Kremlin’s Rhetoric on ‘Slavic Civilisation’ and ‘Brotherly Peoples’ Is Akin to the Nazi ‘Blood and Soil’

When the Russian foreign minister suggested Hitler could have had ‘Jewish blood’ this predictably sparked outrage and shock. However, the scandalous statement was more than ‘trolling’ or a cynical propaganda stunt. 

The foreign minister’s implicit assumption that someone could be defined by their ‘blood,’ or, in other words, biological origins, reveals a great deal about the way Russian decision-makers (and many from the broader public) think. In many ways, Russia is a 21st century society but it is also visibly stuck in the 19th century with its outdated beliefs about human society and nationality.

The 19th century was a time when European intellectuals and politicians discovered ethnicity or ‘nationality’ and developed a keen interest in national languages and ‘folk’ culture. Language and culture were of central importance to the Romanticist movement. 

Nazism’s and Pan-Slavism’s Mutual Roots

At the same time, the 19th century was heavily shaped by the developing studies of biology and multiple attempts were made to adapt natural sciences to understanding human society. Thus, many were inclined to believe that states and nations were literally ‘living organisms.’ It was also a time when the pseudoscientific racial ‘theories’ flourished, positing biological inequality between peoples.