Pan-Slavism
19th-century movement that recognized a common ethnic background among the various Slav peoples of eastern and east central Europe and sought to unite those peoples for the achievement of common cultural and political goals. The Pan-Slav movement originally was formed in the first half of the 19th century by West and South Slav intellectuals, scholars, and poets, whose peoples were at that time also developing their sense of national identity. The Pan-Slavists engaged in studying folk songs, folklore, and peasant vernaculars of the Slav peoples, in demonstrating the similarities among them, and in trying to stimulate a sense of Slav unity. As such activities were conducted mainly in Prague, that city became the first Pan-Slav centre for studying Slav antiquities and philology.
The Pan-Slavism movement soon took on political overtones, and in June 1848, while the Austrian Empire was weakened by revolution, the Czech historian František Palacký (Palacký, František) convened a Slav congress in Prague. Consisting of representatives of all Slav nationalities ruled by the Austrians, the congress was intended to organize cooperative efforts among them for the purpose of compelling the Emperor to transform his monarchy into a federation of equal peoples under a democratic Habsburg rule.
Although the congress had little practical effect, the movement remained active, and by the 1860s it became particularly popular in Russia, to which many Pan-Slavs looked for leadership as well as for protection from Austro-Hungarian and Turkish rule. Russian Pan-Slavists, however, altered the theoretical bases of the movement. Adopting the Slavophile notion that western Europe was spiritually and culturally bankrupt and that it was Russia's historic mission to rejuvenate Europe by gaining political dominance over it, the Pan-Slavists added the concept that Russia's mission could not be fulfilled without the support of other Slav peoples, who must be liberated from their Austrian and Turkish masters and united into a Russian-dominated Slav confederation.
Although the Russian government did not officially support this view, some important members of its foreign department, including its representatives at Constantinople and Belgrade, were ardent Pan-Slavists and succeeded in drawing both Serbia and Russia into wars against the Ottoman Empire in 1876–77.
When efforts were made in the early 20th century to call new Pan-Slav congresses and revive the movement, the nationalistic rivalries among the various Slav peoples prevented their effective collaboration.
Loris-Melikov, Mikhail Tariyelovich, Graf
▪ Russian statesman
(Count)
born Jan. 1, 1826, [Dec. 20, 1825, old style], Tiflis, Russia
died Dec. 24 [Dec. 12, O.S.], 1888, Nice, Fr.
military officer and statesman who, as minister of the interior at the end of the reign of the emperor Alexander II (ruled 1855–81), formulated reforms designed to liberalize the Russian autocracy.
Loris-Melikov was the son of an Armenian merchant. He attended the Lazarev School of Oriental Languages and the Guards' Cadet Institute in St. Petersburg before he joined a hussar regiment in 1843. Assigned to the Caucasus in 1847, he served as governor of the Terek region (1863–75) and, while commanding an army corps in Turkey during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, scored notable military victories. For his heroism, he was made a count.
After serving briefly as governor-general of the plague-ridden lower Volga region (1879), Loris-Melikov was transferred to the provinces of central Russia, where he recommended to the emperor a modest scheme of administrative and economic reforms, aimed at alleviating the causes of social discontent and, thereby, combating revolutionary terrorism. Impressed by his suggestions, Alexander appointed him chairman of a special commission that was given authority to use the entire government apparatus to suppress the revolutionary movement and also to prepare a reform program for the country. Six months later Alexander abolished the commission and named Loris-Melikov the new minister of the interior (November 1880).
In this position Loris-Melikov devised a program of moderate reforms that included provisions for locally elected representatives to give the government advice on certain current problems. Although the project was approved in principle by Alexander, the emperor was assassinated (March 13 [March 1, O.S.], 1881) before it was formally enacted. When his successor, Alexander III, rejected the reform program and firmly committed himself to the preservation of the autocracy, Loris-Melikov resigned (May 19 [May 7], 1881), retiring to Nice.
emperor of Russia
Russian in full Aleksandr Aleksandrovich
born March 10 [Feb. 26, old style], 1845, St. Petersburg, Russia
died Nov. 1 [Oct. 20, O.S.], 1894, Livadiya, Crimea
emperor of Russia from 1881 to 1894, opponent of representative government, and supporter of Russian nationalism. He adopted programs, based on the concepts of Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost (a belief in the Russian people), that included the Russification of national minorities in the Russian Empire as well as persecution of the non-Orthodox religious groups.
The future Alexander (Alexander II) III was the second son of Alexander II and of Maria Aleksandrovna (Marie of Hesse-Darmstadt). In disposition he bore little resemblance to his softhearted, impressionable father and still less to his refined, chivalrous, yet complex granduncle, Alexander I. He gloried in the idea of being of the same rough texture as the great majority of his subjects. His straightforward manner savoured sometimes of gruffness, while his unadorned method of expressing himself harmonized well with his roughhewn, immobile features. During the first 20 years of his life, Alexander had no prospect of succeeding to the throne. He received only the perfunctory training given to grand dukes of that period, which did not go much beyond primary and secondary instruction, acquaintance with French, English, and German, and military drill. When he became heir apparent on the death of his elder brother Nikolay in 1865, he began to study the principles of law and administration under the jurist and political philosopher K.P. Pobedonostsev (Pobedonostsev, Konstantin Petrovich), who influenced the character of his reign by instilling into his mind hatred for representative government and the belief that zeal for Orthodoxy ought to be cultivated by every tsar.
The tsesarevich Nikolay, on his deathbed, had expressed a wish that his fiancée, Princess Dagmar of Denmark, thenceforward known as Maria Fyodorovna, should marry his successor. The marriage proved a most happy one. During his years as heir apparent—from 1865 to 1881—Alexander let it be known that certain of his ideas did not coincide with the principles of the existing government. He deprecated undue foreign influence in general and German influence in particular. His father, however, occasionally ridiculed the exaggerations of the Slavophiles and based his foreign policy on the Prussian alliance. The antagonism between father and son first appeared publicly during the Franco-German War, when the Tsar sympathized with Prussia and the tsarevich Alexander with the French. It reappeared in an intermittent fashion during the years 1875–79, when the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire posed serious problems for Europe. At first the Tsarevich was more Slavophile than the government, but he was disabused of his illusions during the Russo-Turkish War (Russo-Turkish wars) of 1877–78, when he commanded the left wing of the invading army. He was a conscientious commander, but he was mortified when most of what Russia had obtained by the Treaty of San Stefano was taken away at the Congress of Berlin under the chairmanship of the German chancellor Otto von Bismarck (Bismarck, Otto von). To this disappointment, moreover, Bismarck shortly afterward added the German alliance with Austria for the express purpose of counteracting Russian designs in eastern Europe. Although the existence of the Austro-German alliance was not disclosed to the Russians until 1887, the Tsarevich reached the conclusion that for Russia the best thing to do was to prepare for future contingencies by a radical scheme of military and naval reorganization.