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East European Quarterly, Vol. XV, No. 1

The Slav Congress which was held in Prague amidst the turnoil of that momentous year 1848 represented the first attempt of the Danubian Slav nations to formulate a joint response to the threat to their national well-being posed by German and Magyar nationalist policies. The congress, poised between stages of national renascence and political maturation, stands as a watershed in the modern history of the Slavs.

Within a remarkably short time after the fall of the Metternichian pre-March order, two hostile national axes crisscrossed central Europe, one running from Frankfurt in the west through Vienna and Pest, the other from Poznań in the north through Prague and Zagreb. The first joined the liberal and radical advocates of greater German unity and Magyar independence; the second, the Slavs seeking to escape German and Magyar hegemony and distant bureaucratic rule. It was this mounting national enmity that engendered the Slavs’ search for a common forum and program. The idea of convening a congress of Slav spokesmen was advanced in late April, 1848, in several quarters-in a public call by the Croatian liberal, Ivan Kukuljević-Sakcinski; in private correspondence to Prague by the Poznań democrat Jędrzej Moraczewski; and, especially, by the Slovak national leader Ľudovít Štúr, who obtained backing in Prague from the Czech liberals. The various initiatives were linked by a common insistence on the need for the Slavs “to deliberate [forthwith] the means whereby their subjugators in Pest and Frankfurt could most easily, quickly, and surely be confronted.” At a meeting of Czech patriots in Prague on April 30, a committee was selected to guide the congress preparations, and a proclamation was approved, inviting all Austrian Slavs “possessing the trust of their peoples to assemble in the venerable Slav and Czech city of Prague on May 31.”

Although František Palacký did not attend the first meetings of the Preparatory Committee, his presence was pervasive. (It is noteworthy that at its first meeting the committee approved the congress announcement contingent on Palacký’s endorsement.) Since April 11, the date of his celebrated reply to Frankfurt, in which he refused to become a member of