Old Slovenes

The main Old Slovene leaders were Janez Bleiweis, Lovro Toman, Luka Svetec, Etbin Henrik Costa, and Andrej Einspieler.

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.

This tactical alliance between conservatives and liberals, which also included a substantial group of radicals, was known as "The Concord" (Slovene: Slogaštvo).