Anti-Slavic sentiment, also called anti-Slavic racism or Slavophobia, refers to different types of negative attitudes, prejudices, collective hatred or animosity, stereotypes, discrimination, and violence (economic, physical, political, psychological, verbal, etc.) directed at one or more ethnic groups of Slavic peoples. Accompanying racism and xenophobia, the most common manifestation of anti-Slavic sentiment throughout history has been the assertion that some Slavs are inferior to other peoples.
Anti-Slavic sentiment reached its highest point during World War II, when Nazi Germany and its collaborators classified most of the Slavs, especially the Belarusians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, and Ukrainians, as "subhumans" () and perpetrated a systematic genocide against them, murdering millions of Slavs through the Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan.
Slavophobia also emerged twice in the United States. The first time was during the Progressive Era, when immigrants from Eastern Europe were met with opposition from the dominant class of Western European–origin American citizens, who drew on a mix of Puritanism, Anglo-Saxonism, Teutonism, Social Darwinism, and Eugenics to frame Eastern Europeans as racially inferior, culturally unassimilable, and a threat to national vitality; and again during the Cold War, when the United States became locked in an intensive global rivalry with the Soviet Union.Roucek, Joseph S. “The Image of the Slav in U.S. History and in Immigration Policy.” The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, vol. 28, no. 1, 1969, pp. 29–48. JSTOR, . Accessed 6 Feb. 2024.
By country Albania Albanian slavophobia can be found in The Highland Lute by the "Albanian Homer" Gjergj Fishta, who wrote after massacres and expulsions of Albanians by their Slavic neighbours. The Albanian intelligentsia proudly asserted, "We Albanians are the original and autochthonous race of the Balkans. The Slavs are conquerors and immigrants who came but yesterday from Asia."
Italy
For many Italian irredentists, hatred of Slavs had been strongly pronounced since the beginning of the 20th century, because there were still “unredeemed” territories with Slavic populations under Habsburg rule, that were considered necessary for the formation of the Italian nation-state. Anti-Slav sentiment deepened through the First World War, in which Slavs fought for Austria-Hungary against Italy. The fact that Italy was awarded only parts of Dalmatia at the end of the war also intensified this hostility.Aram Mattioli: Das faschistische Italien – ein unbekanntes Apartheidregime. Erschienen in: Gesetzliches Unrecht – Rassistisches Recht im 20. Jahrhundert. Hrsg.: Micha Brumlik, Susanne Meinl und Werner Renz, Campus 2005, ISBN 3-593-37873-6, S. 157 ff. In the 1920s, Italian fascists propagated animosity towards people from the neighboring Yugoslavia, especially the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes. Among others, they fabricated many chauvinistic tropes, for example, claims that the Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes had "atavistic impulses," alongside perpetuating the made-up accusations that the Yugoslavs were conspiring on behalf of "Grand Orient Masonry and its funds." Additionally, some of these prejudices, stereotypes, and racial tropes were connected with anti-semitic conspiracy theories, such the belief that the Serbs were involved in a "social-democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot."Burgwyn, H. James (1997) Italian Foreign Policy in the Interwar Period, 1918–1940. Greenwood Publishing Group. p.43.
The leader of fascist Italy, Benito Mussolini, considered the Slavic race inferior and barbaric.Resistance, Suffering, Hope. The Slovene Partisan Movement 1941-1945, Ljubljana 2008, , p. 27 Furthermore, he believed that the Croats posed an existential threat to Italy as they supposedly intended to seize Dalmatia, a region which was claimed by Italy, while he also claimed that the threat rallied Italians at the end of World War I: "The danger of seeing the Yugoslavians settle along the whole Adriatic shore had caused a bringing together in Rome of the cream of our unhappy regions. Students, professors, workmen, citizens—representative men—were entreating the ministers and the professional politicians."Mussolini, Benito; Child, Richard Washburn; Ascoli, Max; & Lamb, Richard (1988) My rise and fall. New York: Da Capo Press. pp.105–106. These claims often tended to emphasize the "foreignness" of the Yugoslavs by stating that they were newcomers to the area, unlike the ancient Italians, whose territories were occupied by the Slavs.
Canada In Canada, many xenophobic white supremacists were deeply tied to their nation's "Anglo-Saxon" culture, especially from the early 1900s to the end of World War II. The Ku Klux Klan in Canada was prominent in the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta, both of which have had a relatively high share of Eastern European ethnic population. Consequently, many immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, and Poland were frequently faced with public defamation, acts of harassment, and physical assaults.
Furthermore, during World War I, thousands of Ukrainian Canadians were perceived as "enemy aliens" as Canadian nativists considered their presence as a "threat" to Canada's Western European heritage. Due to this, many of them were interned in concentration camps. What is more, there was constant discrimination towards Ukrainians who recently immigrated from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Germany
Middle Ages Though anti-Slavic sentiments reached their peak during Nazi Germany, Germany has had a long history of Slavophobia. (see: Wikisource), an important chronicle written in the 1010s by Thietmar, Prince-Bishop of Merseburg, contains negative, prejudicial depiction of Slavic people, defined as population living between the rivers Elbe and Oder (Polabians)—although Thietmar recognized that inhabitants of Poland and Bohemia speak "Slavic language", he did not refer to them as Slavs in the ethnic sense. Later, the Germanic people of Prussia often depicted Polish people in a negative light, which paralleled future Slavophobia in the Nazi regime. The Teutonic Order played a foundational role in shaping early German anti-Slavic sentiment through its participation in the Drang nach Osten ("Drive to the East"), a medieval and later nationalistic concept referring to German expansion into Slavic and Baltic lands. Beginning in the 13th century, the order launched crusades against pagan and Slavic populations in the eastern Baltic region, including Prussians, Lithuanians, and Pomeranians, under the pretext of Christianization and a civilizing mission. The conquest and colonization of these territories involved the suppression of native Slavic and Baltic cultures, forced conversions, and the settlement of German colonists. These actions were justified by portraying Slavic peoples as barbaric, morally deficient, and politically inferior, a narrative reinforced by Teutonic chroniclers such as Peter of Dusburg. The order imposed German legal systems and language, contributing to a lasting cultural hierarchy in which German identity was seen as superior.
19th century in his 1968 article "Замолчанный Маркс" (Hushed-up Marx) provides ample evidence of anti-Slavism by the founders of Marxism, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. https://vtoraya-literatura.com/pdf/uljanov_zamolchanny_marx_1969_text.pdf " Замолчанный Маркс" (Hushed-up Marx)], «Возрождение» № 201, 1968, reprinted in 1969 by For example, in his 1849 article "The Magyar Struggle," Engels wrote that the Slavs living in the Austrian Empire were "barbarians" who "needed to be saved" by the German Austrians, and predicted that a future revolutionary upheaval would enable the "Austrian Germans and Magyars" to "wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians." He described German Austrians and Magyars (Hungarians) as progressive forces acting as a “wedge” driven between the Slavic groups—namely the Czechs, Slovaks, South Slavs, and Ruthenians—and argued that the German nobility "in Bohemia, Moravia, Carinthia and Kraina" had "Germanised them and so drew them into the European movement", while the "Magyar nobility likewise" ruled, "in Croatia, Slavonia and the Carpathian territories."
Gustav Freytag's 1855 novel Soll und Haben ("Debt and Credit") was one of the most-read German novels of the 19th century, and contained antisemitic sentiments as well as depictions of Poles as incompetent.
Polish people in the Prussian Partition (territories that belonged to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth before 1772, but became part of the Kingdom of Prussia — and, later, German Empire — following the Partitions) were discriminated against in multiple ways. For example, Michał Drzymała was prohibited from building a house on his own land by the Prussian authorities because of his ethnicity (there was legislation intended to restrict Polish settlement in the Prussian eastern provinces). Another famous anti-Polish actions of Germans are activities of the German Eastern Marches Society, events that led to the Września children's strike and other ways of Germanisation.
Nazi Germany
Anti-Slavic racism played a significant role within the ideology of Nazism.Bendersky, Joseph W. (2007).A concise history of Nazi Germany Plymouth, U.K.: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 161-2 Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party held the belief that Slavic countries - particularly Poland, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia, as well as their respective peoples - were "Untermenschen" (subhumans). According to their viewpoint, these Slavic nations were deemed to be foreign entities and were not considered part of the Aryan master race. Nazi Germany depicted the Soviet Union as an "Asiatic enemy" of Europeans, in addition to portraying its population as inferior subhumans controlled by Jews and communists.
Hitler’s autobiography, Mein Kampf, expressed anti-Slavic views. Among others, he wrote: “One ought to cast the utmost doubt on the state-building power of the Slavs,” and from the beginning, he rejected the idea of incorporating the Slavs into Greater Germany.A Ridiculous Hundred Million Slavs: Concerning Adolf Hitler's World-view Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza, page 41, Wydawnictwo Neriton and Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2006
Hitler considered the Slavs to be racially inferior, because, in his view, the Bolshevik Revolution had put the Jews in power over the mass of Slavs, who were, by his own definition, incapable of ruling themselves but were instead being ruled by Jewish masters. He considered the development of modern Russia to have been the work of Germanic, not Slavic, elements in the nation, but believed those achievements had been undone and destroyed by the October Revolution,Bendersky, Joseph W. (2000) A History of Nazi Germany: 1919–1945. Plymouth, UK: Rowman & Littlefield. p.177. in Mein Kampf, he wrote, “The organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race.”Martyn Housden, Hitler: Study of a Revolutionary?, page 36. Heinrich Himmler and the SS in particular interpreted the medieval conflicts between feudal rulers of German, Polish, and Russian-speaking lands as a "racial struggle" of the Germanic peoples against the Slavs. Himmler regarded himself as the reincarnation of the Saxon king Henry the Fowler, who had been victorious against the Slavs.Aleff 1973, p. 70. This interpretation influenced Germany's war planning and conduct during World War II in Eastern Europe. A few days before the invasion of Poland, Hitler declared in a speech before military commanders: