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Cross-Border Movement in Interwar Polesie as a Manifestation of the Local Population's Indifference towards the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2022

Stanisław Boridczenko Open the ORCID record for Stanisław Boridczenko [Opens in a new window]
Stanisław Boridczenko*
Affiliation:
Institute of History, University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland
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Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The present article addresses how the local population of the Polesie Voivodeship perceived the establishment of the Soviet–Polish state border that separated them into two nations. This article focuses on their co-existence, through the prism of the evolution of the reason for cross-border movements. It aims to show that national indifference is not based on the same attitude towards a modern institution as a result of only a vague knowledge of modern society, but is, very often, the result of a conscious choice in the conditions of the need to live and co-exist with ‘alien’ institutions of power. This article, contributing to a growing literature on how ‘ordinary’ people living near state frontiers both resist and appropriate these demarcations of state sovereignty, is largely based on cross-referencing local state archival material with oral testimony from residents of the time and their descendants.

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Article
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The Historical Journal , Volume 65 , Issue 5 , December 2022 , pp. 1354 - 1373
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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References

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19 Interview with eighty-year-old woman, Pinsk, 12 June 2018.

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43 Polesie Voivodship annual report, 1922, SAotBR, 1/9/47/8.

44 Polesie Region's NarKom annual report, 1922, ZSAiM, 463/3/2–6.

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47 In the calculation, I used documents created by the local Polish authorities, often representing lists of persons, suspected of serving in the Red Army. However, such estimates are extremely inaccurate.

48 The National Archives of Belarus, 4/1/53, 55–7.

49 A series of interviews with the descendants of immigrants in 2016–18 in Brest and Homel districts; furthermore, this was noted in the following works: Smalianchuk, ed., Vosen´, pp. 1–16; Smalianchuk, ed., ‘Za pershymi savetami’, pp. 2–26.

50 The number of such a class, according to my estimates, could reach up to 5–8 per cent of the total population.

51 SAotBR 1/10/144–5.

52 Reports of the local raiispolkom (District Executive Committee), 1922, ZSAiM, 178/5, 7, 10–13.

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61 This conclusion follows from the surveys of migrants conducted by the Border Protection Corps (KOP) in 1928–34. Up to 90 per cent of migrants were classified as belonging to the above-mentioned groups, SAotBR, 1/10/144–51.

62 On Soviet terror, see Snyder, Bloodlands, esp. pp. 59–119.

63 Monthly reports of the KOP in 1928–34, SAotBR, 1/9.

64 A series of interviews with the descendants of immigrants in 2016–17 in the Brest and Homel districts.

65 By my estimates, up to 60 per cent of the local party activists left the region in years 1924–35. In the reports of the governor of the region, even more than 90 per cent of them are mentioned as ‘escapers’ to Russia (SAotBR, 1/10/144–6).

66 Numerical estimation of the phenomenon is extremely difficult. However, based on the official documentation of local self-government bodies, it can be argued that up to 20 per cent of the local non-Polish conscripts ‘ran to Russia’.

67 References to this are often in the reports of the Polesie Voivode in 1924–8.

68 For example, SAotBR 1/8/639.

69 Department of State Security, SAotBR, 1/10/137–9.

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82 On border protection, 1935–9, see SAotBR 1/10/146–7.

83 Materski, ‘The Second Polish Republic’, pp. 332–9.

84 This statement made on the base of transcriptions of conversations with violators of the state border conducted by the KOP and a series of interviews with the inhabitants of Pruzhany, Pinsk, and Berioza districts in 2018–19.

85 SAotBR, 1/10/148–9.

86 A series of interviews with the descendants of immigrants in 2016–18 in Brest and Homel districts.

87 Interview with ninety-year-old woman, Lienin, 1 July 2016.

88 Smalianchuk, ‘Za pershymi savetami’, pp. 1–26.

89 Such changes were also noted by the Polish interwar ethnologists, for example, Joseph Obrebski. See Obrębski, Józef, Dzisiejsi ludzie Polesia i inne eseje, ed. Engelking, Anna (Warsaw, 2005), esp. pp. 20–45, 91–102Google Scholar.

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92 On measures to eliminate smuggling, 1937–9, ZSAiM, 178/4–22.

93 Aliaksandr Smalianchuk, ‘Paleskaja vjoska w stasunku da pana’, in Belaruskaia historyia: Znaistsi chalaveka (Minsk, 2013), pp. 138–54.

94 Interview with ninety-one-year-old woman, Sinkiewicze, 15 June 2016.

95 Stanisław Boridczenko, ‘Strangers: first encounter with the Soviets through the eyes of the population of the Polesie Voivodeship’, Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, forthcoming (2022).

96 In national and state awareness societies, this process is completely different. For example, Paasi, Anssi, Territories, boundaries and consciousness: the changing geographies of the Finnish–Russian boundary (New York, NY, 1996)Google Scholar; Sahlins, Boundaries.

97 On the topic of rural conflict with the modern society, see Colburn, Forrest D., Everyday forms of peasant resistance (New Haven, CT, 1989)Google Scholar; Tilly, Charles, The contentious French (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scott, James C., Decoding subaltern politics: ideology, disguise, and resistance in agrarian politics (London and New York, NY, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

98 On the topic of the Second Polish Republic's attitude to the eastern territories, see Mędrzecki, Włodzimierz, Kresowy kalejdoskop: Wędrówki przez Ziemie Wschodnie Drugiej Rzeczpospolitej, 1918–1939 (Cracow, 2018)Google Scholar; idem, Województwo wołyńskie, 1921–1939: Elementy przemian społecznych, politycznych, cywilizacyjnych (Wrocław 1988).

99 This was probably the first step towards the development of nationalism. See Anderson, Benedict, Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London, 1991), pp. 23–59Google Scholar.

100 On the topic of modern understanding of sovereignty and borders, see Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid, eds., Identities, borders, orders: rethinking international relations theory (Minneapolis, MI, 2001)

101 On the forms of modern state identity, see Donnan, Hastings and Wilson, Thomas M., Borders: frontiers of identity, nation and state (Oxford, 1999), esp. pp. 43–63Google Scholar.