Authors

Jagoda Wierzejska¹;  ¹ University of Warsaw, Poland

Discussion

The presentation will analyse two dimensions of the dominant Polish discourse on the Hutsul Region and the Hutsul population in the Second Polish Republic (1918-1939): first, a tendency to exoticise the region and its indigenous inhabitants, second, a tendency to include them in the Polish, national cognitive framework. 

The Hutsul Region of the Eastern Carpathians, incorporated in reborn Poland after the collapse of the Habsburg Empire and the Polish-Ukrainian War (1918-1919), was considered remote and barely known in the new country. This resulted in the need to unite the Hutsul Region with the lowland area of Poland and to bring the ethnic Hutsul minority closer to the Polish nation. The creators of the Polish dominant discourse tried to achieve these goals in two ways. On the one hand, they showed the region as a marvellous wilderness, which offered visitors freedom and a possibility of unique adventures. On the other hand, they emphasised the region’s close ties with Polish history, tradition and modern times. Such a discourse will be interpreted in the presentation as a manifestation of the appropriation of the region for the needs of the Polish state and nation, but also as a reflection of Polish unsatisfied colonial ambitions and aspirations for national or at least state assimilation of ethnic minorities in the Second Polish Republic. The subject of the analysis will be the interwar Polish discourse on the Hutsul Region focused on the local spatiality, materiality and community, especially texts on the local history and tourism supplemented by photographs.