We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 November 2020
Recent scholarship on post-imperial Eastern Europe has emphasised the continuation of wartime violence in post-war states. Focusing on the early years of the Polish Second Republic, this article considers how the ‘unmixing’ of Eastern European peoples also unfolded in ways not explicitly violent. Specifically, I demonstrate how the sorting of returning refugees on Poland's new frontiers, the culling of personnel from the former imperial civil service and the submission of citizen denunciations helped to disaggregate loyal citizens from hostile foreigners. All of these practices highlight the importance of internal bordering as a process that accompanied the formal drawing of international boundaries in this period.
1 Sharp, Alan, The Versailles Settlement: Peacemaking After the First World War, 1919–1913 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Gerwarth, Robert, The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2016)Google Scholar; Borodziej, Włodzimirz and Górny, Maciej, Nasza wojna, Tom II: Narody, 1917–1923 (Warsaw: Grupa Wydawnicza Foksal, 2018)Google Scholar.
3 Ther, Philipp, ‘Caught in Between: Border Regions in Modern Europe’, in Bartov, Omer and Weitz, Eric D., Shatterzone of Empires: Coexistence and Violence in the German, Habsburg, Russian, and Ottoman Borderlands (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 485–6Google Scholar; Gerwarth, The Vanquished, 7–8.
4 Adelman, David A., A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today (Nashville, TN: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2014), 156Google Scholar; Böhler, Jochen, Civil War in Central Europe, 1918–1921: The Reconstruction of Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Piotr Wróbel, ‘The Revival of Poland and Paramilitary Violence, 1918–1920’, in Rudiger Bergien and Ralf Prove, eds., Spießer, Patrioten, Revolutionäre: Militärische Mobilisierung und gesellschaftliche Ordnung in der Neuzeit (2010), 281–304.
5 Wróbel, Piotr, ‘The Seeds of Violence: The Brutalization of an East European Region, 1917–1921’, Journal of Modern European History, 1, 1 (2003), 125–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Böhler, Jochen, ‘Enduring Violence: The Postwar Struggles in East–Central Europe, 1917–1921’, Journal of Contemporary History, 50, 1 (2015), 58–77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 In addition to those noted here, see Gerwarth, Robert and Manela, Erez, eds., Empires at War: 1911–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gerwarth, Robert and Horne, John, eds., War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Balkelis, Tomas, War, Revolution, and Nation–Making in Lithuania, 1914–1923 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
7 See also Eichenberg, Julia and Newman, John Paul, ‘Introduction: Aftershocks: Violence in Dissolving Empires after the First World War’, Contemporary European History, 19, 3 (2010), 183–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanborn, Joshua, Imperial Apocalypse: The Great War and the Destruction of the Russian Empire (Oxford University Press, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Roshwald, Aviel, Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia, and the Middle East, 1914–1923 (London: Routledge, 2005)Google Scholar.
8 Jones, Reece, Violent Borders: Refugees and the Right to Move (London: Verso, 2016), 89–118Google Scholar.
9 Balkelis, War, Revolution, and Nation–Making, 1–5; Tooley, T. Hunt, ‘Political Violence and the Border Plebiscite in Upper Silesia, 1919–1921’, Central European History, 21, 1 (1988), 78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 On bordering as a process, see Newman, David, ‘Borders and Bordering: Towards an Interdisciplinary Dialogue’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9, 2 (2006), 171–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Van Houtum, Henk and Van Naerssen, Ton, ‘Bordering, Ordering and Othering’, Royal Dutch Geographical Society KNAG, 93, 2 (2002), 125–36Google Scholar.
11 Żołędowski, Cezary, ‘“Pierwsza repatriacja”. Powroty i przyjazdy osiedleńcze do Polski ze wschodu po I wojnie światowej’, Studia Migracyjne – Przegląd Polonijny, 1, 163 (2017), 63–93Google Scholar.
12 On the return process following the end of hostilities, see Mariusz Korzeniowski, Mądzik, Marek and Tarasiuk, Dariusz, Tułaczy Los: Uchodźcy polscy w imperium rosyjskim w latach pierwszej wojny światowej (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie–Skłodowskiej, 2007), 212–27Google Scholar; Piotrowski, Mirosław, Reemigracja Polaków z Niemiec 1918–1939 (Lublin: Radakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Uniwersytetu Lubelskiego, 2000)Google Scholar; Kozyra, Waldemar, Polityka administracyjna ministrów spraw wewnętrznych Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej w latach 1918–1939 (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie–Skłodowskiej, 2009), 106–13Google Scholar and Jerzy Borzęcki, The Soviet–Polish Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press), 246–.
13 See footnotes 43–6 below.
14 On the ways in which empires continued to serve as objects of identification long after their collapse, see Ther, Philipp, ‘“Imperial Nationalism” as a Challenge for the Study of Nationalism’, in Berger, Stefan and Miller, Alexie, eds., Nationalizing Empires (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2014), 573–91Google Scholar.
15 See especially Gerasimov, Ilya, Glebov, Sergey and Mogilner, Marina, ‘The Postimperial Meets the Postcolonial: Russian Historical Experience and the Postcolonial Moment’, Ab Imperio, 2 (2013), 97–135CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Sablin, Ivan, ‘National Autonomies in the Far Eastern Republic: Post–Imperial Diversity Management in Pacific Russia, 1920–1922’, History and Anthropology, 28, 4 (2017), 445–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On groupness as a concept, see Brubaker, Rogers, ‘Ethnicity Without Groups’, European Journal of Sociology/Archives européennes de sociologie, 43, 2 (2002), 163–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 For the Russian Empire, see Chwalba, Andrzej, Polacy w służbie Moskali (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo naukowe PWN, 1999)Google Scholar; for Galicia, , Stauter–Halsted, Keely, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland, 1848–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001)Google Scholar.
17 On the continuity of imperial practices within nation states, see Miller, Paul and Morelon, Claire, eds., Embers of Empire: Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2019)Google Scholar.
18 Even in Paris amorphous discussions of Polish national ‘character’ influenced decisions about the country's new borders. See Clark, Denis, ‘Poland in the “Paris system”: Self–Determination, Stereotypes, and Decisions in 1919’, Nations and Nationalism, 25, 4 (2019), 1362–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Weitz, Eric D., ‘From the Vienna to the Paris System: International Politics and the Entangled Histories of Human Rights, Forced Deportations, and Civilizing Missions’, American Historical Review, 113, 5 (Dec. 2008), 1313–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
20 House, Edward and Seymour, Charles, eds., What Really Happened at Paris: The Story of the Peace Conference, 1918–1919 (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1921)Google Scholar.
21 Seegel, Steven, Map Men: Transnational Lives and Deaths of Geographers in the Making of East Central Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Riga, Liliana and Kennedy, James, ‘Mitteleuropa as Middle America? “The Inquiry” and the Mapping of East Central Europe in 1919’, Ab Imperio, 4 (2006), 271–300CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gelfand, Lawrence E., The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917–1919 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963)Google Scholar.
23 On the civilisational hierarchies officials in the kresy imposed, see the path–breaking work of Ciancia, Kathryn, On Civilization's Edge: A Polish Borderland in the Interwar World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
24 For an interesting discussion of national stereotypes in the settling of Poland's borders, see Clark, Denis, ‘Poland in the “Paris System”: Self–Determination, Stereotypes, and Decisions in 1919’, Nations and Nationalism, 25, 4 (2019), 1362–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
25 Romer, Eugene, ‘The Population of Poland According to the Census of 1921’, Geographical Review, 13, 3 (1923), 406–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mariusz Korzeniowski, ‘Refugees from Polish territories in Russia during the First World War’, in War; Gatrell, Peter and Zhvanko, Liubov, eds., Europe on the Move: Refugees in the Era of the Great (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017), 66–87Google Scholar.
26 Martina Hermann, ‘“Cities of Barracks”: Refugees in the Austrian Part of the Habsburg Empire during the First World War’, Europe on the Move, 129–55; Kamil Ruszala, ‘Uchodźcy galicyjscy podczas I wojny światowej w monarchii Habsburgów’, Ph.D. Dissertation (Cracow: Jagiellonian University, 2018).
27 Zieliński, Konrad, ‘Kwestia obywatelstwa polskiego dla repatriantów, reemigrantów i uchodźców z Rosji w latach 1918–1922: regulacje prawne a praktyka urzędnicza’, Dzieje Najnowsze, 33, 4 (2001), 23–36Google Scholar.
28 There is a great deal of confusion surrounding requirements for formal citizenship in the early years of the Second Republic. In theory, anyone residing continuously on what would become Polish territory prior to the war was eligible. However, several exceptions made the process less than automatic. These included the denial of citizenship from anyone who had held political office in a foreign country or served in the military of another country without the consent of local authorities, or who had married a foreign citizen. The latter restriction was waved in the case of Poles who married Soviet citizens without a church marriage. See ‘Ustawa z dnia 20 stycznia 1920 roku o obywatelstwa państwa polskiego’, Dziennik Ustaw, 44, 7, 82–3.
29 ‘Minorities Treaty between the Principal Allied and Associated Powers (The British Empire, France, Italy, Japan and the United States) and Poland, signed at Versailles (28 June 1919)’, in Clive, Perry, The Consolidated Treaty Series, vol. 225 (New York, 1919), 412–24Google Scholar.
30 Cabanes, Bruno, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 133–88Google Scholar.
31 Gendarme in Cracow to Nowy Targ gendarme, 28 Apr. 1919, Archiwum Narodowe w Krakowie, Starostwo in Żywiec, hereafter ANKr StŻ II 114, 17–8.
32 Report to the Starostwo in Żywiec from state police post in Zwardoń, 12 Dec. 1919; Report to the Starostwo in Żywiec from Zwardoń, 10 Jan. 1920, ANKr StŻ II 114, 21, 95.
33 Karpus, Zbigniew, Jeńcy i internowani rosyjscy i ukraińscy na terenie Polski w latach 1918–1924 (Toruń, 1999), 15–20Google Scholar.
34 Zieliński, Konrad, ‘Population Displacement and Citizenship in Poland, 1918–1924’, in Baron, Nick and Gatrell, Peter, eds., Homelands: War, Population and Statehood in Eastern Europe and Russia, 1918–1924 (London: Anthem Press, 2004), 102–3Google Scholar.
35 ‘Instrukcji. Prawo Powrotu do Kraju’, 3 May 1918, Przedstawicielstwo Rady Regencyjnej Królestwa Polskiego w Rosji, hereafter PRRKPR, Archiwum Akt Nowych, hereafter AAN 140, 20–1.
36 ‘Uchodźcy i bieżeńcy z Rosji – rejestracja’, Office of the Governor General in Lwów, 8 Mar. 1921, ANKr Starostwo Grodzkie w Krakowie, hereafter StGKr 346.
37 Rada Główna Opiekuńcza, hereafter RGO, in Warsaw, AAN 1350, 1–9.
38 ‘Instrukcji. Prawo do Powrotu do Kraju,’ 3 May1918, AAN PRRKPR 140, 20–1.
39 Appeal from Alma Orłowska to the Representative of the Regency Council of the Polish Kingdom in Russia, 25 Oct. 1918, AAN PRRKPR 146; Appeal from Stanisław Witkowski, 10 Nov. 1918, AAN PRRKPR 147, 227.
40 Circular from Count Lasocki of the Polish Liquidation Commission to all commissioners of the PLC and the chief of police in Cracow, 19 Jan. 1919, ANKr StGKr 23, 391.
41 Letter from the Presidium of the High National Court to Cracow police headquarters, 30 Jan. 1919, ANKr StGKr 23, 545, 551–5.
42 Brubaker, Rogers, ‘Aftermaths of Empire and the Unmixing of Peoples: Historical and Comparative Perspectives’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18, 2 (1995), 205CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Letter from the Presidium of the High National Court to Cracow police headquarters, 30 Jan. 1919, ANKr StGKr 23, 545.
44 Andrzej Makas to Cracow police headquarters, 6 Feb. 1919, ANKr StGKr 24, 119–23.
45 ‘Usunięcie Czechów, Niemców i Rusinów z krak. Dyrekcyi kolejowej. Patryotyczne stanowisko naszych kolejarzy’, Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny, 27 Jan. 1919, 3.
46 ‘Życie gospodarcze w rękach wrogów’, Ilustrowany Kurier Codzienny, 5 Feb. 1919, 2.
47 These denunciations are found in the files of the Cracow District Office (Starostwo Grodzkie w Krakowie) housed at the National Archive in Cracow. The files contain accusations of disloyalty and legal investigations into ‘enemy aliens’ who were incarcerated in the Dąbie internment camp near Cracow.
48 ‘Szpiedzy Cześcy i Ukraińscy’, Głos Narodu, 28 Jan. 1919; ‘Szpiedzy Cześcy i Ukraińscy’, Illustrowany Kurier Codzienny, 29 Jan. 1919.
49 Fitzpatrick, Sheila and Gellately, Robert, ‘Introduction to the Practices of Denunciation in Modern European History’, The Journal of Modern History, 68, 4 (Dec. 1996), 747–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
50 Connelly, John, ‘The Uses of Volksgemeinschaft: Letters to the NSDAP Kreisleitung Eisenach, 1939–1940’, The Journal of Modern History, 68, 4 (Dec. 1996), 899–930CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
51 Gellately, Robert, ‘Denunciations in Twentieth–Century Germany: Aspects of Self–Policing in the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic’, The Journal of Modern History, 68, 4 (Dec. 1996), 931–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
52 Scheer, Tamara, ‘Denunciations and the Decline of the Habsburg Home Front During the First World War’, European Review of History: Revue européennes d'histoire, 24, 2 (2017), 214–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Healy, Maureen, Vienna and the Fall of the Habsburg Empire: Total War and Everyday Life in World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 148–59Google Scholar.
53 Anonymous letter from ‘an electrical official’ to Cracow police, 2 Feb. 1919; letter from brewery worker Jan Radłowski to Cracow police headquarters, 28 Jan. 1919; statement from Galician Municipal War Credit Bank to Cracow police headquarters, 2 Feb. 1919, ANKr StGKr 23, 809–14, 821–4, 857–60.
54 Anonymous denunciation from ‘the residents of Dębniki’ to the police chief in Cracow, 3 Feb. 1919. ANKr StGKr 24, 637–48.
55 Electrical official to Cracow police regarding the Ruthenian, Mikołaj Harasymczuk, 2 Feb. 1919; confidential memo to Cracow police regarding Czechs and Jews guarding military warehouse; report from the ‘members of an association’ on Piotr Kriżnik, 1 Feb. 1919; anonymous letter to Cracow police regarding Jan Siefert, 4 Feb. 1919, ANKr StGKr 23, 845, 857–60, 719–22; ANKr StGKr 24, 627–36.
56 Testimony of Julijanna Majka, 11 Feb. 1919, ANKr StGKr 24, 319–22.
57 Ministry of Internal Affairs, Political Department, Defensive Division, Warsaw, to the Information Section of the District Command in Cracow, 25 Oct. 1919, StGKr 31, 753–59.
58 Józef Kraszewski to Cracow Police Headquarters, 23 Oct. 1919, ANKr StGKr 31, 39–45.
59 Ministry of Internal Affairs to Cracow police headquarters, 31 Nov. 1921, ANKr StGKr 50, 1–6.
60 Anonymous letter to Cracow police headquarters, 7 Jan. 1920, ANKr StGKr 33, 163–9.
61 Police in Lwów to police in Cracow, 18 Nov. 1919, ANKr StGKr 31, 1003.
62 Anonymous denunciation to Cracow police headquarters, 7 Jan. 1920, ANKr StGKr 33, 163–9; a defence of Mr. Sokołowski came from the Liga Pomocy Przemysłowej in Lwów, 29 Jan. 1920 signed by the president and vice president of League, ANKr StGKr 33, 695.
63 Anonymous denunciation to Cracow police headquarters regarding Jan Seifert, 3 Feb. 1919. ANKr StGKr 23, 845; anonymous denunciation to Cracow police regarding Mr. Langer and Mr. Waliczek, 2 Feb. 1919, ANKr StGKr 23, 787–8.
64 Report of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, state police command in Cracow, to Cracow police headquarters, 31 Nov. 1921, ANKr StGKr 50, 1–6.
65 ANKr StGKr 31, 39–45.
66 Memo from the Cracow Magistrate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Warsaw, 27 Sept. 1919, APKr StGKr 30, 301.
67 ‘Brak mieszkań’, Nowa Reforma, 2 Oct. 1919; ‘Brak mieszkań w Krakowie’, Goniec Krakowski, 1 Oct. 1919.
68 Appeal from Agnieszka Klewar on behalf of Antoni Klewar, 6 Feb. 1919; appeal from Joana Rozbozil on behalf of Edward Rozbozil, 5 Feb. 1919 to Cracow police headquarters, ANKr StGKr 24, 17–9, 63.
69 Letter from Andrzej Makas to Cracow police headquarters, 6 Feb. 1919. ANKr StGKr 24, 119–23.
70 Józef Skrynkowicz to Cracow police headquarters. Authorities released Peranek from internment on 6 Feb. 1919 seemingly in response to this letter.
71 See, for example, the statement from the Galicyjski Miejski Wojenny Zakład Kredytowy to the Police Chief in Cracow, 2 Feb. 1919, in defence of Jan Dragańczuk, Ruthene, ANKr StGKr 23, 821–4.
