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.
CITATION STYLE
Boridczenko, S. (2022). Cross-Border Movement in Interwar Polesie as a Manifestation of the Local Population’s Indifference towards the State. Historical Journal, 65(5), 1354–1373. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0018246X21000911
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