Russian Pan-Slavists of the 1860s and 1870s

Abstract

The essay examines the programs of the Pan-Slavists R.A. Fadeev and N.Ya. Danilevsky, that appeared in Russia in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Their emergence was induced by programs of unification peoples into a single state or administrative unit on an ethnic basis that started to spread in Europe after the Revolutions of 1848–1849. In his book Opinion on the Eastern question (1870), General Fadeev argued that all Slavs should strive to create a Federation under the leadership of the Russian Tsar and with the leading role of the nobility. At the same time, each Slavic nation should have its own administration, and it should be headed by one of the representatives of the Romanov dynasty. Danilevsky, in his extensive work Russia and Europe (1871), called for the creation of a Slavic Federation in which every peasant would have their own allotment. He actively opposed the Eurocentric theories of European scholars who believed that the highest achievement of culture is the Romano-Germanic civilization. Both programs had similar postulates. Fadeev and Danilevsky were convinced that the main enemy of the Russian and other Slavic peoples is Romano-German Europe, primarily the German States. The Slavs will not be able to achieve reconciliation with those states, and the only salvation for them is to unite with Russia.