Slavs versus Slavs

Slavs versus Slavs Slavs versus Slavs AUTHOR: Krzysztof Wasilewski | March 24, 2014 Slavic unity can be put between fairy tales Slavs Population% of the total Slavic population Russia 122,500,000 85.3 Ukraine 50 568 000 96.6 Poland 38,032,000 98.7 Czech Republic 10 197 000 98.6 Belarus 10 157 000 98.1 Kazakhstan 7 563 000 44.0 Bulgaria 7 500 000 88.5 Serbia 6 155 100 85.0 Slovakia 4 658 000 87.4 Croatia 4 423 000 91.7 Bosnia and Herzegovina 3,515 700 97.8 Germany 2 025 000 2.5 Uzbekistan 1,928,000 9.1 Slovenia 1,882,000 94.2 Macedonia 1,510,000 73.2 Moldova 1 234 000 28.3 Latvia 1 171 000 44.0 Kyrgyzstan 1 088 000 24.0 Lithuania 689,000 18.1 Estonia 552,000 35.2 Montenegro 506,000 81.6 Tajikistan 480,000 8.4 Azerbaijan 459,000 6.2 Turkmenistan 408,000 9.5 Georgia 346,000 6.3 Greece 186,000 1.8 Hungary 140,000 1.3 Italy 180,000 0.3 Romania 172,000 0.8 Kosovo 97 300 5.3 Austria 63,000 0.8 Albania 5,000 0.2 Total 280 390 100 Recent events in Ukraine have sparked a heated discussion about relations between the Slavs. You can hear from everywhere that the Russians will never come to terms with the loss of these lands, because it was in Kiev that their civilization was to be born. Appeals for Slavic solidarity were also heard during the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Do common ethnic roots really affect contemporary relations between states and nations? “The Slavs will be loved by God for keeping their true faith in the Lord to the end. And they will receive great blessings from him in the form of the Russian-Slavic kingdom. Russia will merge into one great sea with other lands and Slavic tribes, it will create a huge ocean of nations ”. Can this prediction of an Orthodox saint from the beginning of the 20th century come true, or rather the historical events and disputes between the 280 million Slavs make it unreal? Pan-Slavism is not a new phenomenon. It was born in the 19th century in Bohemia, then part of the Habsburg Empire. The Czechs saw the idea of ​​uniting the Slavs as a chance to develop their own culture and tradition, suppressed by the German element. Ilirism developed in the same period - the idea of ​​uniting the southern Slavs. As Pan-Slavism found support in Russia, Poles opposed it, because on the Vistula River the alliance of the Slavs led by the Tsar was perceived as the end of the chances for their own independent state. Poles' dislike of Pan-Slavism was also fueled by the fear of Orthodoxy. This does not mean, however, that there were no supporters of Pan-Slavism in Poland. Prince Adam Czartoryski was one of the enthusiasts of the unity of the Slavs. Another Pole, Julian Lubliński, became the head of the Association of the United Slavs, the first organization to openly proclaim the idea of ​​Pan-Slavism. Both conservatives from the national camp and non-believers or even neo-paganists supported the Slavic community. Divisions in the family The theoretical assumptions of Pan-Slavism were verified by reality. It started optimistically - in October 1912, a broad coalition of southern Slavs was formed against the Ottoman Empire, including Bulgaria, Montenegro and Serbia, with the support of Greece. The conflict, which lasted less than a year, ended with the expulsion of the Turks from the Balkan Peninsula. However, he did not seal Slavic unity. Only a few months later, the Second Balkan War broke out, with Bulgaria, Serbia and their allies facing each other. Lonely Bulgarians quickly asked for a truce, handing over part of Macedonia to Serbia. The Slavs found themselves on both sides of the trenches also during World War I. The Slavic inhabitants of Austro-Hungary and the German Reich had to fight as their non-Slavic rulers decided. There was no agreement among the countries ruled by the Slavs themselves. Russia and Serbia found themselves in the Entente, along with Britain and France; Bulgaria, on the other hand, preferred to form an alliance with the Habsburgs and the Hohenzollerns. The division within the "great family of Slavs" became even more visible in the years of World War II. The Soviet Union took the eastern territories of the Second Polish Republic under the pretext of ensuring the safety of their Slavic inhabitants. Poland itself also had no resistance to the occupation of Zaolzie in 1938, when the "brotherly" Czechoslovakia fell victim to Hitler's policy. World War II awoke hidden animosities between the Slavs. The Volyn genocide remains a thorn in Polish-Ukrainian relations. It is difficult to pass over the murder of tens of thousands of people, including women and children. The Croatian Ustashe, who pursued his own policy of ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, committed equally macabre crimes. Their victims were mainly Orthodox Slavs, and the scale and methods of the crime shocked even German soldiers. Ukrainians and Poles, and Croats and Serbs are just two examples of how national resentments prevailed over Slavic unity. Nationalism put an end to the idea of ​​Pan-Slavism, as we learned not only during World War II, but also quite recently. In the early 1990s, a spark was enough to plunge the peoples of Yugoslavia into a murderous conflict once again. Slavic Solidarity was already an empty slogan then, although it was referred to by all parties. Interestingly, even Polish journalism - usually reluctant to any references to Slavic roots - wrote about the civil war or even the fratricidal war in Yugoslavia. Mild animosities It can be said that the divisions in the Slavic family are not surprising. After all, the last time the Proto-Slavic language, common to all groups, was used at the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries. As one historian noted, "Slavs used their national languages ​​to divide rather than unite." The differences between the Slavs are not limited to language or history. "