Violence by Other Means: Denunciation and Belonging in Post-Imperial Poland, 1918–1923

Abstract

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.