As a speaker of Croatian (southern Slavic) and Ukrainian (western Slavic), both Slavio and InterSlavic are bad from the Croatian POW, but InterSlavic is definitely a better choice in either case.

Many word forms in InterSlavic just seem like strangely archaic versions of Croatian, but might pass as "just strange" for Ukrainian.

Ukrainian is eastern Slavic though?

As a speaker of Polish (western Slavic) reasonably familiar with Ukrainian I find InterSlavic and madzuslovanski (or whatever it's spelled) much better than this Slavio.

As a Ukrainian & Russian speaker, I find Polish intelligelible, and Polish people generally understand me when I speak Ukrainian.

The languages are much closer than any of them is to Russian.

Ukrainian is a Slavic language. It's average of language spoken by 9 tribes with light influence of ancient Greek from Crimea and Byzantine, with almost no German and Latin influence, because they are proxied by Slavic neighborhoods.

Greeks influenced Ukrainian language indirectly: via songs. When Ukrainian salt traders (chumaks, чумаки) visited Crimea, they also picked fresh songs to sing when traveling, and then they spread those new song all over Ukraine. Often, chumaks based their songs on Greek songs, because ancient Greeks were much better in music. Chumaks also created portable copy of harp, which they called «bandura» («big thing»), which then used for hundreds of years.

Interslavic seems just as understandable to me. Sometimes I wish all slavic people had one country, one language.

Let's call it Slavia.

There is such an idea of a greater connection between Slavic nations called Pan-Slavism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Slavism).

When it comes to "one country" - the USSR aimed at that, and from the perspective of hundreds of millions of people, it wasn't the best idea.

Plus, I think that ethnic states are one of the worst inventions of the 19th century, which accelerated a lot after WWI & WWII. I prefer cities where e.g. 1/3 were Polish, 1/3 German, and 1/3 Jewish (as for my pre-war hometown) rather than monoliths. Even in the middle ages, cities had multiple languages and cultures (e.g. German-speaking for trading cities in Slavic and Baltic countries). Right now, even in many multicultural cities, it is often implicitly assumed that there is the "default language" and an ethnic/national/cultural majority.

The problem with panslavism is that Russians would have majority, and Russian states were almost always authoritharian and oppressive.

We had rather brutal monarchies in the West, too. Colonialism was not altruistic trip around the globe.

Almost all former European monarchies, from England to Belgium, were authoritarian imperialistic countries.

There're different levels of authoritarianism and Russia was usually at the far end. Especially compared to the other Slavic countries it annexed like Novogrod Republic of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth which had parliaments and elections in 1500s.

But even compared to the absolutist monarchies of the west Russia was more authoritarian. For example serfdom was only abolished in Russia in 1861.

Don't look so far the the west, you have an example of non authoritarian monarchies in central Europe (e.g. Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth where you had a second constitution in the world, just after the US one, a parliament).

The Ukraine offers the Orlyk constitution from 1710. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Pylyp_Orlyk

Let's bring back to Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, only under a more inclusive name.

Russia wasn't always authoritarian, though. Before the Mongols, it was a bunch of independent, freedom-loving cities. Sort of like the American Wild West.

I feel like we need a new experiment in inclusive governance, and that Slavic countries are the place to do it.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was hardly exemplar, either, given the state of the peasants there, and religious persecution of non-Catholics.

Grand Duchy of Lithuania is a better model, IMO - a state with a Lithuanian pagan ruler, and a mix of pagan, Catholic, and Orthodox elites and population all living together.

Let's break this down piece-by-piece.

(1) The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had elected kings and a parliament. It was a republic to the same degree as Rome or some of the more democratic Greek city-states. The only people who could vote were nobles, but nobles were about 10% of the population. That's about on-par with with Athens or the Roman Empire. Even in the US, only white landowners could vote when it was first founded. That's not too dissimilar from the Polish nobility.

(2) Jews emigrated to the Commonwealth from all over Europe for better treatment. Good treatment? No. Better treatment? Without a doubt.

The Commonwealth wasn't a modern enlightened democracy, but this was 1600, not 1900. It did incredibly well for 1600.

The problem, ultimately, is that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was dominated by Poland, and said Polish nobility was not interested in treating religious minorities equally, as GDL did. Republic or not doesn't matter here - republics can quite easily become tyrannies of the majority. There's a reason why there were so many uprisings on the territory that is Ukraine today, back when it was a part of the Commonwealth:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cossack_uprisings

It changed with time, but the Polish nobility wasn't the ones persecuting religious minorities for the most part.

For one thing nobles took a lot of Jewish immigrants, used them as middle management (which frustrated the church, who in turn sent angry peasant mobs against Jews, which meant Jews had to work with nobility for their protection).

Also a lot of nobles weren't Catholic, especially in 1500s protestantism was very popular (about 1/3rd of nobles and majority of magnates were protestant). Only in times of Zygmunt 3 Waza who was super Catholic and introduced some discrimination it changed significantly.

In fact nobility forced kings to sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Confederation which banned religious persecution.

Majority of nobles from eastern parts of PLC were orthodox at first (later they polonized and switched to Catholicism mostly), and there were some Jewish and Muslim nobles (but it was very rare). They still had all the rights including voting for kings, wars and taxes.

> There's a reason why there were so many uprisings on the territory that is Ukraine today, back when it was a part of the Commonwealth

Mostly economic, but yes, there has been some religious persecution there. Especially after the attempts to create orthodox-style pope-sanctioned religion in Ukraine.

The Orthodox nobility had the same rights at first. But, as you say yourself, almost all of them have switched to Catholicism over time. And the reason for that was that it was the only way to preserve both the rights and the social standing in the long term.

As for nobles not carrying out religious persecution, I don't even know what to say. Local magnates were the main drivers of the religious persecution of Orthodox Ukrainians and Belarusians. And sure, that persecution was often economic in nature, but it was also very clearly carried out along religious lines.

I'll grant you that religious intolerance in Poland was primarily between Catholics and Orthodox, rather than Catholics and Protestants as elsewhere in Europe. But that's to be expected from a country where most subjects are either Catholic or Orthodox, no?

EDIT: I suppose our perspectives are so different because we're focusing on different time periods. My take on this is that early Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth inherited many of the political arrangements of GDL, and tolerance was one of them. But as the center of political power shifted over to Poland over time, they were weakened.

> religious persecution of non-Catholics

There was some of that (especially in lat 1600s), but compared to basically any other country at the time it was significantly better. PLC even had a law that each newly elected king had to sign where he promised not to persecute anybody because of religion or he stops being the king: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Confederation

Majority of magnates (the big nobility that actually decided things by buying other nobles during elections) weren't Catholic in 1500s.

Yep, it’s the Three Seas Initiative. Bring it on! We’ll take on board some non-Slavic speakers from Hungary, the Baltics, Romania, and Albania.

That's a great name for the new entity. Three seas works well in Slavic languages, and is neutral.

Austria should be replaced by Ukraine and Moldova, though. Austria definitely doesn't belong.

Ukraine and Poland really do belong together. Ukraine is more faithful to traditional Polish culture than Poland. Poland westernized a lot since joining the EU and NATO, and Ukranian cultural influence would be awesome. Conversely, Ukraine could use some economic assistance, where Poland's economy has exploded, for much the same reason of NATO/EU.

There is a continuous history of autocratic rulers, Tzars named one way or another. And an as long history of dissidents.

Yet, this idea would be dangerous even with very different cultures - vide "Ein Reich".

I think single language would be wonderful and Interslavic sounds really good to me (btw. Serbian).

The one country thing, I think USSR made it unpalatable, but a lot of conflicts would not be happening if there was some construct that allow simpler work and life in Slavic worls. Something like EU, without bureaucracy, maybe just rule that people can cross countries easier and live and work.

I don't think it would be problem of Russians being the most numerous, as long as people would use Interslavic in communication and be able to travel and work more easily.

And the issue that Panslavism inheritently supposes Russians to be the protectors of other Slavic nations. Thank you, we had enough of their "help".

Have you read Vilem Flusser’s Bodenlos?

USSR was a blasphemy because of it's communist nature. It was an abomination born in blood.

Slavs were never for communism.

Was the economic structure of USSR the real problem? I thought it was the power structure (dictatorship) and general lack of accountability of management.

The economic structure wasn't great, but people can disagree as to whether it was due to the power structure (a militarism and imperialism-obsessed dictatorship), and how much of it due to the fundamental problems of... The weird, state-capitalism flavour of 'communism' that was used in practice in the second world.

Then you get into no true Scottsman arguments about what is, and what isn't communism, and whether or not state capitalism is guaranteed to be a failure, or whether it was state capitalism, as practiced by the Eastern Block is guaranteed to be a failure. And then you can further split hairs as to whether or not having some aspects of state capitalism in your economy are better than having no aspects of it, and where the optimal line is.

And then you find that you've wasted hours of time arguing, but haven't actually convinced anyone, or learned anything new.

> Slavs were never for communism

i disagree to some extent. historically slavic culture tends to be much more communal than rest of europe. even in eu you can see this manifested in thr resistance to liberalism that comes from all (?) slavic countries

I think Slavs historically tended more towards decentralized structure. So maybe communal in a small community structure.

Decentralized structures and communism are not mutually exclusive.

What does resistance to liberalism manifest about being more communal or communist? Is resistance to privatisation a "resistance to liberalism" or "communist"? I don't think so. It is nationalistic, conservative and social democratic.

We had Yugoslavia, for southern Slavic people. Didn’t work out.

It did not work out because the binding ideology wasn't pan-slavism, but rather bad mix of communism and socialism.

Also, instead of returning to our root slavic religion, we got atheism. Without any form of religion, people can not feel that deep bond. Especially Slavic people, who are naturaly very religious.

Yugoslavia was a mistake, but not for reasons you might think.

I'm pretty sure that "returning to the root Slavic religion" would involve offering massive cow sacrifices to the thunder god Perun in exchange for long life and prosperity. Not sure if that's what you had in mind, though!

There were decentralized Christian-like religions like Bogomils (Cathars in Western Europe) in south Slavic parts before modern centralized religions. Maybe those would work better with Slavs who seem to not organize well around centralized sources of power.

Many of us offer sacrifices today, too.

In most Slavic countries, it is customary to slay and eat a pig on certain holidays, like Christmas and our Slava.

In the US you kill turkeys for Thanksgiving. How different is that compared to other "sacrifices"?

Sadly, we don't offer our turkey up to any thunder god. It's even traditional for presidents and governors to pardon a turkey. Blasphemy!

We do it for the fun and food, not for some pseudo gods.

You can colour it any way that you like. Many Americans would likely baulk at the idea of a turkey-less Thanksgiving. It is a central theme of the holiday. What else is it, if not a sacrifice?

It's food and fun, not sacrifice.

We can do it for both. Why not?

Perun is a "pseudo" God, as much as Zeus was a pseudo God.

And if they are pseudo gods, then Jesus Christ is a pseudo God, too.

Gods exist as long as people believe in them.

Because we mostly don't like gods, at least here in CZ.

Yugoslavia pre-1945 had nothing to do with communism and socialism - it was created explicitly as a pan-South Slavic state. It ended up being dominated by Serbia, though.

>Also, instead of returning to our root slavic religion, we got atheism This reads like 4chan-level trolling

I assure you, it is not.

Many Slavs feel the same.

draw a possible map of Slavia and see it from a perspective of neighbouring non-Slavic countries. would you find such a political structure threatening? this is the reason i think it would be a bad idea. what would be nice in my opinion is a larger inter-slavic cultural exchange: in academic research, text books, litterature, music, film, etc

They find us treatening even now.

But yes, cultural exchange can be a good first step.

I don't know, I think after two decades of Cold War II, Western Europe will warm up to Slavs living east of Bialystok. Nothing brings people closer together than a common enemy. [1]

[1] See: The Brits and the French, the French and the Germans, etc, etc.

What are the benefit of the ethno state? Why does that benefit outweigh the costs of being an ethno state?

No, let's call it Baník.

its certainly strange but im not sure if "bad" is fair here. what i can say is that i understood what was being said on very first reading for both. i imagine if travelling to poland or russia and seeing instructions written in slovio/inter-slavic would be quite easy to follow

Just a nitpick: Ukrainian is Eastern Slavic.

From the linked page:

"Slovio is not very Slavic at all: its grammar is almost entirely based on Esperanto, its word building mechanisms are mostly Germanic, and its vocabulary, although clearly dominated by (often mutilated) Russian words, does not relate in any predictable way to the Slavic languages either. As a result, its educational value is practically zero."

This was also my impression of Slovio after attempting to read a few texts. Interslavic feels much more natural, coming from the perspective of a heavy dialect speaker of one of the south Slavic languages.

From comments here, my impression as a completely non-Slavic speaker, is that Slovio is more artificial, designed to be easy to learn by non-Slavic speakers and still somewhat understandable by all Slavic speakers, whereas Interslavic is much closer to a real Slavic language, but might be harder to learn for non-Slavic speakers.

Does that make sense?

WTF/wow. As a native speaker of Croatian I can understand 80% directly and additional 10-15% by "interpolating into the context". Good work. EDIT: I don't like Slovio either, especially because of using x/cx/etc. instead of proper diacritics. EDIT2: I might event invest into learning it. I wouldn't speak any particular "native" language, but could find my way around all Slavic countries.

As a Pole, both languages are readable, but InterSlavic takes less effort and feels more natural. This FAQ matches my intuitions.

That said, I would be curious how it works for other Slavic languages. Or, in other words, is it sort of equidistant or favors one language or the other?

I mean, the FAQ claims that it is the easiest for Czechs and Slovaks (is it because of their geographical centrality and possibility that these languages are the closest to the "Slavic average"?) and harder for the South Slavs. However, and always, I would love to see any data.

As a Slovak I can confirm it's pretty easy to read both, although I hate the usage of cx, sx, ... instead of č, š, ... in Slovio.

I feel like Interslavic is closer in vocabulary to Slovak, but the form of the words is a bit foreign (reminds me of some other Slavic languages, although I can't quite figure out which one), while the opposite is the case with Slovio - the form of the words feels closer to Slovak, but the vocabulary itself feels more "Russian" to me.

I know Russian and Bulgarian (non-native in both, but enough to be able to easily read books or watch movies spoken in them).

This seems enough to allow me to understand effortlessly the examples that I see for both InterSlavic and Slovio.

However I would need to study them more in detail, to form an opinion about which is better.

At least they achieve the goal of easy understanding for someone familiar with Slavic languages.

As a Polish speaker, Interslavic seems significantly easier and more natural to read, but I wonder if it's actually universally better, or just more suited for western Slavs.

Same for me (as a native Ukrainian speaker).

That one is easier for me also (as a Polish speaker). Slavio looks more like Russian-first and other Slavic languages added on top.

interesting. From my perspective (Slovenian native, know some Serbo-Croatian & Russian), Slovio is much better.

At first glance:

- Interslavic needlessly complicates the alphabet - there is no need for "y" where "i" would suffice, there is no need for "Ě" where "je" would suffice

- Interslavic needlessly complicates spelling / words - surely there should be a drive towards simplification and shortening, especially in a "shared" langauge:

    "koristajut" -> "koristaju"
    "medžuslovjansky" -> "medslovanski"
    "jest" -> "je" or "es"

In general, I can understand most of Interslavic and most of Slovio, but Slovio is easier.

As a Serbian, Interslavic seems much easier to read and understand than Slovio.

As a Slovak, Interslavic feels easier to read and understand, though I can understand Slovio as well.

From my experience, Slovak speakers can understand other Slavic languages pretty well: Czech is basically our second native language (although for some reason it seems Czechs don't understand Slovak quite to the same degree), Polish, Slovenian and Croatian are understandable as well. Russian is a lot harder, even when written in Latin. I don't have experience with Ukrainian.

Wow, what a great idea! I'm originally from Bulgaria and I've enjoyed this kind of "universal understanding" to some level with almost all nearby Slavic countries (e.g. Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine).

I really like the approach of Slovio, it was instantly clear and understandable. I think with some practice it won't be a challenge to adopt it in writing (e.g. plurals with "-s" for some words is a bit strange at first).

As a speaker of Russian and Bulgarian, Interslavic seems to be easier to read. Slovio gets me to ponder on some words a bit more.

This one looks much better.

as a Bulgarian and Russian speaker, I find Interslavic easier to understand. Slovio has some stuff that takes me a bit longer to process.

I have always enjoyed the closeness of Slavic languages. I don't know a lick of Polish, but I can read and understand maybe 70-80% of a polish paragraph. same for a lot of Slavic languages.

lol

No real slavsman!