Why is there is a pan-slavic movement?

Question

While studying the history of Eastern Europe during the last century, I found that one of the main issues was the Pan-Slavic movement. For example big events such as World War I or the current civil war in Ukraine was a consequence of this movement.

Such movement consider people descendant of the Slavs as members of a international community which currently has the foundation and direction in Russia.

Interestingly such feeling did not develop in others civilizations, for instance Spain, France and Portugal cultures are somehow descendants of the Roman culture but there is not such thing as Pan-latin movement.

There are several accusations stating that Russia is enhancing the Pan-Slavic feeling for the purpose of expanding their influence. Is this a realistic statement? If so, was it the case for the past century or if not, is the Pan-Slavic movement just a natural consequence of the nations finding an identity?

Answer 1

Origins of Pan-Slavism

Speaking as a (western) Slav, panslavism was indeed a big topic in 19th century politics.

The primary reason for this seems to have been that outside of Russia, most Slavic populations were not in fact in their own nation states, but rather were subjugated by other national groups. This included, for instance, Czechs under Austrian rule, Slovaks under Hungarian rule, Poles under German rule and various Southern Slavs under Turks (and others), et cetera.

It was a desire of a lot of these Slavic nations to have their own nation states, but achieving this on their own seemed unfeasible, which is why the idea of pan-slavism and associated pan-slavic statehood emerged.

Specifically in the modern day Czech Republic, the Czech population was being subjected to a program of germanization since the 17th century. In the 18th century a backlash started in the form of a national revival movement, the aim of which was originally to reconstruct Czech culture. Gradually, though, it also took on political goals of greater autonomy for the Czech kingdom.

From this, two political lines of thought emerged. One was austro-slavist and argued for cooperation with the Austrians in hopes of greater autonomy and eventual federalization; their hopes were slashed with the formation of Austria-Hungary, when Austrians decided to rely on a Hungarian "alliance" instead.

The other line was pan-slavist which argued for cooperation with other slavic nations, foremost of them Russia on account of being the only Slavic nation-state around. This didn't work out very well, as most prominent pan-slavists only remained pan-slavist until they actually visited Russia (Karel Havlíček Borovský is one instance).

By the time the Great War rolled around, both models were thought unfeasible and instead independent nation-states were created after the war.

It is possible that Russia would have politically supported pan-slavism, though it was mostly an internal affair on our end. Anyhow, most pan-slavist sentiment disappeared to political fringes after the fall of communism, for obvious reasons.

Edited to add: I see I forgot to address the role of pan-slavism in the conflicts you mentioned, so here's an addendum.

Great War

I don't rightly see how pan-slavism could be blamed for starting this war. Most slavic nations where this was a political current were under the rule of their mostly Germanic overlords and didn't get much say in international politics.

It could be argued that Russia supported Serbia against Austria-Hungary because of pan-slavist ideals, and this has certainly been claimed; the problem is, that due to the singular role of Russia in pan-slavist thought, there is no practical difference (from a Russian viewpoint) between pan-slavism and Russian expansionism/expansionst propaganda. Hard to say here, really, but it's highly unlikely that selfless slavic solidarity was Russia's principal motive.

Russian invasion of Ukraine

In the early 20th century, pan-slavist sentiment was not prominent in mainstream politics outside Russia; formation of Slavic nation-states gave most Slavs hope that they could now make it on their own, and mainstream politics had little desire to emulate Soviet Russia. It was kept alive mostly by Communists, who held the Soviet Union up as the paragon of social development and wanted to either follow its example or join it outright.

After the Second World War, Soviet Union staged or sponsored Communist coups in practically half of Europe. Czechoslovak-Soviet (or Polish-Soviet, Hungarian-Soviet, etc) friendship became the official political line that had to be followed under the pain of persecution. An infamous joke describes this rather well:

A Western tourist arrives in Czechoslovakia and goes sightseeing. Having looked around, he finds a local and says to him:
"There's one thing I find fascinating in this country. Everywhere I look, there's some homage to Russia; here's a picture of Lenin, there a statue of Stalin, over there a huge sculpture of a hammer and a sickle. You guys really have to love Russia!"
"Yes," replies the local, "we have to."

In case of Slavic satellite states, the "friendship" propaganda always had a pan-slavic element, and was officially heartily reciprocated. Unofficially, well.

After the fall of Communism, when people were free to express their disgust with the forced friendship, many eagerly did so.

If Putin currently uses pan-slavic rhetoric to justify his invasion of Ukraine, the sentiment is unreciprocated.

The way I heard it, though, the conflict is mostly painted from the Russian side as Russia protecting its nationals (who were transported and made to settle in Ukraine during Soviet times) against Ukrainian neo-nazis or some such; pan-slavic rhetoric would seem at odds with this official line.

Answer 2

It wasn't just about the Slavs; people everywhere were feeling this way.

It essentially happened because the idea of Nationalism: that people in ethnically, geographically, culturally, and linguistically coherent areas should owe their allegiance only to their own single native governments, became a popular sentiment worldwide. Ethnic nationalism was in fact a big deal throughout the late 19th and early to mid 20th centuries pretty much world-wide.

Prime examples of this would be the German and Italian unification movements. Before these movements started there was no concept of a "Germany" or "Italy", except perhaps geographically, and at first both were just ideas in the heads of their proponents.

The concept was enshrined in WWI allied propaganda, as well as the agreements that actually ended the war. It could also be said to have proven itself in the war, as by and large the nation-states performed far better in that war than did the polyglot "empires".

After WWII, (and to a lesser extent between the wars), it had a great deal to do with the decolonization process in Asia, Africa, and India.

Answer 3

For a rather long while slavic peoples were a popular target for slave trade (hence the word "slave"), genocidal endeavours (such as Ottoman campaigns to Bulgaria and the Caucasus) and overlordship (such as the case of Czech republic under Austria, or, interestingly enough, Belarus under Poland). Pan-slavism developed as a form of multi-nationalism, if you will, to motivate members of different but closely related cultures to assist each other in need. Recognizing the need to organize into their own nation-states if they were to preserve their culture and population, but lacking the resources to do so, slavic peoples often relied on the help of those slavic nation-states who already achieved autonomy.

Now, strictly speaking, Russia cannot be viewed as a nation-state in itself, but rather a multinational one. On paper, it is a federation, just like the United States or Canada, which consists of autonomous republics performing administrative roles in their territories. Russia might as well be split into Muscovian, Adygean, Yakutian, Kalmykian and whatnot nation-states. Through different circumstances, however, these lands ended up building one federative union. It is true that the various regions were culturally more prosperous in USSR due to the strict policies of developing the periphery (as opposed to concentrating in the administrative center that we see today). So at least for a while we see a sustained development of different nationalities’ cultures while together they are involved in one “superculture” which ended up forming the Russian society that we know today. Still, in Yakutia you will much rather see Yakutian politicians, state officials, and so on, than ecdemic ones from Moscow or wherever else. This is true for other national regions as well.

Effectively, pan-slavic movement is assistive rather than a militant one. Even today, with the recent rise of militant nationalism, you will more often see militant nationalists advocating “national purity” rather than multinational brotherhood. Specifically nationalist movements in Russia tend to act adversarially towards other slavic nations.

The idea behind the whole existence of this pan-slavic phenomenon is rather simple: none of the slavic peoples are capable of sustaining autonomous independent nation-states of their own without the assistance of others. The most reliable allies for slavs tend to be other slavs, as is known from experience. Now, they (slavic nations) might not feel particularly compelled to acquire and maintain their own nation-states, but experience shows that overlordship by other states tends to come with significant extermination efforts.

This pan-slavic thing is not unique, though. We have since seen some sort of pan-jewish (example part of pan-jewish movement was Izrael Asper's media mogul Canwest with its strict political censorship regarding Israel) and pan-germanic movements. More than that, there are various pan- movements based on religion and also pan-capitalist and pan-socialist movements. Generally, people who find something in common enter into cooperation more easily and quickly than those who do not.

Answer 4

There certainly were other "pan" movements. German unification and the early expansion of Nazi Germany was driven by uniting all German speakers under one flag. Italy had a Italia Irridenta movement that looked to grabbing land from Austria Hungary. Mussolini parlayed some of this into the Fascist Party.