The documents are to be found in the archives of
the _Hofkammer_ and _Ministerium des Innern_ in Vienna.] Centralization and
Germanization really helped to awaken the Slavs. Enlightened despotism gave
them the weapons of political struggle--education and economic resources.
Of the Jugo-Slavs, the Serbs of Hungary were the first to achieve national
and cultural consciousness. In the absence of a native nobility, but with
unusual economic opportunities at their command, they developed a wealthy
middle class--a rare thing among Slavs before the middle of the nineteenth
century. This class came into contact with nationalized western Europe and
found that the bulwark against national oppression was education for the
masses. The nation must be educated and must be economically sound in order
to undertake the political struggle against the Germans, the Magyars, and
the Turks. That was the background of Dositej Obradovi[c]'s literary labors
as he raised spoken Serbian ultimately to the literary language of the
Jugo-Slavs and of Karad[z]i[c]'s efforts which resulted in that wonderful
collection of Serbian national poems, and which clinched for all time the
literary supremacy of the _[S]to_ dialect. Serbian Hungary was the starting
place for Kara George's revolution which brought partial freedom in 1804
and autonomy in 1830 and thus planted the germ of the modern Greater
Serbia.
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