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and religion took first place, it was inevitable thatRussian panslav ideas could find a strong echo onlyamong the Bulgars and the Serbs: more than half theSlavs outside Russia dwelt within the bounds of theHabsburg empire and the great majority of these wereCatholics and had been for centuries deeply affected byWestern influences, especially the Poles and the Czechs.Between 1856 and 1878, when the next Near Easterncrisis came to a head, there grew out of Russian slavophilisma much more active and strident form of Russiannationalism, panslavism. This no longer put the mainemphasis on Orthodoxy, but on the general communityof Slav interests, particularly their common hostility tothe Germans and the Magyars, as well as to the Turks."The eastern question can be solved only in Austria,not in Turkey; the way to Constantinople lies throughVienna." The panslavs were bitterly critical of officialRussian foreign policy during the first half of the century.They believed in an independent, anti-European policyof force and in utilizing the growing nationalism of theother Slav peoples so as to facilitate the disruptionby Russia's own might of both the Ottoman and theHabsburg empires: in their stead there would arise asouth-eastern Europe linked in some form of unionunder Russian protection and control: above all,Constantinople and the Straits would be under thecontrol of Russia or actually in her hands. ,Such ideas, in confused alliance with the older, Slavophiloutlook, found influential adherents in the imperialfamily (though not in Alexander II himself), the church,the army (though not in his war minister), and theforeign office (though not in his foreign minister,Gorchakov). They had a very able, ingeniously flexible,and powerful proponent in Ignatyev, from 1864 to 1877ambassador in Constantinople, who incurred the meritedsuspicion and hostility of all the powers, in particular ofAustria-Hungary.In 1876 Russia became deeply stirred by the revoltof the Christians in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Bulgarianmassacres and the outbreak of war between Serbia andMontenegro and Turkey (two of which owed something,243