carry its own culture to the eastern kresy.”

Like his counterparts in Poznań, he also offered up the city as a rival to Warsaw and encouraged

people to move there rather than to the capital, since the more easterly city not only offered healthier

conditions, but also provided exciting opportunities for executing the “great mission” of “carrying

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Polish culture to the east.”

92 On these two figures, see Ibid., 9-38.
93 “Zjazd miast w Lublinie,” Dziennik Zarządu m. Lublina, August 2, 1924, 5-6.
94 “Na progu naszej pracy,” Przegląd Lubelsko-Kresowy, December 24, 1924, 2.
95 Jan Turczynowicz, “Lublin w nowej roli,” Przegląd Lubelsko-Kresowy, December 24, 1924, 5.

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