The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout regions of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, and Northern Asia, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states and Central Asia, and a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe.
Early Slavs lived during the Migration Period and the Early Middle Ages (approximately from the 5th to the 10th century AD), and came to control large parts of Central, Eastern, and Southeast Europe between the sixth and seventh centuries. Beginning in the 7th century, they were gradually Christianized. By the 12th century, they formed the core population of a number of medieval Christian states: East Slavs in the Kievan Rus', South Slavs in the Bulgarian Empire, the Principality of Serbia, the Duchy of Croatia and the Banate of Bosnia, and West Slavs in the Principality of Nitra, Great Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, and the Kingdom of Poland.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, a pan-Slavic movement has emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The movement was particularly influential in the Balkans. While the Russian Empire’s stance toward the movement was complex and sometimes cautious, many Pan-Slavists looked to Russia for support rather than viewing it as an outright opponent.
The Slavic languages belong to the Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Present-day Slavs are classified into three groups:Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael, Language and Nationalism in Europe, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 199, West Slavs (Czechs, Kashubians, Moravians, Poles, Silesians, Slovaks, and Sorbs); East Slavs (Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians); South Slavs (Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Gorani, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Pomaks, Serbs, Slovenes and Torbeši).
Though the majority of Slavs are Christians, some groups, such as the Bosniaks, mostly identify as Muslims. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse, both genetically and culturally, and relations between them may range from "ethnic solidarity to mutual feelings of hostility" — even within the individual groups.
Ethnonym
The oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is from the 6th century AD, when Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, used various forms such as Sklaboi (), Sklabēnoi (), Sklauenoi (), Sthlabenoi (), or Sklabinoi (), and his contemporary Jordanes refers to the in Latin. The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic, dating from the 9th century, attest the autonym as Slověne (). Those forms point back to a Slavic autonym, which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as , plural Slověne.
The reconstructed autonym is usually considered a derivation from ("word"), originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)", meaning "people who understand one another", in contrast to the Slavic word denoting "German people", namely , meaning "silent, mute people" (from Slavic "mute, mumbling"). The word slovo ("word") and the related slava ("glory, fame") and ("hearing") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek ( "fame"), as in the name Pericles, Latin ("be called"), and English .
In medieval and early modern sources written in Latin, Slavs are most commonly referred to as Sclaveni or the shortened version Sclavi.
History
Origins First mentions
Ancient Roman sources refer to the Early Slavic peoples as "Veneti", who dwelt in a region of central Europe east of the Germanic tribe of Suebi and west of the Iranian Sarmatians in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD,Coon, Carleton S. (1939) The Peoples of Europe. Chapter VI, Sec. 7 New York: Macmillan Publishers.Tacitus. Germania, page 46. between the upper Vistula and Dnieper rivers. Slavs – called Antes and Sclaveni – first appear in Byzantine records in the early 6th century AD. Byzantine historiographers of the era of the emperor Justinian I (), such as Procopius of Caesarea, Jordanes and Theophylact Simocatta, describe tribes of these names emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the Black Sea to invade the Danubian provinces of the Eastern Empire.
Jordanes, in his work Getica (written in 551 AD),Curta 2001: 38. Dzino 2010: 95. describes the Veneti as a "populous nation" whose dwellings begin at the sources of the Vistula and occupy "a great expanse of land". He also describes the Veneti as the ancestors of Antes and Slaveni, two early Slavic tribes, who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early-6th century.
Procopius wrote in 545 that "the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called Sporoi in olden times". The name Sporoi derives from Greek σπείρω ("to sow"). He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy and believed in one god, "the maker of lightning" (Perun), to whom they made sacrifice. They lived in scattered housing and constantly changed settlement. In war, they were mainly foot soldiers with shields, spears, bows, and little armour, which was reserved mainly for chiefs and their inner circle of warriors. Their language is "barbarous" (that is, not Greek), and the two tribes are alike in appearance, being tall and robust, "while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are all slightly ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts..."
Jordanes describes the Sclaveni as having swamps and forests for their cities. Another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly-impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes.
Menander Protector mentions Daurentius () who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars; Daurentius declined and is reported as saying: "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs – so it shall always be for us as long as there are wars and weapons".
Migrations
The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries AD (thought to be in conjunction with the movement of peoples 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 who had fled from the Huns and their allies. Slavs, according to this account, moved 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. It has also been suggested that some Slavs migrated with the Vandals to the Iberian Peninsula and even to North Africa.
Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in large numbers. Byzantine records note that Slav numbers were so great, that grass would not regrow where the Slavs had marched through. Military movements resulted in even the Peloponnese and Anatolia being reported to have Slavic settlements.Tachiaos, Anthony-Emil N. 2001. Cyril and Methodius of Thessalonica: The Acculturation of the Slavs. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion. By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions.
Pope Gregory I in 600 AD wrote to Maximus, the bishop of Salona (in Dalmatia), expressing concern about the arrival of the Slavs,
Middle Ages
When Slav migrations ended, their first state organizations appeared, each headed by a prince with a treasury and a defense force. In the 7th century, the Frankish merchant Samo supported the Slavs against their Avar rulers and became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe, Samo's Empire. This early Slavic polity probably did not outlive its founder and ruler, but it was the foundation for later West Slavic states on its territory.
The oldest of them was Carantania; others are the Principality of Nitra, the Moravian principality (see under Great Moravia) and the Balaton Principality. The First Bulgarian Empire was founded in 681 as an alliance between the ruling Bulgars and the numerous Slavs in the area, and their South Slavic language, the Old Church Slavonic, became the main and official language of the empire in 864 AD. Bulgaria was instrumental in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world. Duchy of Croatia was founded in 7th century and later became Kingdom of Croatia.During the reign of Heraclius (r. 610–641). De Administrando Imperio chapter 30. Principality of Serbia was founded in 8th, Duchy of Bohemia and Kievan Rus' both in the 9th century.
In the centuries that followed, a number of medieval Slavic states emerged, including the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, the Banate of Bosnia, Duklja, and the Kingdom of Serbia, which later developed into the Serbian Empire.
Modern era
Pan-Slavism, a movement which came into prominence in the mid-19th century, emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires: the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice. Austria-Hungary envisioned its own political concept of Austro-Slavism, in opposition of Pan-Slavism that was predominantly led by the Russian Empire.
As of 1878, there were only three majority Slavic states in the world: the Russian Empire, Principality of Serbia and Principality of Montenegro. Bulgaria was effectively independent but was de jure vassal to the Ottoman Empire until official independence was declared in 1908. The Slavic peoples who were, for the most part, denied a voice in the affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were calling for national self-determination.
During World War I, representatives of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. In 1918, after World War I ended, the Slavs established such independent states as Czechoslovakia, the Second Polish Republic, and the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.
The first half of the 20th century in Russia and the Soviet Union was marked by a succession of wars, famines and other disasters, each accompanied by large-scale population losses.Mark Harrison (2002). "Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940–1945". Cambridge University Press. p.167. ISBN 0-521-89424-7 The two major famines were in 1921 to 1922 and 1932 to 1933, which caused millions of deaths mostly around the Volga region, Ukraine and the Northern Caucasus.Rudnytskyi, Omelian et al. “The 1921–1923 Famine and the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: Common and Distinctive Features.” Nationalities Papers 48.3 (2020): 549–568. Web. The latter resulted from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's collectivization of agriculture in Ukraine.
During the war, Nazi Germany used hundreds of thousands of people for slave labor in their concentration camps, the majority of whom were Jewish or Slavic. Both groups were a part of what Germans claimed to be a "vast racially subhuman surplus population" that they "intended to eliminate in time from their new empire", their term for "racial subhumans" being Untermensch. Thus, one of Adolf Hitler's ambitions at the start of World War II was to exterminate, expel, or enslave most or all West and East Slavs from their native lands, so as to make "living space" for German settlers.