Archive:Anti-Slavic sentiment: Difference between revisions

{{Short description|Hostility, prejudice, or discrimination against Slavic peoples}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}

== By country ==

=== Albania ===

=== Italy ===

The leader of fascist Italy, [[Benito Mussolini]], considered the Slavic race inferior and barbaric.<ref>{{cite book |url=http://www.provincia.lucca.it/scuolapace/uploads/quaderni/ricordo2012.pdf |title=I profugi istriani, dalmati e fiumani a Lucca |language=it |trans-title=The Istrian, Dalmatian and Rijeka Refugees in Lucca |publisher=Instituto storico della Resistenca e dell'Età Contemporanea in Provincia di Lucca |chapter=Il confine orientale: una terra, molti esodi |trans-chapter=The Eastern Border: One Land, Multiple Exoduses |date=10 February 2012 |editor=Sestani, Armando |quote=When dealing with such a race as Slavic – inferior and barbarian – we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy. We should not be afraid of new victims. The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps. I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians. |pages=12–13 }}{{Dead link|date=September 2023 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}</ref><ref>[https://znaci.org/00001/179.pdf Resistance, Suffering, Hope. The Slovene Partisan Movement 1941-1945], Ljubljana 2008, {{ISBN|978-961-6681-02-5}}, p. 27</ref> 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."<ref>[[Benito Mussolini|Mussolini, Benito]]; Child, Richard Washburn; [[Max Ascoli|Ascoli, Max]]; & Lamb, Richard (1988) ''My rise and fall''. New York: Da Capo Press. pp.105–106.</ref> 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===

=== Germany ===

{{ill|Nikolay Ulyanov|ru|Ульянов, Николай Иванович}} 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]].<ref name=niu>{{ill|Nikolay Ylyanov|ru|Ульянов, Николай Иванович}}  https://vtoraya-literatura.com/pdf/uljanov_zamolchanny_marx_1969_text.pdf " Замолчанный Маркс" (''Hushed-up Marx'')], «Возрождение» № 201, 1968, reprinted in 1969 by ''{{ill|Possev-Verlag|ru|Посев (издательство)}}''</ref> 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."<ref>{{Cite news |last=Engels |first=Friedrich |date=January 1849 |title=The Magyar Struggle |url=https://marxists.architexturez.net/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm |work=Neue Rheinische Zeitung}}</ref>

[[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.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Petersen |first=Hans-Christian |title=Between Marginalization and Instrumentalization: Anti-Eastern European and Anti-Slavic Racism {{!}} illiberalism.org |url=https://www.illiberalism.org/between-marginalization-and-instrumentalization-anti-eastern-european-and-anti-slavic-racism/ |access-date=2024-02-05 |website=www.illiberalism.org/ |language=en-US}}</ref>

==== Nazi Germany ====

Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza, page 41, Wydawnictwo Neriton and Instytut Historii Polskiej Akademii Nauk, 2006</ref>  

| quote = "Hitler gave the already existing ideas of anti-Semitism, anti-Bolshevism, and [[anti-Slavism]] the form of a genocidal alternative: either we survive or the Jews, Bolsheviks, [[Slavs]] – the people of the East – do. Based on theories of a racial hierarchy, he built the directives for an extermination programme aimed at part of the population of Europe and [[Asia]] and the creation of a Teutonic “[[New Order (Nazism)|New Order]]”. ... The concept of Nazi ''[[Lebensraum]]'' cannot be fully explained without bluntly stating an important motivational element of his conquests in the East: anti-Slavism."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Borejsza |first=Jerzy W. |title=A ridiculous hundred million Slavs: Concerning Adolf Hitler's world-view |publisher=Polskiej Akademii Nauk |year=2017 |isbn=978-83-63352-88-2 |location=Warsaw, Poland |pages=176 |translator-last=French |translator-first=David}}</ref>

| author = - Polish historian [[:pl:Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza|Jerzy Wojciech Borejsza]]

As part of the ''Generalplan Ost'', Nazi Germany developed the [[Hunger Plan]], a forced starvation programme which involved the seizure of all of the food that was produced in Eastern European lands and the delivery of it to Germany, primarily to the German army. The full implementation of this plan would have ultimately resulted in the starvation and death of 20 to 30 million people (mainly Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians). It is estimated that in accordance with this plan, over four million Soviet citizens were starved to death from 1941 to 1944.<ref>Snyder, Timothy (2010) ''Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin''. New York: Basic Books. p.411.</ref> The resettlement policy reached a much more advanced stage in [[German occupation of Poland|occupied Poland]] because of its immediate proximity to Germany.<ref name="bendersky"/>

=== Greece ===

Traditionally,{{when|date=November 2022}} in [[Greece]], Slavic people were considered "invaders who separated the glory of [[Ancient Greece|Greek Antiquity]], by bringing an era of decline and ruin to Greece – the Dark Ages."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Curta |first=Florin |title=[[The Edinburgh History of the Greeks]], c. 500 to 1050 |date=30 January 2011 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-3809-3 |page=3 |doi=10.3366/edinburgh/9780748638093.001.0001 |quote=But during and after the [[Greek Civil War|Civil War]] of 1943-1949, the 'Slavs' themselves became a national enemy. Throughout the Civil War, the Slav Macedonians of northern Greece made an important contribution to the [[Communist Party of Greece|Communist]] cause. A strong link was thus established between national identity and political orientation, as the Civil War and the subsequent defeat of the [[Left-wing politics|left-wing]] movement turned Slav Macedonians into the [[Sudeten Germans|Sudetens]] of Greece (Augustinos 1989: 23). By 1950, those embracing the ideology of the right saw their political rivals as the embodiment of everything that was anti-national, Communist, and Slavic. To hold Fallmerayeran views thus became a crimen laesae maiestatis. Dionysios A. Zakythinos, the author of the first monograph on medieval Slavs in Greece, wrote of the Dark Ages separating Antiquity from the Middle Ages as an era of decline and ruin which was brought by Slavic invaders (Zakythinos 1945: 72 and 1966: 300, 302 and 316). In the United States, Peter Charanis regarded Emperor [[Nikephoros I]] as the hero who saved Greece from [[Slavicisation|Slavonicisation]] (Charanis 1946). The early medieval Slavs thus became a historiographic problem, to slavikon zetema.}}</ref> In 1913, after the [[First Balkan War|First]] and [[Second Balkan War|Second Balkan wars]], when Greece took control of Slavic-inhabited areas in Northern Greece, the [[Geographical name changes in Greece|Slavic toponyms]] were changed to Greek, and according to the Greek government, this was "the elimination of all the names which pollute and disfigure the beautiful appearance of our fatherland."<ref>{{Cite book| last1 = Danforth |first1 = Loring M | author1-link = Loring Danforth |title= The Macedonian conflict : ethnic nationalism in a transnational world|date= 1995|publisher= Princeton University Press |isbn= 0-691-04357-4|page = 69|oclc= 32237371}}</ref>

Anti-Slavic sentiment escalated during the [[Greek Civil War]], when [[National Liberation Front (Macedonia)|Macedonian partisans]], who aligned themselves with the [[Democratic Army of Greece]], were not treated as equals and suffered discrimination everywhere, they were accused of committing a "sin" because they chose to identify themselves as Slavs rather than Greeks.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last= Rossos|first= Andrew|date= 1997|title= Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943–1949|journal= The Journal of Modern History|volume= 69|issue= 1|pages= 56|doi= 10.1086/245440|s2cid= 143512864|issn= 0022-2801 |quote= The terror campaign which was unleashed after Varkiza against the entire Left by the Greek Right was directed with special vehemence against the Macedonians. In addition to the ideological "treachery" of supporting EAM-ELAS, they were attacked for committing the ultimate "sin" of not being, or rather not considering themselves, Greeks. They were condemned as Bulgars, komitajis, collaborators, autonomists, Sudetens of the Balkans, and so forth, and threatened with extermination.}}</ref> The Macedonian partisans were subjected to threats of extermination, physical attacks, murder, attacks on their settlements, forcible expulsions, restrictions on freedom of movement, and bureaucratic problems, among other discriminatory acts.<ref name=":0" /> Although they were allied with the Greek Left, due to their Slavic identity, the [[Slavic speakers of Greek Macedonia|Macedonians]] were viewed with suspicion and animosity by the Greek Left.<ref>{{Cite journal|last= Rossos|first= Andrew|date=1997|title=Incompatible Allies: Greek Communism and Macedonian Nationalism in the Civil War in Greece, 1943–1949|journal=The Journal of Modern History|volume=69|issue=1|pages=42–43|doi= 10.1086/245440|s2cid= 143512864 |issn= 0022-2801}}</ref>

The [[United States|United States of America]] has a long history of Slavophobia. Slavophobia began in earnest during the "second wave" of European immigration in the early 1900s, when many people from Southern and Eastern Europe were immigrating to the US.<ref name=":2" /> They faced opposition from the "old" immigrants, who were mostly from Northern and Western Europe. These attitudes culminated in the [[Immigration Act of 1924]], which established quotas for and limited the numbers of people from Southern and Eastern European countries who were allowed to enter the US.<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Magazine |first1=Smithsonian |last2=Diamond |first2=Anna |title=The 1924 Law That Slammed the Door on Immigrants and the Politicians Who Pushed it Back Open |url=https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/1924-law-slammed-door-immigrants-and-politicians-who-pushed-it-back-open-180974910/ |access-date=2024-02-06 |website=Smithsonian Magazine |language=en}}</ref> Slavic peoples were considered to be people of an "inferior race" who were unable to assimilate into American society.<ref name=":2" /> They were popularly not considered to be "fully white" (and thus fully American), and Slavic peoples' "whiteness" continues to be a debate to this day.

== See also ==

{{Anti-national sentiment}}

{{Discrimination}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Anti-Slavic sentiment| ]]