Slavic Europe is a region of
Europe where
Slavic languages are spoken. This area corresponds, more or less, to
Central and Eastern Europe and the
Balkans, and consists of
Belarus,
Bosnia and Herzegovina,
Bulgaria,
Croatia, the
Czech Republic, the
Republic of Macedonia,
Montenegro,
Poland,
Russia,
Serbia,
Slovakia,
Slovenia, the disputed territory of
Transnistria, and
Ukraine. It may also include
Lusatia in
Germany, home of the
Sorbs and
Burgenland Austria, which are Slavic regions in mainly non-Slavic nations.
Throughout the late Middle and early Modern Ages, many Slavs were under foreign rule. Whilst the western Slavs were dominated by German Empires, South and East Slavs served as a buffer from Mongol attacks onto the rest of Europe, falling under Asiatic rule for a few centuries.
In the 19th century, the consolidation of a national ideology searched for the ancestry of ethnic groups; one of the movements was called Pan-Slavism and it tried to unite nations of Slavic origins to a common interest and develop a common identity. These efforts failed for a number of reasons, one of them being attempts of Imperial Russia to take it over in order to justify its territorial expansion and the subjugation of nations of Slavic origin such as the Ukrainians or Poles. Another fact was due to independent developments amongst Slavic peoples and the development of antagonisms between them. Thirdly, due to divergenet interests between various groups; for example, the Poles repressed the freedom of the Ukrainians both religiously and culturally[citation needed]. Also, while certain Slavic nations such as the Czechs and Slovaks in the Austro-Hungarian Empire desired Russian protection and wanted its dissolution, the Poles, comparing their Austrian partition to the Russian or Prussian one, preferred the relative freedom they enjoyed under Austrian rule.
With the Soviet Union came another period of attempts to use the idea of Slavic unity for political purposes, and post-war Soviet propaganda often made use of Pan-slavist ideology, while before WW II, Poland‘s repressive policy created a great deal of resentment amongst its populous Belarusian and Ukrainian minorities. See also Polish-Ukrainian War in which the Ukrainians fought for independence from Poland.
