The Time of "Organic Work"
Increasing oppression at Russian hands after failed national uprisings finally convinced Polish leaders that the recent 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, 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 while awaiting an eventual opportunity to achieve self-government.
Neither as colorful as the rebellions nor as loftily enshrined in national memory, the quotidian methods of Organic Work proved well successful in combating policies of occupiers polices of Germanization and Russification.
Read more about this topic: Polish Resistance Movement During The Partitions
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“You smile with pomp & rigor, you talk of benevolence & virtue;
I act with benevolence & virtue & get murdered time after time.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“When life has been well spent, age is a loss of what it can well spare,—muscular strength, organic instincts, gross bulk, and works that belong to these. But the central wisdom, which was old in infancy, is young in fourscore years, and dropping off obstructions, leaves in happy subjects the mind purified and wise.”
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