In his youth, after the fall of the Illyrian movement in the early 1850s, Pavlinović accepted Serbian national consciousness, thrilled with Serbia who was at the time fighting against Ottoman Empire for liberation and unification in Revolution. He and many other seminarians from Zadar seminary, including Natko Nodilo and Luka Botić, were so impressed with Serbia that they wanted to move there, believing they would be able to develop their capabilities there and thus be of the greatest benefit to Croats. Pavlinović and his friend Jovan Sundečić embarked in 1864 on a tour to South Slavic (soon to be called Yugoslav) cities with the aim of creating a fraternal union. For a period of time, he was an editor of the Montenegrin yearbook "Orlić". However, after Luka Botić visited Serbia in 1868, he returned to Croatia very disappointed with what he saw there. This led to Pavlinović and his friends abandoning the idea of Serbia being a "South Slavic Piedmont", and accepting that Croatia and Serbia should stay separated.