Young Slovenes

Young Slovenes (Slovene: Mladoslovenci) were a Slovene national liberal political movement in the 1860s and 1870s, inspired and named after the Young Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia. They were opposed to the national conservative Old Slovenes. They entered in a crisis in the 1880s, and disappeared from political life by the 1890s. They are considered the precursors of Liberalism in Slovenia.

The movement was founded in the early 1860s, when a group of young Slovene radicals, led by author and activist Fran Levstik, challenged the influence of the conservative leadership of the Slovene National Movement, led by the so-called triumvirate of Janez Bleiweis, Lovro Toman and Etbin Henrik Costa. Levstik and his peers rejected the pragmatic tactic of the conservative mainstream within Slovene nationalism, and demanded a more decisive political actions, which would include a direct confrontation with the Austrian authorities with a mass mobilization of the Slovene pesantry. Levstik's demands were backed mostly by the Slovenes from Styria and the Austrian Littoral, while the Slovenes from Carniola and Carinthia remained mostly on the side of their conservative leadership. By the mid-1860s, two distinct factions within the Slovene National Movement emerged: the liberal and radical Young Slovenes and the national conservative Old Slovenes. The two groups collaborated closely until 1872, when they broke away. In 1876, they forged a fragile tactical alliance against Austrian centralism and German nationalism, and united in support of the coalition government of Eduard Taaffe.

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