Pan-Slavism Essay, Research Paper

Pan-SlavismIt has been the goal of the Slavs to create a pan-Slav empire,and unite the slaves which are spread throughout Europe. Somegroups wanted to create the empire in order to get independencefrom their country, while others opposed the creation of theempire because of fear that Russia will become too powerful.Most of the opposing force came either before or after the bigPan-Slavism movement. From 1948-1869 we only see opinionsfor the creation of a Pan-Slav empire and none opposing at thetime when it was in full impact. Way before the Slav movement gained a surge of popularity,Jan Kollar a poet had strong opinions for having the Slavs united.He said In other nations humanity comes after nationality. Among the Slavs nationality comes after humanity trying toshow how important it would be for the Slavs to unite. Kollarwho was a romantic poet wanted other Slavs to show their prideof their nationality. After Kollar we do not see any pro Slav unity but we seeallot of people speaking against it. In an editorial inContemporary Austrian Review we see opposition of Slav unitybecause of fear of Russian takeover. It is suggested that theAustrian s should lead the Slav s and than be able to destroy anychance of a Russian Pan-Slavism. So they supported Pan-Slavismbut not for the right reasons. Karel Havlicek says that

Nationality is not only determined by language, but also bycustoms, religion, form of government, state of education,sympatheis, etc…. but the Slav nation do not have any of these incommon. Then in 1848 we start seeing allot activities for Pro-Slavunity. Bronislaw Trentowski a Polish Intellect wants to unite theSlavs but first of all have the polish people freed and then liberatethe rest of the Slav nations. We see the same sort of thinkingfrom many other Slav countries, we ll unite the pan-Slavs so thatwe will be able to get our freedom or lead the Slavs so that we canbe in control. In the article written by Nikolay Danilevsky we seea perfect proof of what I said before. He says Russia must steelthem and itself in the spirit of independence and Pan-Slavicconsciousness so what he is saying is that Russia should be forSlav unity but they should be in charge. From my reading I see that the main reason thatPan-Slavism did not have a chance to happen is because ofselfishness. Every nationality that is a part of the Slavs wanted tobe the one in control this causes disagreements and allows for theopposing forces to win. I found it to be confusing that there wereno opposition during the time that Pan-Slavism was at full force,the only opposition is 25 years after the Pan-Slav movement hadit s greatest surge if population. This made it hard for me toanalyze the political and cultural issues for Slavism.