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Above all, neoslavism, in which the Czechs took aspecially prominent part, was the result of new developmentsin south-eastern Europe. Austria-Hungarychanged its ten-year policy of combining with Russiato keep the Balkans on ice and embarked on a newforward policy, signalized by the annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908. At the same time the grant ofuniversal manhood suffrage in Austria (1907), with itsinevitable repercussions in Hungary, rendered yet moreserious the problem of their Slav nationalities. Thesenow represented a formidable, though still divided,challenge to the German-Magyar domination which wasthe basis of the Dual Monarchy ever since its birth in1867.The Jugoslavs were the greatest danger, since acrossthe frontier Serbia, after the bloody coup d'etat of 1903,restored the russophil Karageorgevich dynasty, brokewith Austria-Hungary, linked up closely again withRussia, and drew towards Bulgaria. The Young Turkrevolution of 1908, the Bosnian crisis of 1908-9 resultingin the humiliation of Russia and Serbia by Austria-Hungary and Germany, the making of the Balkan allianceand the two Balkan wars (1912-13), first against Turkey,then against Bulgaria, made the Slav lands a storm centreof international relations and the object of intense interestand feeling for Russia.Neoslavism gave birth to the striking novelty of aseries of annual Slav conferences (1908-12), in Prague,St Petersburg, Sofia, and Belgrade, but not in Warsaw;attended by Russians and representatives of variousparties from all the Balkan and Austrian Slavs, thoughnot from those of Hungary or Germany. Orthodoxywas definitely abandoned as the keynote of neoslavism(except in eastern Galicia). Plans were made for anextension of Slav cultural and economic links. Whatpolitical form their common links might ultimately takeremained very dubious, but the essential was the beliefin the early break-up of the Dual Monarchy, almostcertainly through war, in which the aid of Russia wouldbe indispensable for the other Slavs.Berlin figured as even more the enemy of Slavdom247

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