Origins
The origins of the ND can be traced to the 1864 failure of the January 1863 Uprising and to the era of Polish Positivism. After that Uprising – the last in a series of 19th-century Polish uprisings – had been bloodily crushed by Poland's partitioners, the new generation of Polish patriots and politicians concluded that Poland's independence would not be won on the battlefield but through education and culture.
In 1886 the secret Polish League (Liga Polska) was founded, in 1893 renamed National League (Liga Narodowa). From 1895 the League published a newspaper, Przegląd Wszechpolski (The All-Polish Review), and from 1897 it had an official political party, the National-Democratic Party (Stronnictwo Narodowo-Demokratyczne). Unlike the Polish Socialist Party (PPS), the ND advocated peaceful negotiations. Influenced by Roman Dmowski's radical nationalist and social-Darwinist ideas, National Democrats turned against other nationalities within the Polish lands, most notably the Jews; anti-Semitism became a key element of ND ideology.
During World War I, while PPS, under the influence of Józef Piłsudski, supported the Central Powers against Russia (the Polish Legions), the ND first allied itself with the Russian Empire (supporting the creation of the Puławy Legion) and later with the Western Powers (supporting the Polish Blue Army in France). At war's end, many ND politicians enjoyed much more influence abroad than in Poland. This allowed them to share power with Piłsudski, who had much more support in the military than they did. Still, due to their support abroad, ND politicians such as Dmowski and Ignacy Paderewski were able to gain backing for some Polish demands at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and in the Treaty of Versailles.
Read more about this topic: National Democracy
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)