Slavic Congress of 1867

From Slavic.info

In May of 1867 a great Slavic Congress was held at Moscow. There were no Poles at this second congress, and no doubt, the weakness of the Slavophile movement is in the fact that the attempt to bring the Poles has failed. The Russians were always interested in Czechs and the Balkan Slavs. A comparative silence in regard to the Polish problem was mainly due to the suppression of the freedom of expression. Representative is the teaching of Ivan Aksakov, who acknowledges the right of the Polish people as a separate Slavic nation, believes in their union with the Russian people, supports the principle of nationality, denying the historical right and the right of conquest. Another Russian Slavophile, Danilevsky, shows that Russia with other Slavic nations form a separate type of civilization. He does not believe in the universal mission of Russia, nor in the unity of mankind, and does not want assimilation of Poland, but her membership in the Federation of the Slavic tribes. Dr. Semen Rapoport, in his article on The Russian Slavophiles and the Polish Question (Polish Rtnicw, I, 1917, 141-52) thinks that the present Polish question is purely political, having lost its moral, racial, and Slavic aspects. This attitude is fairly expressed in the German press beginning in 1846 up to the recent Austro-German propaganda for "independent" Poland and Ukraine. Such an attitude is not championed by the leading Polish thinkers in the past and present (See: L. Mickiewicz, Adam Mickiewicz and the Polish Destiny, in: Polish Review, 1, 1917, 132-40; Die Verschworung des Panslavismus und der polnischc Aufstand, Leipzig, 1846; Russland am Scheidewege: Beitriige zur Kenntniss dcs Slavophilenthums und zur Beurtcilung seiner Politik, Leipzig, 1859; Die Sünden Russlands gegen die Katholische Kirche oder die Gcschichte dcs alten Polen, Mainz, 1874, IV + 243; La Pologne devant l'Europe Catholique, Paris, 1863.) On account of the fact that some Polish politicians preach openly the doctrine that the Poles are a distinct nationality, that Poland must be an independent state, having no connection with other Slavs and their Slavic Federation, and that Catholic Church is the spiritual principle of Polonism,—Russian Slavophiles worked with other Slavs only. Russia found a most receptive field for the propaganda in Bulgaria, Serbia and Macedonia.28 Yes, it was largely as the natural champion of the oppressed Slavs of the Balkan peninsula that Russia declared war on Turkey, in 1877, and the politics of this peninsula since then have been influenced to a considerable degree by the ambitions of the Pan-Slavists. Russia became now more pronouncedly the protector of all Eastern Orthodox Christians—Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks and Rumanians. The Austrian Slavs felt themselves put into the background by the re-constitution of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1867, which gave so much power to the Magyars who are numerically much smaller than the Slavic element in Austria-Hungary.29 The spirit of this Austro-Hungarian compromise, as regards the Slavs, is expressed in Beust's brutal threat: "Put them up against the wall." Palacky, the historian of the Czechs, mourned the establishment of the Magyars in Europe in the following words: "Slavdom never received a more fatal blow. . . . The Magyar by driving a wedge into the heart of the State destroyed it and therewith all the hopes of the Slavs." The spirit which still animates the Magyar interests is the same as that proclaimed by Lajos Kossuth, who was only a liberal when direct Magyar interests were at stake, when he said: 'I know no Kroatian nationality.' " And so Austria has used the Germans to keep down the Czechs, the Magyars to keep down the Rumanians and the Serbo-Croatians, the Poles to oppose the Ruthenians, the Italians to keep down the Serbo-Croatians of Dalmatia and Istria. The Austrian prime-minister, Bcust, is said to have remarked to the Hungarian ministry: "Take care of your barbarians, we will take care of ours."