Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/336

310 writer on military topics, friend of Černaev of disastrous memory.

The attitude of the slavophils towards the Slavs was determined by their theocratic outlook. During his European journey Homjakov visited Prague and became acquainted with Hanka. The Slavs were dear to him, but dear above all were the Orthodox southern Slavs. Similar were the feelings of the later Slavophils. lvan Aksakov, for example, took an extremely critical view of the pilgrimage of the Czechs to Moscow, and laid stress upon religious differences.

Lamanskii subsequently suggested the possibility of partitioning the Bohemian territories. Bohemia with the liberal Czechs was to go to Germany, whilst southern Moravia and the Slovaks were to become Russian. But just as Bismarck from his Protestant standpoint rejected the idea of a union with Catholic German-Austria, so were the Russian slavophils and panslavists horrified at the thought of annexing the Liberal and Catholic Slavs.

Certain Russian slavophils and panslavists attempted, however, to show that the Czech Slavs have a right to stand on the same footing as the Russian Slavs, attributing to them adhesion to Orthodoxy, on the ground that the Czech reformation had been due to the influence and existence of Orthodoxy in Bohemia since the days of the Slav apostles. Kirěevskii was the first to formulate this historical doctrine, which is manifestly false; subsequently it was expounded in fuller detail by Hilferding (Huss, his Relationship to the Orthodox Church, 1871); and it is held even to-day, notwithstanding the overwhelming proof to the contrary (Palmov, The Moravian Brethren, 1904).

Vis-à-vis the Orthodox southern Slavs, both slavophils and panslavists adopted a different standpoint, for here the tie of a common faith existed, and there were old associations. Moreover, official Russia was the antagonist of Turkey and appeared as liberator of the southem Slavs—the conquest of Constantinople and the erection of the three-barred cross on the dome of St. Sophia becoming a national ideal. Catherine II had regarded Constantinople as capital of the Russo-Greek realm.

Towards the Poles the attitude both of slavophils and of panslavists was always peculiar. Russism as Orthodoxy contrasted with Sarmatianism as Catholicism, and further,