The Russian Empire in the Balkans

Russia's long standing support for orthodox communities living under moslem rule merged with the new strains of nationalism that had grown up in the nineteenth century. Serbs, cro ats, bulgarians, romanians and albanians all developed their own dreams of national unification or independence. For such pan slavic idealists, the debate came down to whether they would be unified under the greatest slavic power of them all, r Russia.