In a Latin treatise, published in 1826 and devoted to the universal Slav language, the Slovak writer, Herkel, uses the expression, 'verus panslavismus'. He was the father of a word which, taken in a political sense, was destined, after 1848, to ring through the world.
If the word was new, what it denoted was old. The notion of Slav solidarity, implying a more or less organic plan for union among Slavs, progressed for three centuries along the paths of philology and literature. It was originated by a poet, the Ragusan Ivan Gondoulich (1588-1638), author of Osman, an epic poem . . . He formulated the idea of mutual assistance among Slavs, with a view to the redemption of the Turk-oppressed race, by singing the victories of Prince Ladislas, the future Ladislas IV, who routed the infidels on the banks of the Dniestr. It was a hymn of gratitude and hope, offered up by the Catholic Slavs of the Adriatic coasts, and addressed to Poland . . .
Shortly after Gondoulich, a Catholic priest of Croatia, Youraj Krijanich (1618-1683), spoke in burning accents of the ' Slavonic nation ' ; his work, a mixture of linguistics, history and politics, bears traces of exalted intellectual and sentimental emotions, influenced perhaps . . . by memories of Byzantium. In Krijanich is shown, for the first time, a clear consciousness, developed beyond the limits of a poetic formula, of the unity of the Slavonic race. Turning no longer towards Poland, but towards Russia, he had a prophetic conception of that country's rôle as a consolidating factor for Slav energies. Krijanich, a Croat, a Papist and a Russophile, expressed himself in a strange dialect—a mixture of Croatian, Russian, and Paleosla—in the hope of creating an idiom of intellectual solidarity for use among all Slavs, whom he called ' our people '. . . . Whereas Gondoulich saw
no oppressor of the Slavonic race other than the Turk, Krijanich added the German. He was the ancestor of the Russian Slavophiles of the nineteenth century. He was completely out of harmony with his age, which could not understand an argument combining the Slavonic idea with Roman Uniatism. He met the usual fate of a precursor. Having offered his services as Librarian to the Czar Alexis Mikailovitch, he obtained from Moscow a mission to reform Russian spelling ; the manuscript of this work was recovered at Tver in 1888. But it was not long before he was suspected of being a Papist agent, and was deported to Siberia, in circumstances which have never been cleared up. At Tobolsk he drew up a treatise on ' Politics ' which, on the lines of Machiavelli's work, was intended to deduce, from the principles of good and evil, the laws of the art of government. Was Peter the Great acquainted with this treatise, and was he influenced by it ? Unfortunately, that is a matter which scholarship has not yet been able to decide. After that we lose trace of Krijanich. A Dutch traveller relates that a monk of that name died under the walls of Vienna, in the ranks of Sobieski's army ; such would seem to be the crowning adventure of that strange visionary . . .
( pages 10 - 11 )
. . . the movement whose watchword was defence of ' brothers in race ', did not arise in official circles. It was a creation of the ' intelligentsia '. It received its first impetus from the immense work of the German historical school in the second third of the nineteenth century.* 'Sanctus amor patriae dat animum ', the epigraph to the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, inspired Chafarik's Slavonic antiquities in 1837, and Palatsky's History of Bohemia. The Slavs threw themselves passionately into these
studies, and allowed th4mselves to be infected with that racial pride which German science displayed, with a tremendous orgy of texts and compilations.
* "I dont' know". The chair of the
Slavonic literature was established in Paris in the early 1800's for Mickiewicz — whom A. Mousset does not mention. (?) There is no question that a major work by a German author would have inspired others. Did A. M mean 'the second third of the eighteenth century' ?. (WPT)
Kollár, a Slovak, Koukouljevich, a Croat, Kopitar and Stanko Vraz, two Slovenes, with Vuk Karajich, a Serb, formed the pleiad of romantic scholars and men of letters who revealed to the Slav peoples the common basis of their culture and their traditions. Their scientific offensive, which Renan was to call . . . 'Comparative Philology transplanted to the political domain', was the prelude to an era of ferment . . .
( pages 12 - 13 )
The Slavonic Congress held in St. Petersburg in May, 1908, was attended by members of the Duma, of Kolo Polskie* (Polish
Club) and the Skupshtina. But only secondary questions were dealt with, to be re-examined . . . in the following month in Prague. These questions included the creation of a Slavonic Bank, a Slavonic Telegraphic Agency, the preparation of an Exhibition, the extension of Sokolism . . . . the time of heroic debates had passed.
* The text has �Kolo Polsko�, it should stand �Polskie�, which I have corrected here and below.
'Koło' means 'wheel' and has come of same Aryan (Indo-European) root-word as 'wheel' ; akin to Greek 'kuklos', etc. etc.
The more closely literal translation of Kolo Polskie would go, 'the Polish circle'. — (WPT)
Then, in the speculations founded on an identical destiny for the Slavonic community, there was one disturbing element—Poland. Towards that country, Tsarist Russia displayed implacable aversion. . . .
Comment the Tsarist Russia's aversion was to own crime — on which it was sitting for about a century — much corrected round 1917 by certain statements and actions of some Russian authors and then aggravated again by the bolshevist threat and the communist onslaught in 1939 and at the later dates.
Also, by the way : One notes very common identification of the soviet agents as "the Russians" which is in fact very inaccurate. The Slav Russians were for the most part victims of the criminal 'ideology' not any less than the other nationalities that were affected by it.
The 'disturbing' factors are far less now (2005) ; or so it seems. (WPT).
For their part the Poles were inclined to think that there existed only two Slavonic people, Russia and themselves, and, of the principles of Slavism, to grasp only that directed against Germany.
It was precisely in the measure in which she appealed to the Slavonic idea that Russia caused them uneasiness. As for the other Slavonic peoples, their relations with them were only occasional. . . .. The seventy-seven Polish deputies who made up the Kolo Polsko ['Polskie'?], and together stood for all the parties represented in the Reichsrat, rarely cast their votes with those of the Slav bloc formed by the Czech, Slovene, Serbo-Croat parties of Istria and Dalmatia. Yet the Slavonic Union of 1907 proved—though for a very short time—that, with them, the Slavs would have secured an absolute majority in the Parliament of Vienna. The Kolo Polskie adopted a realistic and short-sighted policy ; its members derived temporary advantages, but consolidated a régime which the other Slavs declared to be inhuman and condemned by the evolution of the modern world. The Poles saw the Serbs only as Orthodox Christians and vassals of the Russians. They boycotted the last Slav Congresses, in order not to sit at the same table as the Russians. In1911, the Serbs succeeded in
getting them to attend the Slavonic Press Congress which was held during the summer in Belgrade. A characteristic incident spoiled the atmosphere of the gathering. The Poles agreed to attend the banquet offered to the members of the Congress only on the condition that the Imperial hymn . . . should not be played. In an attempt to conciliate all parties, it was agreed not to play either the Russian or the Polish hymn, but to replace them with the Panslav hymn, Ei Sloveni. But no one had thought of the fact that this is sung to the same tune as that of Dabrowsky's hymn, Jeszcze Polska nie zginela . . . Hence an altercation between Poles and Russians, with the result that the latter refused to take part in the proposed outing to the Iron Gates.
It was jokingly said in Belgrade that the Poles were first and foremost Poles, then Catholics, and Slavs when they had time. Yet Bethmann-Hollweg, as President of the Prussian Council in 1912, had, by his famous Expropriation Law, reawakened among the Poles the feeling of a community of destiny with the Slavs. In the Prussian Landtag Korfanty exclaimed, ' At a time when, in the Balkans, the cannon is thundering for the liberation of the Slavs, we Poles . . . are the victims of a fresh act of vile oppression ad persecution'.
But the Russians did not wish, or did not know how to profit by these divisions. The idea of easing the situation came to them too late, at the time of the First World War, after Pilsudski had organised the ' legions ' in Krakow, and the P.O.W. (Polska organizacya wojskowa), the Polish secret organisation in Russia ; it was only then that Grand-Duke Nicholas proclaimed the [then] hypothetical independence of Poland.
The first Russian Slavophiles' die-hard attitude in matters of religion greatly contributed to disturbing the currents of sympathy between Muscovites and the Slavs of Central Europe. Yet denominational differences were not calculated to alarm the Czechs. In 1848, the populace of Prague crammed Wenceslas Square to hear the Serbian Archpriest, Stamatovich, sing the office of the Orthodox rite ; a wave of emotion passed through them when the celebrant intoned the Gospodi pomiluj for the repose of the soul of John Hus and of Zizka, the hero of the Hussite Tabor. The fact was that the Serbs, not very much given to mysticism, saw the faith chiefly as a counterpart of
national sentiment. It is not irrelevant to mention that the Orthodox Slavs of the Balkans are the least practising of orthodox Christians, among whom it is the Serbs who have the largest number of unbelievers. It is said that, for a given number of inhabitants, there would be six times as many churches in Greece as in Serbia, four times as many in Rumania, and twice as many in Bulgaria.
Muscovite Slavism differed from Czech Slavism not only in its internal tendencies but in its psychological structure. The patient mysticism of the Russians aimed at achievements on the basis of a millenary evolution. The Czechs, of less nebulous mentality and of intense volitional power, sought immediate results. In Moscow they talked of the divine mission of Eastern Christianity ; in Prague, of the boycotting of German goods and the disposal of the products of Czech industry. Between two nations with such a differing mental outlook, it was difficult to maintain concomitant moral action for very long.
The breach became apparent when the Czech, Karel Kramáar, created the 'Neo-Slavism ' which held its first Assembly in Prague in May 1908. A Pole Roman Dnowski [i.e. Dmowski], and a Bulgarian , Stevan Bobtchev, were in agreement with him to rejuvenate the old Slavonic ideal under a new climate. It was a doctrine tending towards cultural unity and the spiritual and economic collaboration of all Slavs, without distinction of religion, and on a footing of perfect equality. An anti-hegemonic conception of Slav solidarity thus replaced ' Russo-Orthodox-Panslavism ', relegated to the order of romantic myths. It seemed to provide the positive basis and the practical aims which agreement among Slavs had always lacked.
But, among the other Slav peoples, this movement did not meet with the success its founder anticipated. Too many of these peoples still had to contend with foreign domination.
( pages 22 - 25 )
There were . . . some attempts at understanding among the various emigrations, especially between the Polish National Committee (Dmowski, Paderewski), the Czechoslovak national Council (Masaryk, Benes, Stefánik) and the Yugoslav committee (Troumbich, Hinkovich). These contacts lasted until the Peace Conference. But they never led to the elaboration of a programme, or of any organic agreement.*
( page 37 )
* Such contacts might have resulted in some literary works which can be still at least in part actual. — (WPT).
Slovakia . . . From her went out the first call for Slav solidarity, and it was one of her sons, the priest Jean Kollar, who founded romantic Slavism. Kollar had studied in Jena with the historian Luden. He had participated in the Wartburg Festival. . . .
( page 72 )