Pan-Slavism

Pan-Slavism, political and cultural doctrine which promoted international solidarity between the numerous Slavic peoples and nations of eastern Europe in the 19th century. Pan-Slavism came into existence in about 1830, as a movement to protect, organize, and assist Slavic culture; later it took on a much more political meaning, its goal being the union of all the Slavic peoples. In 1848, the “year of revolutions”, the leaders of the movement called a congress at Prague, which was attended by representatives from Bohemia, Poland, Croatia, Dalmatia, Silesia, and Serbia. Fresh meetings were called in Moscow in 1867, and in Prague in 1908. Pan-Slavism in the years before World War I came to mean the liberation of non-Russian Slavs from their Ottoman, German, and Austro-Hungarian rulers. The movement exerted great influence in Europe, and was at the root of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, which was waged by Tsar Alexander II to “protect” the oppressed Slavs of the Balkan Peninsula. Thus Russia, the only independent Slav state, used the Pan-Slavic movement to cover its expansionist designs; and there is no question that Russian support of the Slavic Serbs against the Austro-Hungarian Empire was the immediate cause of World War I.