World War Two Era Slavic American Communities

World War Two Era Slavic American Communities: Two Different Paths

The Slavic community in the first half of the twentieth century was a largely working class community, a part of the “new immigrant” wave, concentrated in the industrial centers of Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern America, with large proportions of Slavic immigrants and their descendants residing in cities such as Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Chicago. Exposed to anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as the exploitative working conditions of turn of the century American mines and factories, a class consciousness emerged among a wide swath of the immigrant community. Slavic Americans participated in labor strikes and joined labor unions en masse, and abuses against fellow Slav workers led

Many Slavs regardless of religion shared a common background - many came from the lands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. They spoke a common language as well. However, sharp differences remained. Many Serbian organizations sprung up around the Serbian Orthodox church, while Croats’ and Slovenes’ organizations had ties to the Roman Catholic church. These groups developed differently - Croatia and Slovenia were absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while much of Serbia was part of the Ottoman Empire. However, there were efforts to unify these groups under a common Slavic banner - not only southern Slavs, but their eastern and western counterparts as well, for cooperation, friendship, and helping their countrymen back in Europe. This call to unity grew to a fever pitch during the war, as Yugoslavia was in ruins. In Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic fighting force - the Partisans - had risen to combat fascism and those who sought to revive the kingdom, which itself was deeply flawed and dominated mostly by ethnic Serbs. It labeled itself as a proletariat movement, fighting against the bourgeois monarchy and fascism. It made sense for many working class Slavs, who had been exposed to and perhaps participated in workers’ movements, who labored side by side with Slavs both Catholic and Orthodox, to find a movement worthy of support in the Partisans. They adopted the Partisan ideal of “brotherhood and unity.” This sentiment took hold in many within the Slavic American community, and thus enter figures like Zlatko Baloković, a man emblematic of the pan-Slav movement in the United States. Baloković was a man who openly supported the ideals of pan-Slavism, helping organize the American Slav Congress. The importance of this congress cannot be underestimated. Taking place in Detroit from April 25th to 26th, 1942, this congress was a show of Slav unity within the United