Slavic peoples

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The Slavic peoples are the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe with about 400 000 000 speakers, residing chiefly in the east and southeast of that continent but also found across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Slavic languages belong to the Indo-European family. Customarily Slavs are divided into the following subgroups:

Contents

List of groups

Main history

Slavs historically were described as Venedes or Wends, but their connection to the Veneds mentioned by Tacitus, Ptolemy and Plinius, is uncertain, and the similarity of the two names may be accidental.

The connection between the Lugii and the Slavs is controversial. Some recent authors connect them with Slavs, some with Germans, and still others claim that the Lugii were a compound tribe, or confederation of tribes of different ethnicity. The Lugii or Lygii had earlier Celtic elements and were actually recorded as a part of the Vandals in Magna Germania, which included territory of later Silesia (named for the Silingi-Vandals). It is possible that the city of Legnica (Liegnitz) in Silesia was named for Lug, Ligo.

Some later recorded names of Slavs were Sclavens, Sclovene, and Ants. Jordanes mentions that the Venets are divided into three groups: the Venets, the Ants and the Sklavens. Even the origin of the word "Slav" is unsure. In Slavic languages that word is "Slowianie", "Slovene", or something similar, with obvious similarities to word "Slowo" meaning "Word". "Slowianie" would mean "people who can speak", as opposed to the Slavic word for Germans, "Niemcy", that is, "dumb", "people who cannot speak". Another obvious similarity is to the word "Slawa", that is "glory" or "praise"(with common root with "Slowo"). Some linguists believe, however, that these obvious connections are false, despite the early translation of the Greek word "orthodoxos" ("Correct/right", "glorifying/praising") having its equivalent in "pravoslavni" with "pravo" meaning "right" or "correct" and "slavni" meaning "those who praise" or "those who glorify" [God]. It has also been suggested that the word is cognate with the English "slave", because Slavs were often enslaved in the Roman Empire.

Some Slavic peoples retain some linguistic connection to ancient non-Slavic peoples. One such connection is between the Bulgars of antiquity and the Volga Bulgars, Crimean Tatars, and Tatars of today in some word roots and personal names.

In religion, the Slavs traditionally divided into two main groups: those associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church (Russians, most Ukrainians, most Belarusians, some Carpathorussians, Serbs, Bulgarians, Macedonians) and those associated with the Roman Catholic Church, both Roman Catholic believers and Uniates Greek Catholic Church (Poles, Sorbs, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenians, some Ukrainians, and some Belarusians). The division is further marked by the use of the Cyrillic alphabet by the former and the Roman alphabet by the latter with a few minor exceptions. Ukrainians and Belarusians use Cyrillic; Montenegrins are Eastern Orthodox who use a Latin script. Catholic Croats in Istra peninsula and Adriatic islands up to recently used the peculiar Glagolitic alphabet. There are also many minority religious groups, including both Sunni and Shiite Muslims incorporating numerous mystical sects, Protestants, and Jews.

Prehistorically, the original habitat of the Slavs, as of all Indoeuropeans, was Asia, from which they migrated in the 3rd or 2nd millennium BC to populate parts of eastern Europe. Subsequently, these European lands of the Slavs were crossed or settled by many peoples forced by economic conditions to migrate. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC, Celtic tribes settled along the upper Odra River, and Germanic tribes settled on the lower Vistula and lower Odra rivers, usually without displacing the Slavs there. Actually the land at the Elbe, Odra and Vistula Rivers was all recorded as Magna Germania 1900 years ago and later. Finally, the movement westward of the Germans in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., necessitated by the onslaught of people from the Far East: Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Hungarians, started the great migration of the Slavs, who proceeded in the Germans' wake westward into the country between the Odra and the Elbe-Saale line, southward into Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and the Balkans, and northward along the upper Dnieper River. When these migratory movements had ended, there appeared among the Slavs the first rudiments of state organizations, each headed by a prince with a treasury and defense force, and the beginning of class differentiation, with nobles that pledged allegiance to the Frankish and Holy Roman Emperors. Numerous Slavic place names of the Peloponesus date to the second century C.E.

It is believed that either Karantania or Great Moravia was the first Slavic state.

There were two theories in history about the original homeland of Slavs: the first, called the autochtonic, was based on the assumption that Slavs had lived north of the Carpathian Mountains since 1000 BC. A second theory, called allochtonic, assumed that the Slavs came there in the 5th or 6th century AD. Both theories were used as tools of political propaganda by Germans and different Slavic nations, with great harm to science. Some scientists consider both theories absurd (e.g. Kazimierz Godlowski or Zdenek Vana), because they think that Slavs as such appeared and differentiated from other tribes after 1AD. There is a theory that there were two waves of Slavs: Proto-Slavs, called Wenetes or Veneds, and Slavs proper, and that these two groups mixed to become today's Slavs. That theory at least tries to deal with the very complicated question arising from archeological findings in the area. Nobody is sure where the Slavic homeland was before their big expansion. Slavs have first been recorded in the Pripjet Marshes area but a considerable number of Southern Slavic words are Indo-Iranian, chiefly in Croatia and Bulgaria.

In the centuries that followed, scarcely any unity developed among the various Slavic peoples, although a faint traces sometimes appeared. In the 19th century, Pan-Slavism developed as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, and poets, but it rarely influenced practical politics. The various Slavic nations and peoples conducted their policies in accordance with what they regarded as their national interests, and these policies were as often bitterly hostile toward other Slavic peoples as they were friendly toward non-Slavs. Even political unions of the 20th century, such as that of Yugoslavia, were not always matched by feelings of ethnic or cultural accord and were essentially hegemonial in favor of certain groups. Neither did the sharing of communism after World War II necessarily provide more than a high-level political and economic alliance.

Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany claimed the racial superiority of the Germanic people, particularly over the Semitic and Slavic peoples. One major goal of the Nazi's ethnic programs was the enslavement of the Slavic peoples, and reducing their number by killing the majority of the population. Hitler's aim, as evidenced in Mein Kampf, was for the Slavs to serve the Third Reich as a permanent slave class.

See also

  • Important and detailed wiki-source on diverse Slavs is Meta-Wikislavia: wikislavia.volgota.com

References

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