Russian Pan-Slavism
From Slavic.info
Contents |
19th Century
Official Prosecution
In 1849 Ivan Aksakov was examined by the police, and was compelled to give written answers to various questions, especially as concerned the nature of slavophilism. Tsar Nicholas wrote interesting marginal notes upon these answers, expressing his emphatic disapproval of the panslavist movement, and saying that the union of all the Slavs " would lead to the destruction of Russia." To the tsar, panslavism seemed a revolutionary program, seeing that a union of the Slavs could only be effected by revolts against God-given monarchs. In 1847 Kostomarov's Cyrillo-Methodian Union was prosecuted. A writing issued at this date by the ministry for education and expounding the true Russian program opposes this program to " the purely imaginary Slavdom " imported into Russia from Bohemia.
Decembrists
Several of the Decabrists cherished panslavist ideals, as for example M. A. Fonvizin, but Fonvizin conceived his panslavist program at a later date than the decabrist rising, in the forties, during exile in Siberia.
There existed a Society of United Slavs, secret of course; after 1825 there was also a political secret society aiming at a federation of Slav republics, and this society was broken up during the trial of the Decebrists.
Czech Influence
In the reign of Nicholas, literary panslavism was encouraged by the Slavistic movement, whose beginnings in Russia can be traced back into the eighteenth century. In this matter Schlozer, the German historian, directed Russian attention towards the Slavs by the chapter on the Slav apostles in his translation of Nestor.
The influence of the Czech Slavists played a part, above all that of Dobrovsky, one of whose Russian acquaintances was Šiškov (1813). Dobrovsky's successors in Prague were likewise concerned in the movement, and in special Kollar, who did not sufficiently separate the provinces of poetry, archaeology, and philology. Czecho-Russian mutuality was to a certain extent favoured by the Russian campaigns in Europe, when the Russian armies marched across Bohemian territories. Youthful Russian historians and philologists visited Prague, but during the fifties these literary efforts cooled. The labours of Dobrovsky and Safafik left little scope in Prague for Russian Slavists.1 Hanka entered into close relationship with various Russians, and among them Count Uvarov, whose Orthodox clericalism he flattered with the suggestion that Bohemia received Christianity from Constantinople and in Orthodox form. But these panslavist whimsies could not maintain their ground in face of the political movement which now, under western influence, was beginning in Austria and Bohemia. Kollar and Hanka were replaced by Palacky and Havlicek, and panslavism was driven out by democracy and liberalism.
Difficulties
Official Russia was too conservative and too Orthodox to think of panslavism. Šiškov, for example, was infuriated by the very idea of writing Russian in the Latin script, and said that any Russian who did such a thing ought to be beheaded. Magnickii denounced Koppen for his article upon Cyril and Methodius. Koppen's plan to invite the three Czech Slavists, Safafik, Celakovsky, and Hanka, to Russia was frustrated by the fears and the indifference of the government and the academy of sciences. Nicholas, as legitimist, was the declared enemy of panslavism.
Reaction under Alexander II and still more under Alexander III
The reaction under Alexander II and still more under Alexander III endeavoured with increasing energy to realise the official nationalist program of Uvarov in accordance with which all the nonrussian peoples of Russia, Germans, Finns, Lithuanians, Letts, etc., as well as the rebellious Poles, were to be Russified. Administrative centralism, hitherto easygoing and intellectually sluggish, was transformed into a state, privileged linguistic aristocracy of the dominant nation, the language question becoming continually more acute, above all in the civilised frontier lands adjacent to Europe.