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Poland The Time of "Organic Work"
Increasing oppression at Russian hands after failed
national
uprisings finally convinced Polish leaders that
insurrection was
premature at best and perhaps fundamentally misguided and
counterproductive. During the decades that followed the
January
Insurrection, 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. This approach took the name Organic
Work
for its philosophy of strengthening Polish society at the
grass
roots. For some, the adoption of Organic Work meant
permanent
resignation to foreign rule, but many advocates
recommended it as
a strategy to combat repression while awaiting an eventual
opportunity to achieve self-government.
Not nearly as colorful as the rebellions nor as loftily
enshrined in national memory, the quotidian methods of
Organic
Work proved well suited to the political conditions of the
later
nineteenth century. The international balance of forces
did not
favor the recovery of statehood when 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 the Prussian state, aimed at the assimilation
of its
eastern provinces inhabited by Poles. At the same time,
St.
Petersburg attempted to Russify the former Congress
Kingdom,
joining Berlin in levying restrictions against use of the
Polish
language and cultural expression. Poles under Russian and
German
rule also endured official campaigns against the Roman
Catholic
Church: the Cultural Struggle (Kulturkampf) of Chancellor
Otto
von Bismarck to bring the Roman Catholic Church under
state
control and the Russian campaign to extend 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 amidst the oppression of German
and
Russian Poland. The Galician provincial Sejm acted as a
semiautonomous parliamentary body, and Poles represented
the
region in the empire government in Vienna. In the late
1800s, the
universities of Kraków and L'vov (Polish form Lwów) became
the
centers of Polish intellectual activity, and Kraków became
the
center 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 (see Glossary).
Data as of October 1992
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