Anti-Slavic sentiment

Anti-Slavic sentiment, also called anti-Slavic racism or Slavophobia, refers to different types of negative attitudes, prejudices, collective hatred or animosity, stereotypes, discrimination, and violence (economic, physical, political, psychological, verbal, etc.) directed at one or more ethnic groups of Slavic peoples. Accompanying racism and xenophobia, the most common manifestation of anti-Slavic sentiment throughout history has been the assertion that some Slavs are inferior to other peoples.

Anti-Slavic sentiment reached its highest point during World War II, when Nazi Germany and its collaborators classified most of the Slavs, especially the Belarusians, Croats, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Serbs, and Ukrainians, as "subhumans" (Untermenschen) and perpetrated a systematic genocide against them, murdering millions of Slavs through the Generalplan Ost and Hunger Plan.

Slavophobia also emerged twice in the United States. The first time was during the Progressive Era, when immigrants from Eastern Europe were met with opposition from the dominant class of Western European–origin American citizens; and again during the Cold War, when the United States became locked in an intensive global rivalry with the Soviet Union.