when government officials attempted to influence its editorial policy.52 And he stood by Havlíček when the latter was arrested and exiled to Brixen in December, 1851.
The harsher absolutism of 1851-60 forced an end to even limited collaboration among revolutionaries. Separated physically and under police surveillance, Palacký and Havlíček reduced their contacts to infrequent exchanges of letters. This correspondence was largely non-political, but both men spoke occasionally of the failure of the revolution, and even of plans for the future. Late in December 1851, Havlíček confided to Palacký his intention to dramatize the deterioration of justice in Austria by satirizing the circumstances of his arrest.53 And the following summer he wrote of his desire to escape to Serbia.54 Palacký, in turn, urged his friend not to abandon hope of release and to spend his time writing a nationalistic novel which could counteract the resurgence of absolutism in the Czech lands.55 Of these particular plans only Havlíček’s satire of Austrian police practices–Tyrolské elegie (Tyrolean Elegies)– was ever accomplished. Declining in health for over a year, Havlíček died of tuberculosis in the summer of 1856. Palacký lived another twenty years, but his later political involvements were never extensive.
Neither man realized his goal of the federal reorganization of Austria. Each advocated tactics which, though justifiable, proved ineffective; for the Austro-Slavs’ insistence on non-violence and on fidelity to the Habsburgs earned them a reward no different from that of the Magyars after Világos. Still, the two men’s achievements were not inconsequential. Together they transformed earlier, amorphous Pan-Slav ideals into a narrower and more feasible program of reform. The result, Austro-Slavism, was not new. But Palacký’s and Havlíček’s approach to it was unique. They were the first to appreciate its full political application, as a means of reconciling liberty for individual peoples with the common good of a large, multi-national state.
Individually, Palacký contributed his constitutional labors and a moral leadership based on conciliation and his own irreproachable character. Not always the best politician, he was still the only person who in 1848 commanded the respect of all politically active groups in Czech society. Havlíček’s special contributions were his early analyses of the Russian question, his constant support of Palacký, and his attempts through journalism to increase the political consciousness of apathetic citizens. It was the combination of a shared ideology and the application of different but mutually complementary individual talents that made the two men compatible, if not always successful, political allies.
