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Updated: June 10, 2025
Those that have peered into that abyss, where the dreams of Panslavism, of universal conquest, mingled with the hate and contempt for Western ideas, drift impotently like shapes of mist, know well that it is bottomless; that there is in it no ground for anything that could in the remotest degree serve even the lowest interests of mankind and certainly no ground ready for a revolution.
Upon the throne of the Romanoffs the man is soon absorbed by the Autocrat. The traditional policy of St. Petersburg is not an atmosphere in which the plant of regeneration can grow, and the fanciful idea became soon a weapon of oppression and of Russian preponderance Russia availed herself of the idea of Panslavism to break Turkey down, and to make an obedient satellite out of Austria.
Love of the Holy Shrines begat the war of 1853, racial ardour the war of 1876. The first was directed by a single will, the second by national enthusiasm; yet the mind of Nicholas was no less tossed by a breathless strife of opposing desires and moods than was Russia at large by the struggle between Panslavism and statesmanship.
The Rascians are strongly imbued with ideas of Panslavism, and now disdain any other name than that of Servians; it would be a great offence to call the humblest individual of the race by the old appellation of Rascian or Ratzen. These so-called Servian subjects of the crown of St. Stephen number about 800,000!
This ambition got hold of all the Sclave nations through Europe; so Panslavism became the source of a movement, not of nationality, but of the dominion of languages. That word "language" replaced every other sentiment, and so it became a curse to the development of liberty. Only one part of the Sclavonic races saw the matter clear, and withstood the current of this dark Russian plot.
It took the most energetic measures to promote national education, and to cultivate those fields of science where no political tares could be sown. The leading idea of the time was Panslavism, the object of which was the union of the Slavic race, an opposition to all foreign domination, and the attainment of a higher intellectual and political condition in the general march of mankind.
But the odium of this cramping was thrown by Austria upon our own conservative party: and thus our national force was divided into antagonistic elements. Besides, the idea of Panslavism and of national rivalries, raised by Russia and fostered by Austria, diverted the excitement of the public mind from the development of common political freedom. And Hungary had no national army.
The downfall of European Turkey being conceded as a foregone conclusion, which of the two races, the Slavic or the Germanic, is to oversee and carry out the reconstruction of the region of the lower Danube? Is Russia, already so immense, to place herself at the head of Panslavism and extend her borders to the Dardanelles?
Turkey still withstands her, but Austria has fallen into the snare. Russia sent out its agents, its moneys, its venomous secret diplomacy; it whispered to the Sclave nations about hatred against foreign dominion about independence of religion connected with nationality under its own supremacy; but chiefly it spoke to them of Panslavism under the protectorate of the Czar.
It would be a great mistake to put the Slavs of the north in the same category with the Slavs of the south: the former are on far better terms with the Magyars; they are for the most part contented, hard-working people, not troubling themselves at all about Panslavism. The reason is not far to seek.
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