The racial tolerance of the Slavic peoples stressed today in an address over Radio Station WWRL outlining the aims of the newly-formed American Slavonic League. Fedor S. Mansvetov, press chairman of the League’s executive committee, said the League was opposed to all forms of totalitarian and absolutist government and sought to formulate a program designed to bring “unity and mutual understanding” among the various Slavonic nations.
Illustrating the Slavic abhorrence of “baitings and persecutions of the Jewish race,” Mansvetov said that his father, a Russian priest whom he described as a “reactionary in politics, had given him his blessings when he joined an illegal “anti-pogrom brigade” in the days of the Czarist regime. “Thus,” he said, “the Jewish pogroms met with no approval of even such a reactionary as my father was supposed to be by virtue of his position. This is just one instance to demonstrate the general attitude of the Slavs toward injustice and intolerance.”
The League was described as comprising American citizens of Slavonic descent, including Bulgarians, Carpatho-Russians, Czechoslovaks, Poles, Ukrainians, Yugoslav and Russians, of whom there are an estimated 8,000,000 in the United States.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
