The Slavs evolved a distinct ideology to keep the poles of cosmopolitan and particular in fruitful interaction. Such were the origins of the famous notion of pan-Slavism, which later took on a political and diplomatic life of its own. Pan-Slavs believed in the brotherhood of all Slavs, who shared at root one language, common ancestry, a rich and heroic past. The theory rested partly on Enlightenment speculation, partly on Romantic conceits, partly on a conscious anti-Germanism. Be it noted here that pan-Slavism grew first not out of Russian or Polish requirements, nor even primarily out of Czech ones, but out of the needs of the tiny and insecure community of Slovaks, whose spokesmen Jan Kollár and Pavel Šafárik gave it classic exposition, and out of almost equally insignificant Croatia, where Ljudevit Gaj’s partial, Yugoslav version of “Illyrism” evolved. By means of it small men, heading small communities, could yet partake of wholeness.

From R.J.W. Evans’ Austria, Hungary, and the Habsburgs: Essays on Central Europe, c. 1683-1867, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, p. 110.