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The Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of Indo-European peoples, living mainly in Europe, where they constitute about one third of the population. Since emerging from their original homeland (most commonly thought to be in Eastern Europe) in the early 6th century, they have inhabited most of eastern Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Many have later settled in Northern Asia or emigrated to other parts of the world.

Slavic peoples are traditionally divided along linguistic lines into West Slavic (including Czechs, Poles and Slovaks), East Slavic (including Belarussians, Russians, and Ukrainians), and South Slavic (including Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs and Slovenians). For a more comprehensive list, see Ethno-cultural subdivisions.

Origin of the term Slav

The origin of the word Slav remains controversial. Excluding the ambiguous mention by Ptolemy of tribes Stavanoi and Soubenoi, the earliest references of "Slavs" under this name are from the 6th century. The word is written variously: Sklabenoi, Sklauenoi, Sklabinoi - in Byzantine Greek; Sclaueni, Sclauini, Sthlaueni - in Latin.

The oldest documents written in Old Slavonic and dating from the 9th century use the word "slověne". Note the first vowel "o", rather than an "a" as in Greek and Latin.

Folk etymologies and some scholars (e.g., Roman Jacobson) traditionally link the name either with the word slava ("glory", "fame") or with the word slovo ("word, talk"). Thus slověne would mean "people who speak (the same language)", i.e. people who understand each other, as opposed to the Slavic word for foreign nations, nemtsi, meaning "speechless people" (from Slavic němi - mute, silent, dumb).

Most linguists believe, however, that these obvious connections are misleading. Names of ethnicities are often very old and defy attempts to find etymologies for them. There are two alternative scholarly theories as to the origin of the Slavs ethnonym, both very tentative: According to the first theory, it derives from a Proto-Indo-European *(s)lawos, cognate to Greek Template:Polytonic "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 National Socialist 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.

Proto-Slavic language

Main article: Proto-Slavic language

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" . 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.

Origins and Slavic homeland debate

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, Belorussia and Ukraine. The proposed frameworks are:

  1. "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).
  2. "Belorussian" hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs (or Balto-Slavs) were the bearers of the Milograd culture
  3. "Ukrainian" hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs were the bearers of the Chernoles culture of the 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

The situation in the 3rd century AD: The Chernyakhov culture is shown in orange, The Przeworsk culture in green, and the Wielbark Culture (associated with the Goths) in red. The yellow area is a Baltic culture (Aesti/Yotvingian?) and the pink area is the Debczyn culture. The Roman Empire is shown in dark purple.
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" 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 the of the 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 the 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 "Belorussian" 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.

Slavs in the historical period

File:Slavs.jpg
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.

Distribution of Slavic peoples by language

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. The Croats probably merged with the Alans and the Serbs with the Illyrians.

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.

Religion and alphabet

In religion, 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: 2. Those who are mainly Roman Catholic or Uniate with small Protestant minorities: 3. Those who are mainly Muslim: 4. 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).

Ethno-cultural subdivisions

Slavic settlers mixed with existing local populations and later invaders. Slavic languages are divided by use of Latin and Cyrilic alphabet, in addition to over 1500 years of different linguistic influences, further setting apart various languages with Slavic origins. Besides the differences in linguisitics, Slavic countries have experienced different religion, history and cultural influences and often oppose being associated with each other While the idea of alledged common Slavic identity was proposed by the ideology of Pan-Slavism, it failed, as the cultural and historic differences made the creation of such identity impossible.

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 organized as Kievan Rus' beginning in the 9th century A.D. and eventually fell under the influence of the Mongol Empire. 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:

West Slavs:

South Slavs:


Extinct (Not existing anymore)
Also considered part of Rusyns
Considered transitional between Ukrainians and Belarusians
Also considered part of Ukrainians
Also considered part of Poles
Today, often considered part of Czechs, originally closer to Slovaks
Often considered part of Croats, although listed separately in Serbia (Refer to link)


Note: 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 (in Croatia), Bosanci, Hercegovci, Krajišnici, Semberci (in Bosnia and Herzegovina), Srbijanci, Šumadinci, Vojvođani, Sremci, Bačvani, Banaćani, Sandžaklije, Kosovci, Crnogorci, Bokelji (in Serbia and Montenegro), etc.


Notes

  1. Bernstein S. B., Очерк сравнительной грамматики славянских языков, vol. 1-2, Moscow, 1961.
  2. James P. Mallory, "Chernoles Culture", EIEC
  3. "Kundera emphasized that for a thousand years the Czechs never had any direct contact with Russia In spite of their linguistic kinship, the Czechs and the Russians never shared a common world, neither a common history of common culture.(...) Joseph Conrad wrote that "nothing could be more alien to what is called in literary world "the Slavic spirit" then the Polish temperament with its chivalric devotion to moral constraints and its exaggerated respect for individual rights"A History of Eastern Europe: Crisis and Change. Robert Bideleux. Routledge 1998.(accentuation added.
  4. . From its beginning, Poland drew its primary inspiration from Western Europe and developed a closer affinity with the French and Italians, for example, than with nearer Slavic neighbors of Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine heritage . This westward orientation, which in some ways has made Poland the easternmost outpost of Latinate and Catholic tradition, helps to explain the Poles' tenacious sense of belonging to the "West" and their deeply rooted antagonism toward Russia as the representative of an essentially alien way of life .U.S. Library of Congress(accentuation added).

See also

External links

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