Juraj Križanić

Juraj Križanić (c. 1618 – 12 September 1683), also known as Jurij Križanič, Yuriy Krizhanich, Iurii Krizhanich, and Yury Krizanitch (Russian: Юрий Крижанич; Latin: Georgius Crisanius, Czech: Jiří Križanić, French: Georges Krijanich), was a Croatian Catholic missionary and polymath who is often regarded as the earliest recorded pan-Slavist. His ideal, often misunderstood - even today - was to bring about a union of the churches, which Rome and Constantinople had tried to do without success for centuries. He believed that this might come about through closer relations between Slavic Catholicism and the Russian Orthodox Church, and supported the idea that all Slavs had a common language and ethnic origin. However, he was not a pan-Slavist if this meant seeking the political unity of all Slavic peoples under Russian leadership. He considered that the only possible role for the tsar to 'correct' or unify the orthography and script used in Slavic-language books and awaken Slavic consciousness was through works conducive to education and logic. In extremis the South Slavs might join with the Russian tsar as a sovereign of the same language and people if the Catholic rulers supported his leadership in a war against the Ottomans. After lengthy travels and fifteen years of exile in Siberia, Križanić died, misunderstood and disappointed, in battle during the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. Although he had no direct followers, Križanić's work influenced many later South Slavic thinkers who championed both reliance on Russia and South Slavic cultural and political unification.