Page:The Slavs among the nations by T G Masaryk.djvu/17

 Bulgarians— but also contests on the subject of their dialects and their nationalities; the Ukranians demand recognition of their separate nationality; the Slovacs are concerned to preserve their dialect as a literary language; the Slovenes, who might easily be merged in the Serbo-Croatians, have declared for the maintenance of their language, &c.

Moreover, Panrussianism suffers under geographical difficulties.

The Russians are in contact only with the Poles and, through the Slovacs and the Austrian Ukranians, with the Czechs. They are separated from the Serbians and Bulgarians by Roumania. Though the Serbians are the immediate neighbours of the Bulgarians, they only come into contact with the Czechs through the Croatian groups which extend from the Drave as far as the Danube at Presburg, following the boundary line of Hungary. These Slav groups are the last remnants of the link which existed in the 9th century between the Northern and the Southern Slavs, which was severed by the invasion of the Magyars.

Geographical contact has a very great im-