Destigmatisation Process within Henryk Józewski’s Volhynian Experiment

Su m m ar y: In the social sciences and liberal arts, the issue of labelling is an important field of analysis for a better understanding of the functioning of an individual in a group. The labelling theory has been developing since the 1950s, mainly in the United States. This theory found considerable interest also among the Polish resocialisation thought. The reversal of social labelling, that is the start of the destigmatisation process, seems particularly important from the readaptation perspective. In the paper, the discussion on destigmatisation is related to the Volhynian social policy project implemented between 1928 and 1938 by Henryk Józewski which was later called the ‘Volhynian Experiment’. The aim of the experiment was a normalisation of the Polish-Ukrainian relations which during the Second Polish Republic remained tense.