Old Slovenes

Old Slovenes (Slovene: Staroslovenci) is the term used for a national conservative political group in the Slovene Lands from the 1850s to the 1870s, which was opposed to the radical national liberal Young Slovenes. The main Old Slovene leaders were Janez Bleiweis, Lovro Toman, Luka Svetec, Etbin Henrik Costa, and Andrej Einspieler.

In the 1860s, the Slovene National Movement, which had a wide political platform, based on national emancipation of Slovenes in the Austrian Empire, and the recognition of the linguistic rights of the Slovene language, split into different factions. The differences were both ideological and tactical.

After the beginning of the constitutional period in the Austrian Empire, the Slovene nationalists gathered around the moderate conservative and liberal Catholic editor of the newspaper Kmetijske in rokodelske novice, Janez Bleiweis. Bleiweis and his allies led a policy of tactical alliances with different power groups in the Austrian Empire, like the Roman Catholic Church, František Palacký's Czech federalists, and a small part of the Carniolan regionalist landed nobility. From the mid-1860s onwards, a group of young nationalist activists and intellectuals, gathered around Fran Levstik and Josip Stritar, challenged this pragmatic policy, demanding a more radical approach which would fully embrace liberal ideas. After a decade of friction between the two factions, the break came in 1872, when the Young Slovenes established their own political organization. Consequently, the group remaining loyal to the old leadership and the traditional policies, became known as Old Slovenes.

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