On the Threshold of Dismissal. Head of the Polesia Province Jan Krahelski in View of the Situation in Polesia in 1932

Abstract

In the Second Polish Republic, the culmination point of the huge economic crisis called the Great Depression occurred in 1932. The crisis affected particularly inhabitants of villages, including those dominated by national minorities in eastern provinces. One such region was Polesia. The aim of this text is to answer the question of how the situation of economic collapse was addressed by representatives of the state administration system, one of whom was Jan Krahelski – the Head of the Polesia Province in 1926–1932. At the end of his period in office, he often expressed his views on the condition of the province and the desirable means that could have reduced the consequences of the crisis. The text is based on archival materials acquired from archives of Poland, Belarus, and Russia. Krahelski was an advocate of moderate nationality policy. He refrained from the Polonisation of national minorities and tried not to escalate political repressions almost until the end of his period in office as Head of the province. The radicalisation of social moods combined with the deepening economic collapse forced him to revise his opinion about the methods of ensuring internal security. The analysis of the source materials, for which an important point of reference is also an armed rebellion that occurred on the borderland of the Kashirsky County [the Polesia Province] and the Kovel County [the Volhynia Province], suggests that administrative bodies in the eastern provinces could properly diagnose the general condition of the territory entrusted to them, but at the same time, they did not fully recognise its sources; therefore, they may have been surprised with the collapse of the order.