Jan Pesina
Prace Historyczne, Numer 137, 2010, s. 89 - 96
The South Slavs in the Concept of Slavic Mutual Cooperation by Karel Havlíček Borovský
The beginnings of the Czech independent political journalism are intrinsically connected with the person of Karel Havlíček Borovský, a writer, a journalist and an activist. In 1846–1851 he subsequently worked as the editor of three nationalistic and liberal journals: Pražské Noviny, Národní Noviny and Slovan. In Pražské Noviny he published a series of polemical articles entitled Slovan a Čech (1846). It was a manifest, considered by contemporary scholars to be the fi rst Czech political programme which prioritised the Czech national issues over the general Slavic interests, thereby demystifying the myth f Slavic commonwealth. The point of reference was the concept of Slavic reciprocity formulated by Ján Kollár (On the literary reciprocity between Slav tribes and vernaculars). Havlíček appreciated the idea of close cultural cooperation between the Slavic nations, but he rejected the concept of considering all Slavs as one people. Havlíček reduced the idealistic project of Kollár in the spirit of Austroslavism and arrived at an idea of pragmatic and mutually benefi cial cooperation between the Czechs and the South Slavs in the area of culture, economy and politics. When evaluated from the contemporary vantage point, the infl uence of Havlíček’s ideas upon the Czech socio-political thought is visible in the presence of the South Slavic orientation in the international relations policy adopted by the Czech Republic.