The uprising of 1868 brought about the loss of the nobility as a class in Poland. Because the peasants were freed from their work for the nobility and the nobility was either deported, heavily taxed, and the confiscation of land for those that participated in the uprising. The autonomy of the Kingdom of Poland was gone and the Russians took over with Russian taught in all the schools. There was a mass move to the city from the country-side and the descendants of the gentry started joining civil society as either the intelligentsia or the working class. The petty gentry became leaders in the proletariat movements and in the factories. Poland was slowly becoming a capitalist country. 283
Because of the brutal treatment of people during the uprising and the violence involved bore the end of "Political Romanticism." Young people in Warsaw took up the name "positivists" from the term introduced by the French philosopher, Auguste Compte: Positivist Philosophy. Compte's work represents the height of the 19th century cult of science. In their thinking, Polish Positivists were less indebted to Compte than they were to English utilitarians, John Stewart Mill and Herbert Spencer.283
The fall of the old Republic was blamed on the the anarchy of the nobles, which contrasted with the romantic view that claimed that Poland was an innocent victim of a viscious neighbor. 284
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