The Slavic Groups' Demands In Austria-Hungary

The Slavs in Austria-Hungary wanted to restructure the empire into a federalist state and demanded equality to ensure their unrestricted development. They saw the Habsburg monarchy as the guardian of the Slav peoples, protecting them against German attempts to achieve hegemony. The Czech historian František Palacký voiced his commitment to Austro-Slavism in his refusal to take part in the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848. The Czech Karel Havlíček Borovský also demanded the abandonment of romantic pan-Slavism and national daydreaming, instead calling for the future of the Slavs to lie in modern political emancipation. The main demand was to increase the political representation of the Slavs in proportion to their share of the population. The long-term aim was the Slavisation of the Habsburg monarchy to the detriment of the Germans and the Magyars.

The restructuring of the empire into a federalist state

The Slavs under Habsburg rule regarded the Austrian Empire as the optimum political framework for the existence of the Slav peoples of central Europe. They demanded the restructuring of the empire into a federalist state and the equality of the Austrian Slavs to ensure their unrestricted development. This was known as Austro-Slavism, an ideological programme of the Slavs. The Czech historian and father figure of the Czech 19th-century national renaissance, František Palacký, voiced his commitment to Austro-Slavism in his refusal to take part in the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848. He believed that the Austrian Empire should exist only as long as the Slavs wanted it to.

At the Kremsier Diet, where the constituent Imperial Diet fled in autumn 1848 to elaborate a constitution for the Habsburg empire, the Austrian Slavs formed a single political group but represented different programmes and interests. A number of proposals for the reorganisation of the empire on the basis of a federalist nationalities state were developed but were not pursued by the absolutist regime of the young Emperor Franz Joseph.

The liberal era after 1861 and the resulting German centralist approach destroyed the hopes of the Austrian Slavs for equal treatment. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, in which the Czechs felt ignored, finally brought an end to political Austro-Slavism. Although the demands for a federalist restructuring of the empire continued to be made, in political reality there was little evidence of a common approach by the Slav nationalities. The unitary Slav front was more a figment of the German national and radical Magyar imagination than a real political entity.

Equality of the Austrian Slavs

The Austrian Slavs, or Austro-Slavs, were a group of small Slav peoples of central Europe under Habsburg rule. Austro-Slavism was the ideological programme of the Slavs, which regarded the Austrian Empire as the optimum political framework for the existence of the Slav peoples of central Europe. They demanded the restructuring of the empire into a federalist state and the equality of the Austrian Slavs to ensure their unrestricted development.

The Czech historian František Palacký (1798–1876), who is considered the father figure of the Czech 19th-century national renaissance, voiced his commitment to Austro-Slavism by refusing to take part in the Frankfurt National Assembly of 1848. He also rejected Slav unification on the basis of a Russian initiative and acknowledged the Habsburg monarchy. Palacký's views were echoed by Czech politician, journalist and spokesman of the Austro-Slavs in the Austrian Imperial Diet, František Ladislav Rieger (1818–1903), who said:

> We Slavs are by far the largest power in this state, it is through our money and our blood that it survives, but Austria will exist only as long as we want it to – but we do want it to.

The Czech Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821–1856) also demanded the abandonment of romantic pan-Slavism and national daydreaming. He believed that the future of the Slavs lay in modern political emancipation. Havlíček became the head of the Czech Repeal Movement, which borrowed from the Irish struggle for independence against the British. The main demand was to increase the political representation of the Czechs and, more generally, of the Slavs in proportion to their share of the population. The long-term aim was the Slavisation of the Habsburg monarchy to the detriment of the Germans and the Magyars.

At the Kremsier Diet, where the constituent Imperial Diet fled in autumn 1848 to elaborate a constitution for the Habsburg empire, the Austrian Slavs formed a single political group but represented different programmes and interests. A number of proposals for the reorganisation of the empire on the basis of a federalist nationalities state were developed but were not pursued by the absolutist regime of the young Emperor Franz Joseph.

The liberal era after 1861 and the resulting German centralist approach destroyed the hopes of the Austrian Slavs for equal treatment. The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867, in which the Czechs felt ignored, finally brought an end to political Austro-Slavism.

The merger of all southern Slav regions into an autonomous state within the Monarchy

The Slavs of the Austrian Empire were divided into two main groups: the Austrian Slavs and the South Slavs. The Austrian Slavs were comprised of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Ruthenes, Slovenes, and Serbs and Croats. The South Slavs were comprised of the Serbo-Croat language group.

The Austrian Slavs, led by the Czech historian František Palacký, viewed the Austrian Empire as the optimum political framework for the existence of the Slav peoples of central Europe. They demanded the restructuring of the empire into a federalist state and the equality of the Austrian Slavs to ensure their unrestricted development. They believed that the Habsburg monarchy was the guardian of the Slav peoples and that it was only within the framework of this multi-ethnic empire that the small Slav peoples could find protection against German attempts to achieve hegemony and develop themselves in the field of culture and politics.

The South Slavs, on the other hand, were divided in their loyalties during World War I. While the Serbs were regarded as 'enemies' of the Habsburg Monarchy due to Austria-Hungary's aggressive Balkan policy during the Balkan crisis from 1908, most of the Slovene, Croat, and Bosnian political scene remained loyal to the war policy of the Habsburg Monarchy. The 'southern Slav club', composed of the Slovene, Croat, and Serb members of the reconvened Reichsrat in 1917, was loyal to the Habsburg Monarchy without foregoing the old demand, ignored by Vienna and Budapest, for the merger of all southern Slav regions into an autonomous state within the Monarchy.

The exiled representatives of the South Slavs, however, took the initiative for the creation of an independent southern Slav state. In Paris, a committee was founded in 1914, which was soon dominated by the Serbian position on unification. Some exiled members favoured affiliation with Serbia in the sense of a greater Serbia, while others called for a federalist model in which the different language groups would have equal rights. The Corfu Declaration of July 1917, issued by the Serbian government in exile, called for the creation of a joint state by the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes as branches of a common Yugoslavian nation. This idea was also increasingly attractive to the 'Austrian' South Slavs, despite their fears of greater Serbian aspirations. By the summer of 1918, representatives of practically all political directions among the South Slavs were in agreement.

The abandonment of Russophile pan-Slavism

One key factor was the reactionary and repressive measures taken by the Tsarist regime against the 1830 Polish Uprising. This prompted a shift away from the idea of a pan-Slavic union centred around Orthodox Russia and led by the Tsar. Instead, Slavic groups in Austria-Hungary began to emphasise their western Catholic position and sought alternative paths to emancipation and unity.

Another factor was the influence of German Romantic nationalist philosophy on Slavic thinkers and intellectuals. This inspired a movement for Slavic unity in the 19th century, which was anti-imperial in nature and sought to counter pan-Germanism and Turkish domination. However, there was no consensus among Slavic thinkers, with some, like the Czech poet Karel Havlíček Borovský, criticising the notion of Russian dominance over other Slavic peoples.

The Prague Slavic Congress of 1848 was a significant event, bringing together voices from almost all Slav populations in Europe. This congress promoted the idea of a voluntary union of Slavic nations, in contrast to Russian imperialist aggression.

Within Austria-Hungary, the Slavs sought to restructure the empire into a federalist state, demanding equal rights and unrestricted development within a multi-ethnic empire. They viewed the Habsburg monarchy as a guardian and protector against German hegemony. However, they were often met with resistance and struggled to gain full equality in education, the judicial system, and administration.

The Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 further contributed to the abandonment of Russophile pan-Slavism, as Slavs, particularly the Czechs, felt ignored and marginalised. This led to a shift in orientation towards Russia for some, while others continued to pursue Austro-Slavism, advocating for the preservation of the Austrian Empire as a federation of Slavs, Austrians, and Hungarians.

Overall, the abandonment of Russophile pan-Slavism among the Slavic groups in Austria-Hungary was driven by a combination of reactions to Russian repression, the appeal of alternative ideological movements, and the pursuit of equal rights and autonomy within a multi-ethnic empire.

The rejection of romantic pan-Slavism

Pan-Slavism was a movement that took shape in the mid-19th century, promoting integrity and unity for the Slavic people. Its main impact occurred in the Balkans, where non-Slavic empires had ruled the South Slavs for centuries. The movement was particularly influential in the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, where Slavs made up a substantial proportion of the population.

The First Pan-Slav Congress was held in Prague, Bohemia, in June 1848, during the revolutionary movement of 1848. The Czechs refused to send representatives to the Frankfurt Assembly, feeling that Slavs had distinct interests from the Germans. The Austroslav, František Palacký, presided over the event, calling for the cooperation of the Habsburgs and endorsing the Habsburg monarchy as the political formation most likely to protect the peoples of Central Europe.

However, Pan-Slavism was not universally embraced by Slavs. Polish Pan-Slavists, for example, did not fully embrace the movement after its early period, instead embracing wide autonomy within the Austro-Hungarian state and assuming a loyalist position towards the Habsburgs. Within the Austro-Hungarian polity, they were able to develop their national culture and preserve the Polish language, both of which were under threat in both German and Russian empires.

Pan-Slavism was also mistrusted and discountenanced by the autocratic Russian government, partly because all civic associations were mistrusted, and partly because an ethnic division of the Empire between the “Great-Russian” ethnicity and other Slavic cultural communities was considered ill-advised.

In the Ottoman Empire, Serbians took a weary view of Gaj’s Illyrian movement and pursued a territorial, anti-Ottoman policy of their own. Bulgarians, for their part, were only beginning to articulate an ethno-national self-consciousness, inspired by Pan-Slavic activists from neighbouring lands but largely in ecclesiastical opposition to the Greek Church hierarchy within the Ottoman Christian millet.

Thus, the initial power base of Pan-Slavism was firmly situated among cultural communities within the Habsburg Empire: those who began to identify as Slovenes, Croats/Illyrians, Slovaks, and, most saliently, Czechs. The role played by Lusatian Sorbs exceeded their numerical importance, given their proximity to Jena and their high degree of literacy and sociability.

Matters came to a head in the run-up to the revolutions of 1848. In the general clamour for liberal reforms, the Slavs called for unification and mutual solidarity against their monarchs. The congress in Prague foundered as the other revolutionary initiatives of that year did, and in the aftermath, the participants were under a cloud of suspicion as culpable rebels against their lawful rulers. The following decades were dominated by the repressive neo-absolutism of the Bach government.

The Russian Empire, softened by its defeat in the Crimean War and under the comparatively liberal rule of Alexander II, took on a more prominent beacon position in the late 1850s. It was a place of emigration and extraterritorial support for Macedonian and Bulgarian activists, and an ally of Serbia. Its cultural tolerance for non-Russian cultures evaporated after the Polish uprising of 1863, but Romantic historicism had spread since the mid-1830s, and Slavophilia had become fashionable among Russian intellectuals, meeting with a corresponding Russophilia from certain Slavic activists, notably Štúr, who turned east because of his frictions with the Prague Czechs.

Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78 and the accession of Alexander III, Russia’s official endorsement of Pan-Slavism diminished, though its own introspective Russophilia continued in force. At the same time, the 1867 Compromise within the Austro-Hungarian Empire strengthened national movements in the Slovenian lands and in Croatia, and also in Czechia, where activists were provoked by Austria’s concessions to Hungary, which left the Bohemian Crown short-changed.

By now, however, Slavic cultural practices took an individually national direction and only indirectly operated in a collective-Slavic frame. Choral and sports exchanges did occur (a Pan-Slavic sokol federation was founded in Prague in 1908), and matice and publishers, when translating foreign works for the domestic reading market, would privilege texts from other Slavic languages as a matter of course.

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