For me personally… it definitely means something, but not… all that much. The biggest issue I have with the whole idea of a Slavic identity is the appropriation of the term by a certain type of conservative, specifically from Eastern Orthodox countries (*ahem* Russia), according to who the cultural-linguistic label of “Slavic” is supposed to carry additional political, ideological and even religious connotations. The connotations that I, or most Slavs for that matter, certainly do not agree with.
Then there’s the less heavy approach to the idea of a Slavic identity. Culture, essentially. Being from northern Croatia, I don’t have nearly as much in common with a Russian or a Bulgarian when it comes to… anything really, than to an Austrian a short drive away. Likewise, the sunny beaches, pines and stone houses of Dalmatia don’t exactly bear much of a resemblance to the vast snowy birch forests and wooden cottages of Belarus. And don’t even get me started on the ideological differences between various Slavic countries.
My point is, I don’t think there’s such thing as a shared Slavic culture. That had died out all the way in the Middle Ages, after Christianization and the formation of different kingdoms and empires. Something I commonly hear from Balkan Slavs, for example, is that they relate much more to Greeks, Albanians and Romanians than to Russians or Poles.
It’s a complex topic. I can’t exactly put my finger on this whole thing. That’s what happens, I suppose, when you come from a country that lies at the crossroads of three major regions of Europe, and which practices a religion and has always belonged to a cultural sphere the majority of the people who speak a similar language to you don’t. I think the French, particularly the ones from the north of the country, would relate in some way, being somewhat of a blend between “Romance” and “Germanic” Europe, but let’s not get into whether the labels “Romance” and “Germanic” mean anything else besides which linguistic family does your language belongs to.
So anyway, I’m really curious what other Slavs think, especially those who live in the same sort of a limbo between the East and West of Europe.
17 comments
For your thing about the french, I’m pretty sure almost all french see themselves as latin, however this concept is not at all used for politics (it used to though from Napoleon occupation to the latin monetary union.)
That said it would be interesting to hear a pole, a czech or a slovak opinion on this. Because as you said, Croatia is, for a slavic country, a bit out there geographically.
I, as a Pole, think of myself as Polish and European, but barely Slavic. I mean, I speak a Slavic language, but the first thing that comes to my mind in this case is that I speak specifically Polish, not “one of Slavic languages”. And I can’t think of any elements of Slavic culture that there might be in my life. Plus, to be honest, I’m more into Romance culture.
Hell yeah! That’s my kind of question I’d love to answer, mah beach cousin.
Now, setting dummery aside – there is no unified slavic culture and being slavic means nothing to me.
It’s also impossible to say clearly what “should be considered modern slavic core culture”. There used to be probably some around 6.-7. century, however it evolved and branched into different subdivisions. In this timeline we have in total 13 countries with modern slavic populations. (different genetic mixes influence by different migration waves) Ironically – each country also have multiple internal ethnic and regional divisions. Each pioneered its own culture, understanding of world, cuisine, dialect and even spiritual belief.
The habbit of associating “the Slavnes” to the visuals of East Slavs is probably remaining pan-slavism stereotype. You most likely know it too, ya’ll were with us inside that bizzare political entity called Austro-Hungarian empire. People usually like to see just only the aesthetical or cultural part, but when we look at facts and history, suddenly the picture of “the unified Slavic culture” get shattered.
As you said, typical Slav according to the cultural stereotype should be Orthodox, should use Cyrillic script and wear only high flower crowns and should be blonde. The reality?
Bosniaks are Muslims, Czechs successfully damned religion, Slovaks and Poles are catholic yet both of them have a different approach to religion in general, Sorbs are protestants ect.
So my conclusions – it’s dope to be able to see strong connection between languages, yet it’s more beautiful when you see the variety between each ethnic group.
Being “Slavic” was a big thing in 19th century, but I think that most Czechs including me do not consider it very important. It is usually more stressed by political fringes, both nazis/fascists and communists (Czech communists have a strong nationalistic aspect and are pro-Russian – and Russia uses Slavic identity as a part of its imperialist toolbox). Usual stereotypes propagated both by 19th century panslavic revivalists, later ethnonationalists and communist regime were centered about Slavs being of “dove mentality” (=inherently peaceful, not like Germans), idealistic image of Russia as a “strong Slavic brother” or some inherent beauty that only our language/folk garb/traditions have – and none of these ideas can withstsnd a critical review.
In 19th century, Slavic identity, in addition to being Czech, was part of cultural emancipation against Austrian German-prefering government, but some (though not all) important founders of later Czechoslovak state like Masaryk were critical of panslavism and had direct experience with how Russia is not a good example to follow. After 1948, communists pushed pro-Russian panslavism to the forefront again as an opposite to anything German. However, the Slavic identity was so pushed, that we actually had a small Celtic revival in 1990s as people started to turn to a less conflicted identity based on prehistoric Celtic cultures of Bohemia (which left a genetic mark in the population, but were not preserved in language except for some place names).
I myself do consider myself European and Czech, acknowledge my genetic and cultural heritage, which is partly Slavic, but should my kids decide to move to another country or accept different cultural identity, I would not consider it a problem as long as they would live a happy life. I like my country of birth and would miss it myself, I like its language, less known cultural quirks etc., but these are more a part of my “local” than “nationa/political” identity. And I refuse the nationalistic idea that being born in a country or ethnic group determines what you should think.
Historically for Czechs, the Slavic identity helped us to differentiate ourselves from Germans and establish an independent nation after the collapse of Austria-Hungary.
For me personally? Nothing. Other Slavic languages are similar to ours, same with some obscure traditions and holidays people in rural areas celebrate, but that’s about it. Our cuisine is closer to Austrian or even Hungarian, than to Polish or Ukrainian, similar is the case with architecture or our mindset.
I struggle to find anything significant we have in common with a majority of other Slavic nations, excluding language and our tragic recent history under the Soviet overlords.
[removed]
I don’t see any ideological or political connotations to being Slavic, the only ones I see can be referred to Eastern Slavic countries if any. But Russians love their brainwashing and think that Russia is somehow the mother of all Slavic nations? No idea how they came up with it considering that their country exists thanks to the Vikings actually raiding some of their current lands…
Anyway, long story short:
When I’m going abroad to another continent or on an international chat/forum I’m not introducing myself as Slavic, I would start with European then Polish and that’s it, if someone starts a conversation about conservatism in Poland I will add usually that I’m from the Western Poland which is the one that is actually more liberal than conservative.
Poland is a Slavic country meaning that we speak a language from the Slavic group and our ancestors came from Slavic tribes, and these tribes formed the country we live in today, but what we have now is just small pieces of what the Slavic culture was since a lot of it was replaced by Catholicism and Latin influence that came with it.
Not to mention the whole XVI and XVII century and the whole sarmatism in Poland and its influence.
And because of this and the huge role of Latin influence we don’t like being thrown in the same basket with Eastern Slavic countries.
On a side note even what we as Poles would describe as “Slavic look” is not what other Slavic countries would have described it to be. For us it’s dark blond/gold blond hair + blue or green eyes, for a lot of other Slavic nations that would be dark hair and not blonde somehow…
Literally nothing other than being a rhetoric tool used by the far-right nationalists.
Linguistic similarities are much more meaningful (e.g. I don’t understand Russian, I understand less of it than German or Spanish, but I usually can get quite a lot of Slovakian)
I dont see being a slav as much more than lingustics terminology
i do feel a connection to the russians and poles whenever i understand even just one word or one sentance
but apart from that i dont see them as „brothers”
at most i see them as distent cousins whos speech sounds a bit funny
As a Polish person, it’s just not something I think about. Like, I will admit I’m Polish and thus Slavic, because it’s true, but I don’t really feel any particular way about it. If I had to rank my identities based on their importance/relevance, I’d say first of all I feel that I’m European and as a close second I’m <all identities related to my passions, worldview etc.>, then I’m Polish, then I’m from my region, then I’m a woman, then I’m a sentient being, then from planet Earth, and perhaps somewhere there after that is my acknowledgement that I’m Slavic. It’s just not a useful category, we’re all very different from each other, our countries are not close politically for the most part, there’s not that much that ties us together.
I see that people define themselves as first this and second that etc. For me I am equally all three: Polish, Slavic and European.
Slavic identity; I guess what it means to me is a feeling of belonging to a bigger community that shares a linguistic and genetic origin.
However instead of sharing in the common linguistic background ultra nationalists go around claiming language X is just a dialect of their language. I’ve seen it too many times. You don’t see Germans claiming Dutch is a German just with a dialect, or Swedes claiming Danish is Swedish. Yet Bulgarians do that to Macedonian, Serbs do it to Montenegrin, Poles do it to Silesian, Russians do it to Belarussian and Ukrainian etc etc etc.
I would call myself a slavic progressivist. Like, why is slavic identity tied to conservative concepts? There’s just something weird about mixing things like feminism and slavic cultural identity, and because of that I feel like slavic culture has a rep for being “based” among hardcore conservative christians. Which is stupid, and also why the idea of a common slavic identity is captured by the far-right.
I’m all for recapturing that concept from the far-right. I do feel a sense of belonging to this family, even though it’s a very pathological one.
What about Germanic and Romance “cultures”?
I do think Flemish people in general feel there is *some* connection with the the other Germanic countries. This is especially noticeable in politics. Politicians love to point out that Flanders is “Northern Europe” and Wallonia is “Southern Europe”. (Literally just a few days ago on Terzake)
There was a tendency for Germans to coin a lot of loan translations and all other Germanic languages (except English) then also used these loan translations. This way, the Germanic languages kept somewhat connected. The same thing still happens in the Romance languages (remember the thread about that verb for “to land on the moon”, “to land on Mars”? All Romance languages have that).
But I don’t think our Germanic culture is more than just there being some connection.
I love the idea of being “Slavic” and I love to read about pagan Slavs, but the truth is… Slavic traditions are pretty much dead in Poland. Everything got christianized or westernized to the point it doesn’t feel slavic anymore, it’s simply “Polish” or “European”.
I doesn’t really mean anything specific. It’s just a feeling.
Religious connotations – we fought like 50+ wars with Bulgaria who are also Orthodox. So there’s that… There is no common Slavic thing.
I never heard anyone who relates to Romanians and Albanians (maybe Bosniaks?) I know Montenegrins relate to Italians… Greeks – it’s mostly care-free attitude (Opa!).
However, there is common culture, values, ideas, “attitude”, mojo, vibe, that developed in countries in former Southslavia because of the institutions and paths that we shared. Religion really doesn’t affect your daily life if you think about it, because no one really practice it (if you don’t count tattoos). The thing that brought Southslavia to life was the fact that Croats, Serbs and Slovenes were treated like second class citizens in Austria-Hungary. But in their new state they weren’t. So, that was a Slavic thing.
“Slavic identity”, pan-Slavism etc. was a useful tool in fights faught by Western and Southern Slavic-speaking populations against their imperial Austrian and later Austrian-Hungarian overlords in the 19th century. In the 20th, it was appropriated by Russian imperialists (both of the reactionary and communist kind) and turned into a way of oppression (e.g. the “Brotherly Help” given to Czechoslovakia in 1968).
These days it’s done and gone. Do the Dutch feel a “Germanic identity”? Do the Portuguese feel they’re “Romance”? Do any of you feel “Indo-European” (or “Uralic”, for the Finnish, Hungarian and Estonian members of this sub)? I don’t think you do. 🙂
Culturally, Poland has similarities to Ukraine, Slovakia and Czechia, but also to Lithuania and Germany, two non-Slavic countries. We were also influenced by other people living or having lived among us, from the Tatars to the Armenians to the Jews. And we have this weird relationship with Hungary that no other Slavic state shares.
So, what is “Slavic”, common to all “Slavs”? The language, mostly, and some Christian-appropriated pagan rituals and a few superstitions.
For me it means absolutely nothing. It’s just a language group, nothing more.
The idea of panslavism was never popular in Poland, mostly because it was, and still is, strongly associated with Russian domination. Every time when I see in Poland someone who brags about Slavic identity, almost always they are a Russian paid shill. Also Poland historically had much better relations with non-Slavic countries, like Lithuania or Hungary.
>The biggest issue I have with the whole idea of a Slavic identity is the appropriation of the term by a certain type of conservative, specifically from Eastern Orthodox countries
Oh yes, I “love” when people are saying “you are Slavs, so you should be Orthodox/write in cyryllic/speak Russian”.
Slavs don’t really have a lot in common anymore, except language. Imo the concept of the “Slavic brotherhood” died in the 20th century, the collapse of Yugoslavia being the last nail in the coffin. Personally I feel closer to a Romanian than, say, a pole or a czech. That said, I think the ability to go to another country and be understood relatively easily while speaking my own language feels amazing.