The largest wave of immigration into the United States from Eastern Europe took place between 1880 and 1914, when some 7 million people from this region arrived in America. Apart from about 1.8 million Jews, mostly of Russian origin, who had been forced out by persecutions, nearly all these peoples were of Slavic stock. Poles were the largest single group, consisting of about 1.1 million people, but there were also substantial numbers of Russians, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Latvians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Serbs, Croats and Romanians.

Some of these immigrants, like the Russian Doukhobors, came searching for religious freedom, while others, especially from the lands of the Austro-Hungarian empire, were avoiding conscription into the army Most, however, were attracted to America by economic opportunities. Rising populations, collapsing agricultural prices and changes in land tenure meant that many peasant families could no longer subsist. America had acquired the reputation of a “promised land,” where work could be found and there was a chance of advancement. Many of the immigrants were in fact recruited by agents in their home countries; others took passage to America trusting that the rumors of plentiful work would turn out to be true. Many of the immigrants were single young males looking for work rather than land.

Most of the immigrants did find work, especially in the rapidly growing industrial centers of the Midwest. The large Polish community in Chicago, IL, for example, dates from around this time. However, wages were low and the immigrants suffered much discrimination. Some stuck it out and put down roots; others moved west to establish homesteads in the Great Plains. Many returned. In the decade before the First World War, immigration records show that around half of all Hungarian, Croat, Slovak and Slovene immigrants returned to Europe soon after their arrival.

The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires at the end of the First World War brought more Slavic immigrants, though in smaller numbers, and there were more after the Second World War. Refugees from behind the Iron Curtain continued to arrive in small numbers; for example, the events of 1956 brought several thousand Hungarians to the USA, while the first suppression of the Solidarity movement in 1982 resulted in around 8,000 Poles fleeing to America.

In many ways, the Slavic immigrants have been model members of the “melting-pot” society The initial immigrants tried to integrate quickly into American society and culture, sometimes even changing their names to Anglicized forms. Unlike German and Jewish immigrants, who retained political affiliations and set up strong intercommunity organizations, the Slavs did not become highly political. During the Cold War, the Republican Party in particular canvassed for votes among immigrants who had families behind the Iron Curtain, but the Slavs never developed the political voice of, for example, Jewish Americans or Irish Americans. In the 1970s, however, following the success of the Black Power movement, some groups of Slavic descent such as Polish Americans and Ukrainian Americans did establish cultural associations with the aim of reawakening pride in their own culture and counteracting racism from WASP segments of society.