Everything about The Slavic Peoples totally explained
The
Slavic peoples are a linguistic and ethnic branch of
Indo-European peoples, living mainly in
Europe, where they constitute roughly a third of the population. Since emerging from their original homeland (most commonly thought to be in eastern
Central Europe) in the early
6th century, they've inhabited most of eastern
Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the
Balkans. Many settled later in
Siberia and
Central Asia or emigrated to other parts of the world.
Slavic settlers mixed with existing local populations and later invaders, thus modern Slavic peoples are considerably genetically and culturally diverse. Yet they're connected by speaking often closely related
Slavic languages, by a sense of common identity and history (which is present to different extents among different individuals and different Slavic peoples), and by predominantly being a
Christian people.
Slavic peoples are traditionally divided along geographical lines into
West Slavic (including
Czechs,
Poles,
Slovaks and
Sorbs),
East Slavic (including
Belarusians,
Russians, and
Ukrainians), and
South Slavic (including
Bosniaks,
Bulgarians,
Croats,
Macedonians,
Montenegrins,
Serbs and
Slovenes). For a more comprehensive list, see
Ethno-cultural subdivisions.
Origin of the term Slav
The origin of the word 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 AD. The word is written variously as
Sklabenoi,
Sklauenoi, or
Sklabinoi in
Byzantine Greek, and as
Sclaueni,
Sclauini, or
Sthlaueni in
Latin. The oldest documents written in
Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest
slověne to describe the Slavs around Thessalonica. Other early attestations include Old Russian
slověně "an East Slavic group near Novgorod",
Slovutich "Dnieper river", and
Serbo-Croatian Slavonica, a river.
Scholars such as
Roman Jacobson and others link the name with the Slavic forms
sláva "glory", "fame" or
slovo "word, talk" (both akin to
slusati "to hear" from the
IE root
*kleu-). Thus
slověne would mean "people who speak (the same language)", for example people who understand each other, as opposed to the Slavic word for foreign nations,
nemtsi, meaning "speechless people" (from Slavic
němi -
mute, silent, dumb). For example, the Polish word
Niemcy means "Germans" or "Germany", as do the Serbo-Croatian words
Nemci/
Nijemci and the Russian and Bulgarian word
Nemtsi.
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 hypothetically reconstructed
Proto-Indo-European, cognate to
Greek laós "population, people", which itself has no commonly accepted etymology. The second theory (forwarded by for example
Max Vasmer) suggests that the word originated as a river name (compare the etymology of the
Volcae), comparing it with such cognates as
Latin cluere "to cleanse, purge", a root not known to have been continued in Slavic, however, and it appears in other languages with similar meanings (cf. Greek
klyzein "to wash", Old English
hlūtor "clean, pure", Old Norse
hlér "sea", Welsh
clir "clear, clean", Lithuanian
šlúoti "to sweep").
Proto-Slavic language
Proto-Slavic, the
ancestor language of all Slavic languages, branched off at some uncertain time in a disputed location from common
Proto-Indo-European, passing through a
Balto-Slavic stage in which it developed numerous lexical and morphophonological isoglosses with
Baltic languages. In the framework of the
Kurgan hypothesis, "the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations became speakers of Balto-Slavic".
Proto-Slavic proper, or more commonly referred to as
Common Slavic or
Late Proto-Slavic, defined as the last stage of the language preceding the geographical split of the historical
Slavic languages, was likely spoken during the 6th and 7th centuries on a vast territory from Novgorod to southern Greece. That language was unusually uniform, and on the basis of borrowings from foreign languages and Slavic borrowings into other languages, can't be said to have any recognizable dialects. Slavic linguistic unity lasted for at least 1-2 centuries more, as can been seen in
Old Church Slavonic manuscripts which, though based on local Slavic Macedonian speech of
Thessaloniki, could still serve the purpose of the first common Slavic literary language.
Origins
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
Belarus,
Poland,
European Russia and
Ukraine. The proposed frameworks are:
- Lusatian culture 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).
- Milograd culture hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs (or Balto-Slavs) were the bearers of the Milograd culture
- Chernoles culture hypothesis: The pre-Proto-Slavs were the bearers of the Chernoles culture of northern Ukraine
The starting point in the autochtonic/allochtonic debate was the year 1745, when
Johann Christoph de Jordan published
De Originibus Slavicis. From the 19th century onwards, the debate became politically charged, particularly in connection with the history of the
Partitions of Poland and German imperialism known as
Drang nach Osten. The question as to whether Germanic or Slavic peoples were autochthonous on the land east of the
Oder river was used by factions to pursue their respective German and Polish political claims to governance of those lands.
Earliest accounts
Pliny the Elder and
Ptolemy mention a tribe of the
Veneti around the river
Vistula. The lands east of the
Rhine,
Elbe,
Oder, and west of the
Vistula river were referred to as
Magna Germania by
Tacitus in AD 98. Romans occupied the land west of the Rhine. From
Romanticism, the allochthonic school theorem is that the 6th century authors re-applied this ethnonym to hitherto unknown Slavic tribes, whence the later designation "
Wends" for Slavic tribes, and medieval legends purporting a connection between Poles and Vandals.
The Slavs under name of
Venethi, the
Antes and the
Sclaveni make their first appearance in Byzantine records in the early
6th century.
Byzantine historiographers under
Justinian I (527-565), such as
Procopius of Caesarea,
Jordanes and
Theophylact Simocatta describe tribes emerging from the area of the
Carpathian Mountains, the lower
Danube and the
Black Sea, invading the Danubian provinces of the
Eastern Empire.
Jordanes mentions that the Venethi sub-divided into three groups: the
Venethi, the
Antes and the
Sklavens (
Sclovenes,
Sklavinoi), collectively called
Spores. The Byzantine term
Sklavinoi was loaned as
Saqaliba by medieval Arab historiographers.
Scenarios of ethnogenesis
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 area of this culture contains typical for IE originators numerous
tumuli.
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 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 indisputably 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
Ruthenian 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.
Genetics
The modern Slavic peoples come from a wide variety of genetic backgrounds. The frequency of
Haplogroup R1a(External Link
) ranges from 63.39% by the
Sorbs, 56.4% in Poland and 54% in Ukraine, to 15.2% in Macedonia, 14.7% in Bulgaria and 12.1% in
Herzegovina.
Haplogroup R1a may be connected to the spread of
Proto-Indo-Europeans (see
Kurgan hypothesis for more information).
A new study studied several Slavic populations with the aim of localizing the Proto-Slavic homeland. The significant findings of this study are that:
Two genetically distant groups of Slavic populations were revealed: One encompassing all Western-Slavic, Eastern-Slavic, and two Southern - Slavic populations (Croats, Slovenes), and one encompassing all remaining Southern Slavs. According to the authors most Slavic populations have similar Y chromosome pools - R1a, and this similarity can be traced to an origin in middle Dnieper basin of the Ukraine from Ukrainian LGM refuge 15 kya.
However, some southern Slavic populations such as Serbians, Macedonians, Bulgarians, and Bosnians are clearly separated from the tight DNA cluster of the rest of Slavic populations. According to the authors this phenomenon is explained by "...contribution to the Y chromosomes of peoples who settled in the Balkan region before the Slavic expansion to the genetic heritage of Southern Slavs..."
Northern Eastern Slavs are distinguished by the presence of Y Haplogroup N in their genome. Postulated to originate from Central Asia, it's found at high rates in Finnic peoples. Its presence in Northern Russians attests to the Northern Eastern Slavic tribes mixing with Finno-Ugric peoples in northern Eurasia.
Slavic migrations
Prior to becoming known to the Roman world, Slavic speaking tribes were part of the many multi-ethnic confederacies of Eurasia- such as the Sarmatian, Hun and Gothic empires.The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germans in the 5th and 6th centuries AD (necessitated by the onslaught of people from Siberia and Eastern Europe: Huns, and later Avars and Bulgars) 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 Oder 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. Perhaps some Slavs migrated with the movement of the Vandals to Iberia and north Africa..
Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in great numbers. The Byzantine records note that after they marched through grass wouldn't regrow under their footprints. After a military movement even the Peloponnese and Asia Minor were reported to have Slavic settlements. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion.
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 a defense force. Moreover, it was the beginnings of class differentiation, and nobles either pledged allegiance to the Frankish/ Holy Roman Emperors or the Byzantine 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 didn't outlive its founder and ruler. This provided the foundation for subsequent Slavic states to arise on the former territory of this realm. Arguably, Carantania is the oldest 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, as well as the Germanisation of Austria, separated the northern and southern Slavs. The First Bulgarian Empire, ruled by a core of Turkic Bulgars, was founded in AD 681. After their subesquent Slavicisation, it was instrumental in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world.
Throughout their history, Slavs came into contact with non-Slavic groups. In the postulated "homeland" region (present-day Ukraine), they'd contacts with Sarmatians and the Germanic Goths. After their subsequent spread, they began assimilating non-Slavic peoples. For example, in the Balkans, there were Paleo-Balkan peoples, such as Thracians, Illyrians and Greeks. Having begun to lose their indegenous language and mores since the time of Roman conquest, what remained of the Thracians and Illyrians were completely absorbed into the Slavic tribes. Later invaders such as Turkic Bulgars and even Cumans mingled with the Slavs also, particularly in eastern parts (ie Bulgaria). In central Europe, the Slavs intermixed with Germanic, Celtic and Raetian peoples, whilst the eastern Slavs encountered Uralic and Scandinavian peoples.
Conversely, some Slavs were assimilated into other populations. The south Slavs who inhabited the Carpathian basin were Margyarised or Romanianised. Part of the substratum of modern-day Hungary and Romania was provided by Slavic peoples. Needless to say, Romania and Hungary are not Slavic countries. Similarly, the populations of Austria and the eastern parts of Germany to some degree comprised of people with Slavic ancestry who became Germanised.
Because of the vastness and diversity of the territory occupied by Slavic people, 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. A notable political union of the 20th century that covered many South Slavs was Yugoslavia, but it was broken apart as well.
The word Slavs is used in the national anthem of the two Yugoslavias. The national anthems are the same.
Slavic populations under foreign rule
In the course of their history, many Slavic-speaking communities came under foreign rule for longer or shorter periods. Poland underwent partition, German-speaking empires appeared to absorb the Czechs and Slovenes for many centuries, and the Ottomans in their heyday dominated the Balkan Slavs. Even the East Slavs had to submit to the Tatar yoke after the Mongol invasion of Rus.
The Slavs living in Brandenburg and Pomerania were exterminated or dissimulated by Germans in the course of the Ostsiedlung; Turkish incursions suppressed the regional hegemonies of Bulgarian and Serbian speakers; Poland suffered decline, partition and extinction as a separate national state in the 18th century. Until the 20th century, certain speech-groups (such as speakers of Slovene) lacked the resources to establish their own distinctive independent nation-states. Other communities (speakers of Sorbian or of Kashubian, for example) remain as minorities in the current system of nation-states.
Some speech-communities have long stood under the influence of others -- even other Slavs: speakers of Ukrainian and Belarusian came under Polish and/or Russian rule; German-speaking overlords have long dominated the Sorbian-speakers. In the case of West Slavic speakers, originally kindred languages diverged when the Poles, Czechs and Slovaks became parts of different countries (Poland, Bohemia, Kingdom of Hungary, respectively), Slovak becoming considerably influenced by Czech after 1400/1500. A political division (Austria, Kingdom of Hungary) also marks the now well-established border between the Slovene and Croatian language areas, even if some bordering dialects of the two languages indicate an almost smooth transition.
Despite their frequent lack of political power, Slavs demonstrated resilience, sometimes culturally taking over foreign political rulers, as in Bulgaria, where originally Bulgar overlords became Slavicized. Similarly, in the Republic of Dubrovnik, the locally spoken Slavic language became an official language in parallel to Ragusan Dalmatian and Latin. Even under the Ottoman Empire, south-Eastern Europe, except for Greece proper and Albanian, Romanian and Hungarian areas, remained Slavic speaking. In the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a Ruthenian dialect was the language of official documents.
Religion and alphabet
Slavs gradually adopted Christianity between 6th and 10th century, and consequently the old Slavic religion was suppressed. The two main Christian denominations with Slavs are Eastern Orthodox and Greek or Roman Catholic, others are Sunni Muslim and a very small minority are Protestant. 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 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 or/and Greek Catholic:
Russians
Ukrainians
Belarusians
Serbs
Pannonian Rusyns
Rusyns
Bulgarians
Macedonians
Montenegrins
2. Those who are mainly Roman Catholic with small Protestant and Eastern Orthodox minorities:
Poles
Silesians
Kashubians
Moravians
Slovaks
Slovenes
Croats
Krashovans
Bunjevs
3. Those who are mainly Muslim:
Bosniaks
Montenegrin Muslims
Gorani
Torbesh
Pomaks
Muslims by nationality
4. Those who are a religious mixture:
Sorbs (Catholic/Protestant)
Yugoslavs (Catholic/Orthodox/Muslim)
5. Those who are mainly atheist and Roman Catholic with Protestant minorities:
Czechs
The Orthodox/Catholic religious divisions become further exacerbated by the use of the Cyrillic alphabet by the Orthodox and 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. 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
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 10th 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, Dacians/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 Slovenes don't share either of these backgrounds, as they expanded to the West and integrated into the cultural sphere of Western (Roman Catholic) Christianity around this timeframe.
In addition there has been a tendency to consider the category of Northern Slavs. Presently this category is considered to be of East and West Slavs, in opposition to South Slavs, however in 19th century opinions about individual languages/ethnicities varied.
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
Ukrainians
Belarusians
Rusyns 3
West Slavs
Main article: West Slavs
Lechitic group
South Slavs
Main article: South Slavs
Eastern (Bulgaro-Macedonian) group
Western group
† Extinct
1 Also considered part of Rusyns
2 Considered transitional between Ukrainians and Belarusians
3 Also considered part of Ukrainians
4 A part of Lemkos identify themselves as Ukrainians and another part as Rusyns (External Link)
5 Also considered part of Poles
6 Today, often considered part of Czechs, originally closer to Slovaks
7 Most Shopi self-declare as Bulgarians. Cognate with Torlaks.
8 Most Torlaks self-declare as Serbs. Cognate with Shopi.
9 Some opt Serb ethnicity, with a historical tradition, dating back to the Serb tribes that settled Montenegro many centuries ago. While others opt for Montenegrin ethnicity, also historically emphasized, but used ubiquitously along with Serb one. Some of the ethnic Montenegrins, mostly supporters of Montenegrin independence and adherents of Montenegrin Orthodox Church call their native language Montenegrin, considering it a separate language from Serbian.
10 Both occur widely in northeastern Croatia and also in northern Serbia; their Ikavian dialect is subequal as southern Croats in Hercegovina and Dalmatian mainland from where they once emigrated. Considered part of Croats by most of them, although recently (since Yugoslav disaster) some within Serbia consider themselves a separate peoples
11 These Gorani are Slavs in Kosovo; but not to be confound with other Gorani (or Gorinci) in the highlands of western Croatia (Gorski Kotar county).
12 A census category recognized as an ethnic group. Most Slavic Muslims now opt for Bosniak ethnicity, but some still use the "Muslim" designation.
13 This identity continues to be used by a minority throughout the former Yugoslav republics. The nationality is also declared by diasporans living in the USA and Canada. There are a multitude of reasons as to why people prefer this affiliation, some published on the article.
Note: Besides ethnic groups, Slavs often identify themselves with the local geographical region in which they live. Some of the major regional South Slavic groups include: Zagorci in northern Croatia, Istrani in westernmost Croatia, Dalmatinci in southern Croatia, Boduli in Adriatic islands, Slavonci in eastern Croatia, Bosanci in Bosnia, Hercegovci in southern Bosnia (Herzegovina), Krajišnici in western Bosnia, Semberci in northeast Bosnia, Srbijanci in Serbia proper, Šumadinci in central Serbia, Vojvođani in northern Serbia, Sremci in Syrmia, Bačvani in northwest Vojvodina, Banaćani in Banat, Sandžaklije (Muslims in Serbia/Montenegro border), Kosovci in Kosovo, Crnogorci in Montenegro proper, Bokelji in southwest Montenegro, Trakiytci in Upper Thracian Lowlands, Dobrudzhantci in north-east Bulgarian region, Balkandzhiiin Central Balkan Mountains, Miziytci in north Bulgarian region, Pirintsi in Blagoevgrad Province, Rupchi in the Rhodopes, etc.
Another interesting note is that the very term Slavic itself was registered in the US census of 2000 by more than 127,000 residents.
Further Information
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