§ 68.
AS we have seen, Russian national sentiment was an independent development of the peculiar historical and geographical problems which Russia had to solve in internal and external relationships; consideration for the Slavs played a very small part. Certain relationships of religious intimacy existed only in the case of the Orthodox Bulgars and Serbs. Križanič, it is true, preached panslavism to the Russians, but had to dream out his political dreams in Siberia. Only with the development of political activities among the Serbs and the Greeks did there arise a certain political interest, inconsiderable at best, on behalf of the Slavs, for the attitude of the Russian government and of the tsar towards the revolting Slavs and Greeks remained legitimist.
The panslavist movement took root to some extent among the freemasons. There existed a lodge of United Slavs, secret of course; after 1825 there was also a political secret society aiming at a federation of Slav republics, and this society was broken up during the trial of the decabrists. Several of the decabrists cherished panslavist ideals, as for example M. A. Fonvizin, but Fonvizin conceived his panslavist program at a later date than the decabrist rising, in the forties, during exile in Siberia.
In the reign of Nicholas, literary panslavism was encouraged by the Slavistic movement, whose beginnings in Russia can be traced back into the eighteenth century. In this matter Schlötzer, the German historian, directed Russian attention towards the Slavs by the chapter on the Slav apostles in his translation of Nestor.
The influence of the Czech Slavists played a part, above all that of Dobrovský, one of whose Russian acquaintances was Šiškov (1813). Dobrovský's successors in Prague were likewise concerned in the movement, and in special Kollár, who did not sufficiently separate the provinces of poetry, archaeology, and philology. Czecho-Russian mutuality was to a certain extent favoured by the Russian campaigns in Europe, when the Russian armies marched across Bohemian territories. Youthful Russian historians and philologists visited Prague, but during the fifties these literary efforts cooled. The labours of Dobrovský and Šafařík left little scope in Prague for Russian
