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Organic work (Polish : praca organiczna) was a phrase adopted from Herbert Spencer by 19th-century Polish Positivists to denote the concept that the nation's vital powers should be devoted to labour ("work from the foundations"), rather than to fruitless national uprisings against the overwhelming militaries of the partitioning empires.
The basic goals of organic work included educating the Polish masses and increasing their economic potential, which was intended to turn the Polish lower classes into a modern nation and to end the population's Germanisation and Russification, pursued by the partitioning occupiers. [1]
Increasing oppression by Russia after failed national uprisings (the November Uprising of 1830–1831 and the January Uprising of 1863–1864) finally convinced Polish leaders that the insurrections had been premature at best and perhaps fundamentally misguided and counterproductive. [2] During the decades that followed, Poles largely forsook the goal of immediate independence and turned instead to fortifying the nation through the subtler means of education, economic development and modernization. That approach took the name "organic work" because of its philosophy of strengthening Polish society at the grassroots level and was influenced by Positivism. For some, the adoption of organic work meant permanent resignation to foreign rule, but many advocates recommended it as a strategy to combat repression and to await an eventual opportunity for the achievement of self-government.
Neither as colourful as the Polish rebellions nor as loftily enshrined in national memory, the quotidian methods of organic work proved well suited to the political conditions of the late 19th century. The international balance of forces then did not favour the recovery of Polish statehood, and both Russia and Germany appeared bent on the eventual eradication of Polish national identity. The German Empire, established in 1871 as an expanded version of Prussia, aimed at the assimilation of the eastern provinces inhabited by Poles. At the same time, St. Petersburg attempted to russify the former Congress Kingdom and joined Berlin in levying restrictions against use of the Polish language and culture. Poles under Russian and German rule also endured official campaigns against the Roman Catholic Church: the cultural struggle (Kulturkampf) of German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck to bring the Roman Catholic Church under state control and the Russian campaign to replace Catholicism by extending Orthodoxy throughout the empire.
The Polish subjects under Austrian jurisdiction (after 1867, the Habsburg Empire was commonly known as Austria-Hungary) confronted a generally more lenient regime. Poles suffered no religious persecution in predominantly-Catholic Austria, and Vienna counted on the Polish nobility as allies in the complex political calculus of its multinational realm. In return for loyalty, Austrian Poland, or Galicia, received considerable administrative and cultural autonomy. Galicia gained a reputation as an oasis of toleration in contrast to the oppression of German and Russian Poland. The Galician Sejm acted as a semiautonomous parliamentary body in the province, and Poles represented the region in the empire government in Vienna. In the late 1800s, the Universities of Kraków and Lwów became the centers of Polish intellectual activity, and Kraków became the centre of Polish art and thought. Even after the restoration of independence, many residents of southern Poland retained a touch of nostalgia for the days of the Habsburg Empire.
The Partitions of Poland were three partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth that took place toward the end of the 18th century and ended the existence of the state, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland and Lithuania for 123 years. The partitions were conducted by the Habsburg monarchy, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire, which divided up the Commonwealth lands among themselves progressively in the process of territorial seizures and annexations.
From 1795 to 1918, Poland was split between Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and Russia and had no independent existence. In 1795 the third and the last of the three 18th-century partitions of Poland ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Nevertheless, events both within and outside the Polish lands kept hopes for restoration of Polish independence alive throughout the 19th century. Poland's geopolitical location on the Northern European Lowlands became especially important in a period when its expansionist neighbors, the Kingdom of Prussia and Imperial Russia, involved themselves intensely in European rivalries and alliances as modern nation-states took form over the entire continent.
The January Uprising was an insurrection principally in Russia's Kingdom of Poland that was aimed at putting an end to Russian occupation of part of Poland and regaining independence. It began on 22 January 1863 and continued until the last insurgents were captured by the Russian forces in 1864.
Galicia is a historical and geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine, long part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It covers much of the other historic regions of Red Ruthenia and Lesser Poland.
Ternopil Oblast, also referred to as Ternopilshchyna or Ternopillia, is an oblast (province) of Ukraine. Its administrative center is Ternopil, through which flows the Seret, a tributary of the Dniester. Population: 1,021,713.
The Kraków uprising of 1846 was an attempt, led by Polish insurgents such as Jan Tyssowski and Edward Dembowski, to incite a fight for national independence. The uprising was centered on the city of Kraków, the capital of a small state of Free City of Krakow. It was directed at the powers that partitioned Poland, in particular the nearby Austrian Empire. The uprising lasted about nine days and ended with Austrian victory.
The Free, Independent, and Strictly Neutral City of Cracow with its Territory, more commonly known as the Free City of Cracow, and the Republic of Cracow, was a city republic created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, which included the Polish city of Cracow and its surrounding areas.
The Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Galicia or colloquially Austrian Poland, was a constituent possession of the Habsburg monarchy in the historical region of Galicia in Eastern Europe. The crownland was established in 1772. The lands were annexed from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth as part of the First Partition of Poland. In 1804 it became a crownland of the newly proclaimed Austrian Empire. From 1867 it was a crownland within the Cisleithanian or Austrian half of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary. It maintained a degree of provincial autonomy. Its status remained unchanged until the dissolution of the monarchy in 1918.
The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polish–Lithuanian national sovereignty until 1918. The partition was the result of the Kościuszko Uprising and was followed by a number of Polish–Lithuanian uprisings during the period.
Polish Positivism was a social, literary and philosophical movement that became dominant in late-19th-century partitioned Poland following Romanticism in Poland and the suppression of the January 1863 Uprising against the Russian Empire. The Positivist period lasted until the turn of the 20th century and the advent of the modernist Young Poland movement.
Western Ukraine or West Ukraine refers to the western territories of Ukraine. There is no universally accepted definition of the territory's boundaries, but the contemporary Ukrainian administrative regions (oblasts) of Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, Ternopil and Zakarpattia are typically included. In addition, Volyn and Rivne Oblasts are also usually included. It is less common to include the Khmelnytskyi Oblasts in this category. It includes several historical regions such as Carpathian Ruthenia, Halychyna including Pokuttia, most of Volhynia, northern Bukovina and the Hertsa region, and Podolia. Western Ukraine is sometimes considered to include areas of eastern Volhynia, Podolia, and the small northern portion of Bessarabia.
There were many resistance movements in partitioned Poland between 1795 and 1918. Although some of the szlachta was reconciled to the end of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, the possibility of Polish independence was kept alive by events within and without Poland throughout the 19th century. Poland's location on the North European Plain became especially significant in a period when its neighbours, the Kingdom of Prussia and Russia were intensely involved in European rivalries and alliances and modern nation states took form over the entire continent.
The Union of Active Struggle, also translated as Union for Active Struggle and Union for Active Resistance, was a Polish secret military organization founded in June 1908 in Lwów by Józef Piłsudski, Marian Kukiel, Kazimierz Sosnkowski and Władysław Sikorski, all members of the Combat Organization of the Polish Socialist Party in the Kingdom of Poland.
After partitioning Poland at the end of the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia and later the German Empire imposed a number of Germanisation policies and measures in the newly gained territories, aimed at limiting the Polish ethnic presence and culture in these areas. This process continued through its various stages until the end of World War I, when most of the territories became part of the Second Polish Republic, which largely limited the capacity of further Germanisation efforts of the Weimar Republic until the occupation during World War II.
New Galicia or West Galicia was an administrative region of the Habsburg monarchy, constituted from the territory annexed in the course of the Third Partition of Poland in 1795.
Zygmunt Balicki was a Polish sociologist, publicist and one of the first leading thinkers of the modern Polish nationalism in the late 19th century under the foreign Partitions of Poland. Balicki developed his original political thought inspired by the ideals of Aleksander Świętochowski from the movement of Positivism which was marked by the attempts at trying to stop the wholesale Russification and Germanization of the Poles ever since the Polish language was banned in reprisal for the January Uprising. Balicki was a key protagonist in the National Democratic campaign of antisemitic agitation.
The Austrian Partition comprises the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth acquired by the Habsburg monarchy during the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. The three partitions were conducted jointly by the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Prussia and Habsburg Austria, resulting in the complete elimination of the Polish Crown. Austria acquired Polish lands during the First Partition of 1772, and Third Partition of Poland in 1795. In the end, the Austrian sector encompassed the second-largest share of the Commonwealth's population after Russia; over 2.65 million people living on 128,900 km2 of land constituting the formerly south-central part of the Republic.
Austria–Poland relations are foreign relations between Austria and Poland. The two nations have a very long historical relationship dating back several centuries, which has been complicated throughout most of their history.
The Galician Peasant Uprising of 1846, also known as the Galician Rabacja, Galician Slaughter, or the Szela uprising, was a two-month uprising of impoverished Austrian Galician[a] peasants that led to the suppression of the szlachta uprising and the massacre of szlachta in Galicia, in the Austrian Partition zone, in early 1846. The uprising, which lasted from February to March, primarily affected the lands around the town of Tarnów.
With the arrival of the Hungarians into the heart of the Central European Plain around 899, Slavic tribes of Vistulans, White Croats, and Lendians found themselves under Hungarian rule. In 955 those areas north of the Carpathian Mountains constituted an autonomous part of the Duchy of Bohemia and remained so until around 972, when the first Polish territorial claims began to emerge. This area was mentioned in 981, when Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus' claimed the area on his westward way. In the 11th century the area belonged to Poland, then reverted to Kievan Rus'. However, at the end of the 12th century the Hungarian claims to the principality turned up. Finally Casimir III of Poland annexed it in 1340–1349. Low Germans from Prussia and Middle Germany settled parts of northern and western Galicia from the 13th to 18th centuries, although the vast majority of the historic province remained independent from German and Austrian rule.
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