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for the next twenty-five years revolved in the orbit ofAustria-Hungary (1878-1903). But the strength ofnationalist feelings pushed Alexander II into war withTurkey (1877) and caused the final crisis of 1878 whenin face of the armed opposition of Great Britain andAustria-Hungary the tsar had to substitute for Ignatyev'striumphant treaty of San Stefano the treaty of Berlin,the handiwork of European intervention, cutting downRussian gains and lowering Russian prestige.Although in fact the gains remained considerable,there was passionate disillusionment in Russia, all thebitterer since the splendid feats of the Russian soldieryhad stopped just short of the actual capture of Constantinople{cf. p. 283). Soon the Russian diatribes were nolonger concentrated on Great Britain and Austria-Hungary, but directed at "the European coalition againstRussia under the leadership of Prince Bismarck." Thenew German empire as the bulwark of Germanismagainst Slavdom came to the front for the panslavs: forthem the road to Constantinople henceforward ledthrough Berlin.Already in 1878 the internal crisis was acute whichculminated in the murder of Alexander II in 1881, andthe discomfiture of Russian hopes in Bulgaria completedthe decline of panslav influence. Bulgaria proved astriking illustration of the difficulty already emphasizedas inherent in the position of Russia as a liberator; forRussia was also an autocracy and a strongly conservativeone, even after the great reforms of the eighteen-sixties.Tsarism was fundamentally antipathetic to most of thenationalist movements in the other Slav countries, whichwere strongly influenced by Western radical thought andby peasant social-revolutionary ideas. The latter currenthad indeed much in common with Russia, but with theopponents of tsarism, the populists or narodniki, wholater developed into the social-revolutionary party.Gorchakov, always an opponent of panslavism, was rightin saying: "I find it difficult to believe in the sympathyof the Slav peoples for autocratic Russia."Hence the paradox of Bulgaria which owed almosteverything to Russia both in her national regeneration245