Juraj Križanić

Juraj Križanić ( – 12 September 1683), also known as Jurij Križanič, Yuriy Krizhanich, Iurii Krizhanich, He considered that the only possible role for the tsar to 'correct' or unify the orthography and script used in Slavic-language books and awaken Slavic consciousness was through works conducive to education and logic. In extremis the South Slavs might join with the Russian tsar as a sovereign of the same language and people if the Catholic rulers supported his leadership in a war against the Ottomans.

After lengthy travels and fifteen years of exile in Siberia, Križanić died, misunderstood and disappointed, in battle during the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683. Although he had no direct followers, Križanić's work influenced many later South Slavic thinkers who championed both reliance on Russia and South Slavic cultural and political unification.

Biography Early life Križanić was born in Obrh, near Ribnik (in present-day Croatia, then part of the Kingdom of Croatia (Habsburg)) in 1618, a period of political turmoil and Ottoman wars in Europe. His parents were Croatian noblemen Gašpar Križanić (died cca. 1633) and Suzana Oršić, and had a younger sister Barbara (married to Juraj Sandrić). His paternal family originated from the Croatian noble tribe of Nebljusi who had estates in old county of Nebljuh between Bihać and Korenica, from where his grandfather Juraj emigrated to the estate of the Zrinski family. Križanić signed himself as Croatus (1641) and Croata (1658), while in Russia others regarded him as Serbian because in Russia that ethnonym was a common umbrella name for Danubian Slavs, and died as "pater frater Augustinus Dalmata".

Final years Križanić remained in Moscow until 1678, when he travelled to Vilnius and later to Warsaw.