Anti-Slavism
Encyclopedia
Anti-Slavism, also known as Slavophobia, a form of racism
or xenophobia
, refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples, most common manifestation being claims of inferiority of Slavic nations with respect to other ethnic group
s. Its opposite is Slavophilia.
through the work of the Franciscan monks who had studied in monasteries in Austria-Hungary
. They imitated and transposed national epics
of the literature produced there, like Gjergj Fishta
did with his Lahuta e Malcis, but substituted the struggle against Turks with struggle against the Slavs, propagating Anti-Slavic feelings. 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." For the Soviet historiography
Anti-Slavism in Albania was inspired by the Catholic clergy which took position against Slavic people because of role the Catholic clergy had in preparations "for Italian aggression against Albania" and because Slavs opposed "rapacious plans of Austro-Hungarian imperialism in Albania".
and Nazism
prior to and during World War II
.
In the 1920s
, Italian fascists targeted Yugoslavs
—especially Serbs
—and accused Serbs of having "atavistic
impulses", claimed that Yugoslavs were conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds" and one anti-Semitic claim that Serbs were part of a "social-democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot".
Benito Mussolini
identified Yugoslavs as a threat to Italy and as competitors over the region of Dalmatia
which was claimed by Italy, and claimed that this threat rallied Italians together at the end of World War I
, saying: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians 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".
Nevertheless, the anti-communist Serbian partisans, the Chetniks
, allied with Italy after the Invasion of Yugoslavia
.
Anti-Slavic racism was an essential component of Nazism
. Adolf Hitler
and his Nazi movement regarded Slavic nations and their peoples as Untermenschen (sub-humans), one of a number of "inferior races" that were, unlike the "Aryan master race
", incapable of creating culture or civilization. They were in fact seen as a threat to European society (which they were not considered part of), and were characterized as eastern barbarians who would eventually overrun the Western nations in order to destroy them. In order to counter this perceived threat, and because according to the Nazis the German people was in need for more territory
to sustain its surplus population, an ideology of conquest and depopulation was formulated for Eastern Europe
according to the principle of Lebensraum
, itself based on an older theme in German nationalism which maintained that Germany had a "natural yearning" to expand its borders eastward (Drang Nach Osten
). This drive was focused especially towards the Soviet Union
, as it alone was deemed capable of providing enough territory to accomplish this goal, although they reached a much more advanced state in occupied Poland due to its immediate proximity to Germany. According to the resulting genocidal Generalplan Ost
, millions of German and other "Germanic" settlers would be moved into the conquered territories, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed, and enslaved.
The Nazis' policies were in practice not omnipresently anti-Slavic however. In order to deviate from their ideological theories for strategic reasons by forging alliances with Croatia
(a puppet state
recently created after the Invasion of Yugoslavia
) and Bulgaria
, the Croats were officially described as "more Germanic than Slav", a notion supported by Croatia's fascist dictator Ante Pavelić
who maintained that the Croatians were descendants of the ancient Goths
and "had the Panslav idea
forced upon them as something artificial". Hitler also deemed the Bulgarians to be Turkoman in origin.
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
or xenophobia
Xenophobia
Xenophobia is defined as "an unreasonable fear of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange". It comes from the Greek words ξένος , meaning "stranger," "foreigner" and φόβος , meaning "fear."...
, refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples, most common manifestation being claims of inferiority of Slavic nations with respect to other ethnic group
Ethnic group
An ethnic group is a group of people whose members identify with each other, through a common heritage, often consisting of a common language, a common culture and/or an ideology that stresses common ancestry or endogamy...
s. Its opposite is Slavophilia.
Albania
At the beginning of the 20th century Anti-Slavism developed in AlbaniaAlbania (toponym)
The toponym Albania may indicate several different geographical regions: a country in the Balkans; an ancient land in the Caucasus; as well as Scotland, Albania being a Latinization of a Gaelic name for Scotland, Alba...
through the work of the Franciscan monks who had studied in monasteries in Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
. They imitated and transposed national epics
National epic
A national epic is an epic poem or a literary work of epic scope which seeks or is believed to capture and express the essence or spirit of a particular nation; not necessarily a nation-state, but at least an ethnic or linguistic group with aspirations to independence or autonomy...
of the literature produced there, like Gjergj Fishta
Gjergj Fishta
Gjergj Fishta was an Albanian Franciscan friar, poet, rilindas, and a translator. Notably he was the chairman of the commission of the Congress of Monastir, which sanctioned the Albanian alphabet. In 1937 he completed and published his epic masterpiece Lahuta e Malcis, an epic poem written in Gheg...
did with his Lahuta e Malcis, but substituted the struggle against Turks with struggle against the Slavs, propagating Anti-Slavic feelings. 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." For the Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography
Soviet historiography is the methodology of history studies by historians in the Soviet Union . In the USSR, the study of history was marked by alternating periods of freedom allowed and restrictions imposed by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union , and also by the struggle of historians to...
Anti-Slavism in Albania was inspired by the Catholic clergy which took position against Slavic people because of role the Catholic clergy had in preparations "for Italian aggression against Albania" and because Slavs opposed "rapacious plans of Austro-Hungarian imperialism in Albania".
National Socialism and Fascism
Anti-Slavism was notable in Italian FascismItalian Fascism
Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...
and Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
prior to and during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
In the 1920s
1920s
File:1920s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: Third Tipperary Brigade Flying Column No. 2 under Sean Hogan during the Irish Civil War; Prohibition agents destroying barrels of alcohol in accordance to the 18th amendment, which made alcoholic beverages illegal throughout the entire decade; In...
, Italian fascists targeted Yugoslavs
Yugoslavia
Yugoslavia refers to three political entities that existed successively on the western part of the Balkans during most of the 20th century....
—especially Serbs
Serbs
The Serbs are a South Slavic ethnic group of the Balkans and southern Central Europe. Serbs are located mainly in Serbia, Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and form a sizable minority in Croatia, the Republic of Macedonia and Slovenia. Likewise, Serbs are an officially recognized minority in...
—and accused Serbs of having "atavistic
Atavism
Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before. Atavisms can occur in several ways...
impulses", claimed that Yugoslavs were conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds" and one anti-Semitic claim that Serbs were part of a "social-democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot".
Benito Mussolini
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....
identified Yugoslavs as a threat to Italy and as competitors over the region of Dalmatia
Dalmatia
Dalmatia is a historical region on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. It stretches from the island of Rab in the northwest to the Bay of Kotor in the southeast. The hinterland, the Dalmatian Zagora, ranges from fifty kilometers in width in the north to just a few kilometers in the south....
which was claimed by Italy, and claimed that this threat rallied Italians together at the end of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, saying: "The danger of seeing the Jugo-Slavians 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".
Nevertheless, the anti-communist Serbian partisans, the Chetniks
Chetniks
Chetniks, or the Chetnik movement , were Serbian nationalist and royalist paramilitary organizations from the first half of the 20th century. The Chetniks were formed as a Serbian resistance against the Ottoman Empire in 1904, and participated in the Balkan Wars, World War I, and World War II...
, allied with Italy after the Invasion of Yugoslavia
Invasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
.
Anti-Slavic racism was an essential component of Nazism
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
. Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
and his Nazi movement regarded Slavic nations and their peoples as Untermenschen (sub-humans), one of a number of "inferior races" that were, unlike the "Aryan master race
Master race
Master race was a phrase and concept originating in the slave-holding Southern US. The later phrase Herrenvolk , interpreted as 'master race', was a concept in Nazi ideology in which the Nordic peoples, one of the branches of what in the late-19th and early-20th century was called the Aryan race,...
", incapable of creating culture or civilization. They were in fact seen as a threat to European society (which they were not considered part of), and were characterized as eastern barbarians who would eventually overrun the Western nations in order to destroy them. In order to counter this perceived threat, and because according to the Nazis the German people was in need for more territory
Volk ohne Raum
"Volk ohne Raum" was a political slogan used in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany. The term was coined by the nationalist writer Hans Grimm with his novel Volk ohne Raum...
to sustain its surplus population, an ideology of conquest and depopulation was formulated for Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe
Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
according to the principle of Lebensraum
Lebensraum
was one of the major political ideas of Adolf Hitler, and an important component of Nazi ideology. It served as the motivation for the expansionist policies of Nazi Germany, aiming to provide extra space for the growth of the German population, for a Greater Germany...
, itself based on an older theme in German nationalism which maintained that Germany had a "natural yearning" to expand its borders eastward (Drang Nach Osten
Drang nach Osten
Drang nach Osten was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German expansion into Slavic lands. The term became a motto of the German nationalist movement in the late nineteenth century...
). This drive was focused especially towards the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, as it alone was deemed capable of providing enough territory to accomplish this goal, although they reached a much more advanced state in occupied Poland due to its immediate proximity to Germany. According to the resulting genocidal Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost
Generalplan Ost was a secret Nazi German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. Implementing it would have necessitated genocide and ethnic cleansing to be undertaken in the Eastern European territories occupied by Germany during World War II...
, millions of German and other "Germanic" settlers would be moved into the conquered territories, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be annihilated, removed, and enslaved.
The Nazis' policies were in practice not omnipresently anti-Slavic however. In order to deviate from their ideological theories for strategic reasons by forging alliances with Croatia
Independent State of Croatia
The Independent State of Croatia was a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany, established on a part of Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. The NDH was founded on 10 April 1941, after the invasion of Yugoslavia by the Axis powers. All of Bosnia and Herzegovina was annexed to NDH, together with some parts...
(a puppet state
Puppet state
A puppet state is a nominal sovereign of a state who is de facto controlled by a foreign power. The term refers to a government controlled by the government of another country like a puppeteer controls the strings of a marionette...
recently created after the Invasion of Yugoslavia
Invasion of Yugoslavia
The Invasion of Yugoslavia , also known as the April War , was the Axis Powers' attack on the Kingdom of Yugoslavia which began on 6 April 1941 during World War II...
) and Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, the Croats were officially described as "more Germanic than Slav", a notion supported by Croatia's fascist dictator Ante Pavelić
Ante Pavelic
Ante Pavelić was a Croatian fascist leader, revolutionary, and politician. He ruled as Poglavnik or head, of the Independent State of Croatia , a World War II puppet state of Nazi Germany in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia...
who maintained that the Croatians were descendants of the ancient Goths
Goths
The Goths were an East Germanic tribe of Scandinavian origin whose two branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe....
and "had the Panslav idea
Pan-Slavism
Pan-Slavism was a movement in the mid-19th century aimed at unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires, Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice...
forced upon them as something artificial". Hitler also deemed the Bulgarians to be Turkoman in origin.