Anti-Slavism , also known as Slavophobia , a form of racism , refers to various negative attitudes towards Slavic peoples , the most common manifestation being claims of inferiority of Slavic nations with respect to other ethnic groups , though most notably the Germanic peoples and Italian people . Slavophilia is a sentiment that celebrates Slavonic cultures or peoples , and has sometimes taken on supremacist or nationalist leanings , but can also refer to an animus of appreciation , love for , or gratitude for Slavic peoples or culture . Anti-Slavism reached its highest peak during World War II , when Nazi Germany declared Slavs , especially neighboring Poles to be subhuman and planned to exterminate the majority of Slavic people . The persecution and systemic extermination of Slavonic persons in World War II for purely ethnic reasons has routinely been under-reported . Partly due to inability to differentiate political and resistance prisoners from those rounded up along the same lines as the Jews , and partly resulting from an anti-Communist sentiment of the West , the tendency of Western scholarship has been to downplay ethnic prejudice toward Slavic people and focus instead on Anti-Semitism , clearly the more profoundly emphasized German prejudice . Under the Generalplan Ost , an extermination plan written by the Nazis in 1941 , approx. 31 of 45 million people of Eastern Europe of Slavonic heritage were to be executed or starved en mass through forced march into Siberia . At the beginning of the 20th century , anti-Slavism developed in Albania by the work of the Franciscan friars who had studied in monasteries in Austria-Hungary , after the recent massacres and expulsions of Albanians by their Slavic neighbours . The Albanian intelligentsia proudly asserted , " We Albanians are the original and autochthonous race of the Balkans . The Slavs are conquerors and immigrants who came but yesterday from Asia " . In Soviet historiography , anti-Slavism in Albania was inspired by the Catholic clergy , which opposed the Slavic people because of the role the Catholic clergy played in preparations " for Italian aggression against Albania " and Slavs opposed " rapacious plans of Austro-Hungarian imperialism in Albania "
massacres
Massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars
Anti-Slavic sentiment