Slavic peoples
, cognate to Greek "population, people", which itself has no commonly accepted etymology. The second theory (forwarded by e.g. Max Vasmer) suggests that the word originated as a river name (compare the etymology of the Volcae), comparing it with such cognates as Latin cluo
("to wash"), a root not known to have been continued in Slavic, however, and appearing in meanings of "to clean, to scour" in Baltic.
A false etymology, popular in Nazi propaganda, derived "Slav" from "slave". In fact, the reverse is true. The word slave
is derived from Middle Latin sclavus
, in turn derived from the ethnonym discussed above, because of the large number of Slavs captured during the raids of Turkic nomads and sold to Europe through slave markets along various routes, see, e.g., saqaliba''.
The ancestor of the
Proto-Slavic language branched off at some uncertain time in an unknown location from common
Proto-Indo-European (possibly passing through a common
Proto-Balto-Slavic stage). According to a popular view, "the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations became speakers of Balto-Slavic" [
1]. Proto-Slavic proper, defined as the last stage of the language preceding the split of the historical
Slavic languages, predates the 7th century, and was likely spoken during the 5th and 6th century.
The Slavic language group is categorized with the
satem or eastern branch of the Indo-European language family, along with the Baltic and Indo-Iranian groups. This is in contrast with the western or
centum branch that includes Romance, Germanic and Celtic languages.
The location of the speakers of pre-Proto-Slavic and Proto-Slavic is subject to considerable debate. Serious candidates are cultures on the territories of modern
Poland,
Belarus and
Ukraine. The proposed frameworks are:
#"Polish" hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs were present in north-eastern
Central Europe since at least the late 2nd millennium BC, and were the bearers of the
Lusatian culture and later the
Przeworsk culture (part of the
Chernyakhov culture).#"Belarusian" hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs (or Balto-Slavs) were the bearers of the
Milograd culture#"Ukrainian" hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs were the bearers of the
Chernoles culture of northern Ukraine
From a Polish/German viewpoint, the "Polish" hypothesis is referred to as the
autochthonic theory (the Proto-Slavs are native to the area of modern
Poland), while the other possibilities are known as
allochthonic theory (the Slavs immigrated to the area of modern Poland during the
Migration period). This debate is politically charged, particularly in connection with the history of the
Partitions of Poland, and both
German and Slavic
nationalists have employed either the 'autochthonic' (in the case of the Slavic nationalists) or the 'allochthonic' (in the case of the German nationalists) as tools of political
propaganda. The debate of Slavic origins in general is often emotionally charged and interspersed with
pseudoarchaeology and
national mysticism. Contemporary scholarship in general has moved away from the idea of monolithic nations and the
Urheimat debates of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and its focus of interest is that of a process of
ethnogenesis, regarding competing Urheimat scenarios as
false dichotomies.
Earliest accounts
The lands of the
Elbe,
Oder, and west of the
Vistula river were referred to as
Magna Germania by
Tacitus in AD
98. Tacitus,
Pliny the Elder and
Ptolemy mention a tribe of the
Venedes east of the Vistula, commonly identified with the early
Vandals, but
6th century authors re-applied the ethnonym to hitherto unknown Slavic tribes, whence the later designation "
Wends" for Slavic tribes, and medieval legends purporting a
connection between Poles and Vandals. A minority view postulates that the Venedes of Tacitus and the "Slavs proper" between the 1st and the 6th centuries coalesced into the historical Slavic ethnicities.
The Slavs make their first appearance in historical records from the end of
Late Antiquity, in the early 6th century.
Byzantine historiographers under
Justinian I (527-565), such as
Procopius of Caesarea,
Jordanes and
Theophylact Simocatta describe tribes invading the Danubian provinces of the
Eastern Empire, emerging from the area of the
Carpathian Mountains, the lower
Danube and the
Black Sea.Jordanes mentions that the Venets sub-divided into three groups: the
Venets, the
Ants and the
Sklavens (
Sclovenes,
Sklavinoi), collectively called
Spores. The Byzantine term
Sklavinoi was loaned as
Saqaliba by mediaval Arab historiographers.
Scenarios of ethnogenesis
[[Image:Przeworsk Chernyakhov.png|thumb|250px|Eastern Europe in the 3rd century AD:
]]
|
Historical distribution of the Slavic languages. The area shaded in light purple is the Prague-Penkov-Kolochin complex of cultures of the 6th to 7th c. AD, likely corresponding to the spread of Slavic tribes at the time. The area shaded in darker red indicates the core area of Slavic river names (after EIEC p. 524ff.) |
The
Globular Amphora culture stretches from the middle Dniepr to the Elbe in the late 4th and early 3rd millennia BC. It has been suggested as the locus of a Germano-Balto-Slavic continuum (compare
Germanic substrate hypothesis), but the identification of its bearers as Indo-Europeans is uncertain.
The
Chernoles culture (8th to 3rd c. BC, sometimes associated with the "
Scythian farmers" of
Herodotus) is "sometimes portrayed as either a state in the development of the Slavic languages or at least some form of late Indo-European ancestral to the evolution of the Slavic stock"
[James P. Mallory, "Chernoles Culture", EIEC] The
Milograd culture (700 BC - 100 AD), centered roughly on present day Belarus, north of the contemporaneous Chernoles culture, have also been proposed as ancestral to either Slavs or Balts.
The ethnic composition of the bearers of the
Przeworsk culture (2nd c. BC to 4th c. AD, associated with the
Lugii) of central and southern Poland, northern Slovakia and of Ukraine, including the
Zarubintsy culture (2nd c. BC to 2nd c. AD, also connected with the
Bastarnae tribe) and the
Oksywie culture are other candidates.
The area of southern Ukraine is known to have been inhabited by
Scythian and
Sarmatian tribes prior to the foundation of the Gothic kingdom. Early Slavic
stone stelae found in the middle Dniestr region are markedly different from the Scythian and Sarmatian stelae found in the Crimea.
The (Gothic)
Wielbark Culture displaced the eastern Oksywie part of the Przeworsk culture from the 1st century AD. While the
Chernyakhov culture (2nd to 5th c. AD, identified with the multi-ethnic kingdom established by the Goths immigrating from the Wielbark culture) leads to the decline of the late Sarmatian culture in the 2nd to 4th centuries, the western part of the Przeworsk culture remains intact until the 4th century, and the
Kiev culture flourishes during the same time, in the 2nd-5th c. AD. This latter culture is recognized as the direct predecessor of the Prague-Korchak and Pen'kovo cultures (6th-7th c. AD), the first archaeological cultures the bearers of which are undisputedly identified as Slavic. Proto-Slavic is thus likely to have reached its final stage in the Kiev area; there is, however, substantial disagreement in the scientific community over the identity of the Kiev culture's predecessors, with some scholars tracing it from the "Belarusian" Milograd culture, others from the "Ukrainian" Chernoles and Zarubintsy cultures and still others from the "Polish" Przeworsk culture. The Kiev culture was overrun by the
Huns around 400 AD, which may have triggered the Proto-Slavic expansion to the historical locations of the Slavic languages.
Nationalist and fringe views
*A recent theory, relying on the
multiregional origin hypothesis claims an autochthonous Slavic origin from pre-glacial times. The Slavic homeland would thus have included areas described by
Tacitus as
Germania. Compare the
Paleolithic Continuity Theory of Indo-European. These theories confuse the boundary between genetic continuity (it is undisputed that 80% of the European gene pool has been stationary since the
paleolithic) and linguistic or ethnic groups.
*Several new theories of the origin of Slavs were published, and found large numbers of followers, in the
1990s and
2000s, fueled by the rise of nationalism in
Ukraine, and the
Eurasianism and
Neo-Eurasianism movements in Russia. Most of these attempt to establish a direct connection between the Slavs and
Proto-Indo-Iranians ("
Aryans"), focussing on sites in the
Urals region (see
Arkaim). These theories are well within the realm of
national mysticism, some even claiming that Slavs existed as an entity as early as the
7th to
5th millennium BC, and were ancestors of the
Sumerians and that the fabled Sumerian city of
Aratta was located in Ukraine.
*Nationalist scholars of
Bulgaria and the
Republic of Macedonia try to connect Proto-Slavic with the
Balkans and the group of
Paleo-Balkan languages.
|
Romanticized Russian painting of Slavs during the Middle Ages. |
Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germans and Celts in the
5th and
6th centuries AD (necessitated by the onslaught of peoples from Siberia and Eastern Europe:
Huns,
Avars,
Bulgars and
Magyars) started the
great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes fleeing the Huns and their allies: westward into the country between the Odra and the
Elbe-
Saale line; southward into
Bohemia,
Moravia, much of present day
Austria, the
Pannonian plain and the
Balkans; and northward along the upper
Dnieper river.
When their migratory movements ended, there appeared among the Slavs the first rudiments of
state organizations, each headed by a prince with a treasury and defense force. Moreover, there were the beginnings of class differentiation, with nobles who pledged allegiance to the
Frankish and
Holy Roman Emperors.
In the
7th century, the Frankish merchant
Samo, who supported the Slavs fighting their
Avar rulers, became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe, which, however, most probably did not outlive its founder and ruler.
Karantania in today's Austria and Slovenia was one Slavic state; very old also are the Principality of
Nitra and the
Moravian principality (see under
Great Moravia). In this period, there existed central Slavic groups and states such as the
Balaton Principality, but the subsequent expansion of the
Magyars and
Romanians, as well as the
Germanisation of
Austria, separated the northern and southern Slavs.
In the early history of the Slavs, and continuing into the Dark Ages, non-Slavic groups were sometimes dissimilated by Slavic-speaking populations: the
Bulgars became Slavicized and their
Turkic tongue disappeared; in other cases, Slavs themselves assimilated other groups such as the Romanians, Magyars, Greeks, etc. Apart from the
Illyrians who inhabited the region, the
Croats probably merged with the
Alans and the
Serbs are speculated to have assimiliated a tribe of the
Sarmatians called the
Serboi.
Because of the vastness and diversity of the territory occupied by Slavic peoples, there were several centers of Slavic consolidation. In the
19th century,
Pan-Slavism developed as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, and poets, but it rarely influenced practical politics and didn't find support in all nations that had Slavic origins. Pan-Slavism became compromised when
Russian Empire started to use it as an ideology justifying its territorial conquests in Central Europe as well as subjugation of other ethnic groups of Slavic origins such as Poles or Ukrainians, and the ideology became associated with Russian imperialism. The common Slavic experience of communism combined with the repeated usage of the ideology by Soviet propaganda after
World War II within the
Eastern bloc (
Warsaw Pact) was a forced high-level political and economic
hegemony of the
USSR dominated by Russians, and as such despised by the rest of the conquered nations. A notable political union of the 20th century that covered many South Slavs was
Yugoslavia, but it broke apart as well.
Nazi Germany, whose proponents claimed a racial superiority for the Germanic people, particularly over
Semitic and Slavic peoples, plotted an enslavement of the Slavic peoples, and the reduction of their numbers by killing the majority of the population. As a result, a large number of people considered by the Nazis to have Slavic origins were slain during
World War II.
The Slavs traditionally divided into two main groups: those who are
Eastern Orthodox, and those who are
Roman Catholic or
Uniate. A few Slavs are Protestant or Muslim. The delineations by nationality can be very sharp. In many Slavic ethnic groups the vast majority of religious people share the same religion, although many Slavs are
atheist or
agnostic; in the latter cases people still may traditionally associate themselves with a particular religion in a cultural and historical sense.
1. Those who are mainly
Eastern Orthodox with small Catholic minorities:
*
Russians*
Ukrainians*
Rusyns*
Belarusians*
Serbs*
Bulgarians*
Macedonians*
Montenegrins2. Those who are mainly
Roman Catholic or
Uniate with small Protestant minorities:
*
Poles*
Silesians*
Kashubians*
Czechs*
Moravians*
Slovaks*
Pannonian Rusyns*
Slovenes*
Croats*
Bunjevci *
Šokci *
Krashovans3. Those who are mainly
Muslim:
*
Bosniaks*
Gorani*
Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians)
*
Torbesh (Muslim Macedonians)
*
Muslims by nationality4. Those who are a religious mixture:
*
Sorbs (Catholic/Protestant)
The Orthodox/Catholic religious divisions become further exacerbated by the use of the
Cyrillic alphabet by the Orthodox and Uniates (Greek Catholics) and of the
Roman alphabet by Roman Catholics. However, the
Serbian language (including Montenegrin) can be written using both the Cyrillic and Roman alphabets (privately, Latinic tends to be more popular, particularly among the youth). There is also a Latinic script to write in
Belarusian, called the
Lacinka alphabet. The
Bosnian language has at times been written using the
Arabic alphabet (mostly in Muslim documents), but it now uses the Roman (in Bosniak, Croat, and Serb areas) and Cyrillic alphabet (in Serb areas).
Slavs are customarily divided into three major subgroups: East Slavs, West Slavs, and South Slavs, each with a different and a diverse background based on unique history, religion and culture of particular Slavic group within them. The
East Slavs may all be traced to Slavic-speaking populations that were loosely organized under the
Kievan Rus' empire beginning in the
9th century A.D. Almost all of the
South Slavs can be traced to ethnic Slavs who mixed with the local population of the
Balkans (
Illyrians,
Thracians,
Dacians and
Getae) and with later invaders from the East (
Bulgars,
Avars, and
Alans), then fell under the hegemony of the
Ottoman Empire. The
West Slavs (and the
Slovenes) do not share either of these backgrounds, as they expanded to the West and integrated into the cultural sphere of Western (Roman Catholic) Christendom around this timeframe.
Please note that some of the following subdivisions remain highly debatable, particularly for smaller groups and national minorities.
East Slavs
Main article: East Slavs
*
Russians**
Pomors**
Lipovan Russians**
Kuban Cossacks*
Ukrainians**
Bojko**
Huculs**
Lemko 1**
Poleszuks
2*
Rusyns 3*
Belarusians**
Poleszuks
2West Slavs
Main article: West Slavs
*
Lechitic group
**
Poles ***
Masovians***
Polans † ***
Vistulans † **
Silesians 4**
Pomeranians***
Kashubians***
Slovincians † **
Polabians † ***
Obodrites/Abodrites
† ***
Veleti † ***
Volinians (Velunzani)
† ***
Pyritzans (Prissani)
† *Czech-Slovak group
**
Czechs**
Moravians 5**
Slovaks**
Pannonian Rusyns 1*
Sorbs (Serbo-Lusatians)
**
Milczans (Upper Sorbs)
**
Lusatians (Lower Sorbs)
South Slavs
Main article: South Slavs
*South-Eastern (Bulgaro-Macedonian) group
**
Bulgarians***
Pomaks (
Muslim Bulgarians)
***
Palćene (
Banat Bulgarians)
***
Bessarabian Bulgarians**
Macedonians***
Torbesh (
Muslim Macedonians)
*South-Western group
**
Serbs**
Croats***
Janjevci***
Molise Croats***
Burgenland Croats**
Šokci 6**
Bunjevci 6**
Slovenians***
Karantanians**
Bosniaks**
Montenegrins **
Muslims by nationality**
Yugoslavs**
Goranci**
Krashovans† Extinct (Not existing anymore)
1 Also considered part of Rusyns
2 Considered transitional between Ukrainians and Belarusians
3 Also considered part of Ukrainians
4 Also considered part of Poles
5 Today, often considered part of Czechs, originally closer to Slovaks
6 Considered part of Croats by some, although many of them consider themselves a separate peoplesNote: Besides ethnic groups, Slavs often identify themselves with the geographical region in which they live. Some of the major regional South Slavic groups include:
Zagorci,
Istrani,
Dalmatinci,
Slavonci,
Bosanci,
Hercegovci,
Krajišnici,
Semberci,
Srbijanci,
Šumadinci,
Vojvođani,
Sremci,
Bačvani,
Banaćani,
Sandžaklije,
Kosovci,
Crnogorci,
Bokelji,
Shopi,
Trakiytsi,
Dobrudzhantsi,
Balkandzhii,
Miziytsi,
Pirintsi,
Rodoptsi, etc.
Image:Prokudin-Gorskii-05.jpg|Three generations of a Russian family, ca. 1910Image:Soviet Union-1961-Stamp-0.03. Belarusians.jpg|1961 USSR postage stamp depicting Belarusian traditional costumesImage:Ukrainians.jpg|Ukrainians in traditional dressImage:Juri Gagarin 2.jpg|Yuri Gagarin, the first human in spaceImage:Slovaci u Srbiji.jpg|Slovaks in Serbia wearing traditional dressImage:Slazaczka.jpg|Girl in Upper Silesian dress from Mysłowice, 2006Image:Sorbs national-costume1.jpg|National costume of Lusatian Sorbs as traditionally worn in the northern part of LusatiaImage:Dzewus w kaszebsczich ruchnach.jpg|National Kashubian costumeImage:Pape Jean-Paul II-01.jpg|Pope John Paul IIImage:Serbian bagpiper.jpg|Serbian bagpiper in traditional attire wearing opanci and šajkačaImage:Bokelj.jpg|A Bokelj in traditional garbImage:Bosnian children.jpg|Bosnian children*
Slavic mythology*
Gord (Slavic settlement)*
Early East Slavs*
Lech, Czech and Rus*
Pan-Slavism *
Pan-Slavic colours*
East Slavs*
West Slavs*
South Slavs*
The Name SLAV by B. Philip Lozinski.
*
The Slavonic Antiquity: Scythians, Sarmatians, Meotians and Slavs by Sergei V. Rjabchikov.
*
FROM PROTO-INDO-EUROPEAN TO SLAVIC, by Frederik Kortlandt.
*
SLOVENI: UNDE ORTI ESTIS? SLOVÁCI, KDE SÚ VAŠE KORENE?, by Cyril A. Hromník (mainly in Slova).
*
Site about Slavics, Slavic Countries, Cultures, Languages, etc (mainly in russian)
