Slavs - WikiHQ

The Slavs or Slavic people are groups of people who speak Slavic languages. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts 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.

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 (),]]

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, 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), 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..." 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. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion.

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

thumb|[[Great Moravia during Svatopluk I (), according to Štefanovičová (1989)]]

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. Principality of Serbia was founded in 8th, Duchy of Bohemia and Kievan Rus' both in the 9th century.

The expansion of the Magyars into the Carpathian Basin and the Germanization of Austria gradually separated the South Slavs from the West and East Slavs. Later Slavic states, which formed in the following centuries included the Second Bulgarian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, Banate of Bosnia, Duklja and Kingdom of Serbia which later grew into Serbian Empire.

Modern era

thumb|upright|Pan-Slavic postcard depicting [[Saints Cyril and Methodius|Cyril and Methodius, with the text "God/Our Lord, watch over our grandfatherland/ heritage" in 9 Slavic languages.]]

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. 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. 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. 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", 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. This plan was to be carried out gradually over 25 to 30 years. After an approximate 30 million Slavs would be killed through starvation and their major cities depopulated, the Germans were supposed to repopulate Eastern Europe. In June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler paused the plan to focus on the extermination of the Jews. Germany's Heinrich Himmler also ordered his subordinate Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben to start repopulating Crimea, and hundreds of ethnic Germans were forcibly moved to cities and villages there. The Soviet Red Army took back their land from the Germans in 1944.

The ultra-nationalist, fascist Ustaše committed genocide against Serbs during World War II. The Serbian nationalist Chetniks committed genocide against Croats and Bosniaks. Also during World War II, fascist Italy sent tens of thousands of Slavs to concentration camps in mainland Italy, Libya, and the Balkans.

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and many former Soviet republics became independent countries. Currently, former Soviet states in Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have very large minority Slavic populations, with most being Russians.

Languages

[[File:Lenguas_eslavas_orientales.PNG|thumb|upright|left|East Slavic languages

]]

thumb|right|South Slavic dialect continuum with major dialect groups

[[File:Lenguas eslavas occidentales.PNG|thumb|upright|left|West Slavic languages

]]

Proto-Slavic, the supposed ancestor language of all Slavic languages, is a descendant of common Proto-Indo-European, via a Balto-Slavic stage in which it developed numerous lexical and morphophonological isoglosses with the Baltic languages. In the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis, "the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations [from the steppe] became speakers of Balto-Slavic".

Standardised Slavic languages that have official status in at least one country are: Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Macedonian, Montenegrin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, and Ukrainian. Russian is the most spoken Slavic language, and is the most spoken native language in Europe.

The alphabets used for Slavic languages are usually connected to the dominant religion among the respective ethnic groups. Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic alphabet while Catholics use the Latin alphabet; the Bosniaks, who are Muslim, also use the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet in Serbia. Additionally, some Eastern Catholics and Western Catholics use the Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian and Montenegrin use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin script to write in Belarusian, called Łacinka and in Ukrainian, called Latynka.

Ethno-cultural subdivisions

West Slavs originate from early Slavic tribes which settled in Central Europe after the East Germanic tribes had left this area during the migration period. They are noted as having mixed with Germans, Hungarians, Celts (particularly the Boii), Old Prussians, and the Pannonian Avars. The West Slavs came under the influence of the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and of the Catholic Church.

East Slavs have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed and contacted with Finns, Balts and with the remnants of the people of the Goths. Their early Slavic component, Antes, mixed or absorbed Iranians, and later received influence from the Khazars and Vikings. The East Slavs trace their national origins to the tribal unions of Kievan Rus' and Rus' Khaganate, beginning in the 10th century. They came particularly under the influence of the Byzantine Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church.

South Slavs from most of the region have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with the local Proto-Balkanic tribes (Illyrian, Dacian, Thracian, Paeonian, Hellenic tribes), and Celtic tribes (particularly the Scordisci), as well as with Romans (and the Romanized remnants of the former groups), and also with remnants of temporarily settled invading East Germanic, Asiatic or Caucasian tribes such as Gepids, Huns, Avars, Goths and Bulgars. The original inhabitants of present-day Slovenia and continental Croatia have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with Romans and romanized Celtic and Illyrian people as well as with Avars and Germanic peoples (Lombards and East Goths). The South Slavs (except the Slovenes and Croats) came under the cultural sphere of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), of the Ottoman Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Islam, while the Slovenes and the Croats were influenced by the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and thus by the Catholic Church in a similar fashion to that of the West Slavs.

Genetics

thumb|right|The genetic legacy of the Slavic expansion (black), per Gretzinger et al. (2025).

Consistent with the proximity of their languages, analyses of Y chromosomes, mDNA, and autosomal marker CCR5 delta 32 shows that East Slavs and West Slavs are genetically very similar, but demonstrate significant differences from neighboring Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and North Caucasian peoples. Such genetic homogeneity is somewhat unusual, given such a wide dispersal of Slavic populations. Together they form the basis of the "East European" gene cluster, which also includes non-Slavic Hungarians and Aromanians. Only Northern Russians among East and West Slavs belong to a different, "Northern European" genetic cluster, along with Balts, Germanic and Baltic Finnic peoples (Northern Russian populations are very similar to Balts).

thumb|Global distribution of the [[R1a haplogroup, which is the most frequently found haplogroup among the Slavic peoples of Europe]]

The 2006 Y-DNA study results "suggest that the Slavic expansion started from the territory of present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the hypothesis placing the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the basin of the middle Dnieper". According to genetic studies until 2020, the distribution, variance and frequency of the Y-DNA haplogroups R1a and I2 and their subclades R-M558, R-M458 and I-CTS10228 among South Slavs correlate with the spread of Slavic languages during the medieval Slavic expansion from Eastern Europe, most probably from the territory of present-day Ukraine and Southeastern Poland.

According to a 2017 study, Slavic speakers like Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians have similar genetic components. Ukrainians and Belarusians have near-equal amounts of two "European components", which are commonly found in North Europe and Caucasus respectively. There is also no evidence of Asian admixture. However, samples of Novosibirsk residents and Old Believers in Siberia have 5-10% Central Siberian ancestry despite being genetically close to European Slavs.

A 2025 comprehensive archaeogenetic study published in Nature on 555 samples out of which 359 from the Slavic period, "demonstrate large-scale population movement from Eastern Europe during the sixth to eighth centuries, replacing more than 80% of the local gene pool in Eastern Germany, Poland and Croatia" and that "on the European scale, it appears plausible that the changes in material culture and language between the sixth and eighth centuries were connected to these large-scale population movements". A Genome Biology study about South Moravia came to the same conclusion, finding "a strong genetic shift incompatible with local continuity between the fifth and seventh century, supporting the notion that the Slavic expansion in South Moravia was driven by population movement". Also, in the first 2025 study, it was considered that the "best spatial proxy" of the Slavic Urheimat was in the south of Belarus and north of Ukraine, indicative of the Kyiv culture. Religious delineations by nationality can be very sharp; usually in the Slavic ethnic groups, the vast majority of religious people share the same religion.

Mainly Eastern Orthodoxy:

Russians
Ukrainians
Serbs
Bulgarians
Belarusians
Macedonians
Montenegrins

Mainly Catholicism:

Poles
Kashubians
Gorals
Czechs (largely irreligious)
Slovaks
Croats
Slovenes
Sorbs
Rusyns
Banat Bulgarians

Mainly Islam:

Bosniaks
Pomaks
Gorani
Torbeši
Ethnic Muslims

Relations with non-Slavic people

Throughout their history, Slavs came into contact with non-Slavic groups. In the postulated homeland region (present-day Ukraine), they had contacts with the Iranian Sarmatians and the Germanic Goths. After their subsequent spread, the Slavs began assimilating non-Slavic peoples. For example, in the Northern Black Sea region, the Slavs assimilated the remnants of the Goths. Because Slavs were so numerous, most indigenous populations of the Balkans were Slavicized. Thracians and Illyrians mixed as ethnic groups in this period.

A notable exception is Greece, where Slavs were Hellenized because Greeks were more numerous, especially with more Greeks returning to Greece in the 9th century and the influence of the church and administration, however, Slavicized regions within Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia Inferior also had a larger portion of locals compared to migrating Slavs. Other notable exceptions are the territory of present-day Romania and Hungary, where Slavs settled en route to present-day Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and East Thrace but assimilated, and the modern Albanian nation which claims descent from Illyrians and other Balkan tribes.

The status of the Bulgars as a ruling class and their control of the land nominally left their legacy in the Bulgarian country and people, but Bulgars were gradually also Slavicized into the present-day South Slavic ethnic group known as Bulgarians. The Latins within the fortified Dalmatian cities retained their culture and language for a long time. Dalmatian Romance was spoken until the high Middle Ages, but, they too were eventually assimilated into the body of Slavs.

In the Western Balkans, South Slavs and Germanic Gepids intermarried with invaders, eventually producing a Slavicized population. In Central Europe, the West Slavs intermixed with Germanic, Hungarian, and Celtic peoples, while in Eastern Europe the East Slavs had encountered Finnic and Scandinavian peoples. Scandinavians (Varangians) and Finnic peoples were involved in the early formation of the Rus' state but were completely Slavicized after a century. Some Finno-Ugric tribes in the north were also absorbed into the expanding Rus population. In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchak and the Pecheneg, caused a massive migration of East Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north. In the Middle Ages, groups of Saxon ore miners settled in medieval Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria, where they were Slavicized.

thumb|left|upright|Map showing [[Baltic Slavic piracy|Slavic raids on Scandinavia in the mid-12th century]]

Saqaliba refers to the Slavic mercenaries and slaves in the medieval Arab world in North Africa, Sicily and Al-Andalus. Saqaliba served as caliph's guards. In the 12th century, Slavic piracy in the Baltics increased. The Wendish Crusade was started against the Polabian Slavs in 1147, as a part of the Northern Crusades. The pagan chief of the Slavic Obodrite tribes, Niklot, began his open resistance when Lothar III, Holy Roman Emperor, invaded Slavic lands. In August 1160, Niklot was killed, and German colonization (Ostsiedlung) of the Elbe-Oder region began. In Hanoverian Wendland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Lusatia, invaders started germanization. Early forms of germanization were described by German monks: Helmold in the manuscript Chronicon Slavorum and Adam of Bremen in Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. The Polabian language survived until the beginning of the 19th century in what is now the German state of Lower Saxony. In Eastern Germany, around 20% of Germans have historic Slavic paternal ancestry, as revealed in Y-DNA testing. Similarly, in Germany, around 20% of the foreign surnames are of Slavic origin.

Cossacks, although Slavic and practicing Orthodox Christianity, came from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, including Tatars and other peoples. The Gorals of southern Poland and northern Slovakia are partially descended from the originally Balkan Romance speaking Vlachs, who migrated into the region from the 14th to 17th centuries and were quickly absorbed into the local population, especially since the majority of Vlachs were already slavicized and the term became synonymous with Ruthenians. The populations of Moravian Wallachia, Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of northern Slovakia are also descended partially from the Vlachs. Conversely, some Slavs were assimilated into other populations. Although the majority continued towards Southeast Europe, attracted by the riches of the area that became the state of Bulgaria, a few remained in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe and were assimilated into the Magyar people. Numerous rivers and places in Romania have a name with Slavic origins.

Population

[[File:Slavic ancestry in the USA and Canada.png|thumb|Slavs in the US (1990 census) and Canada (2016 census) by area:

]]

thumb|Percentage of ethnic Russians by [[federal subjects of Russia|federal subjects of Russia according to the 2010 census:

]]

Winkler Prins (2002) estimated the number of Slavs worldwide to be around 260 million at the time. Currently it is estimated that there are 300 million Slavic inhabitants in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe.

{|class="wikitable sortable"

! Ethnicity

! Estimates and census data

| Belarusians

| data-sort-value="8,437,497" |

8.37 million Belarusians in Belarus (2009 Belarusian census)
46,787 Belarusians in Poland (2011 Polish census)
1.9 million Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina (2013–2022 CIA World Factbook estimate)
153,801 Bosniaks in Serbia (2022 Serbian census)
6.5 million Bulgarians in Bulgaria (Jeffreys et al. 2008 estimate)
10 million Bulgarian speakers worldwide (Jeffreys et al. 2008 estimate)
9 million Bulgarians worldwide, of which 7.3 million in Bulgaria (Danver 2015 estimate)
12,918 Bulgarians in Serbia (2022 Serbian census)
759,906 Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1991, according to Statistic yearbook of SRBiH 1992)
4.5 million Croats and people of Croatian heritage outside Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina (HWC 2003 estimate)
39,107 Croats in Serbia (2022 Serbian census)
6,732,104 Czechs in Czechia (2011 Czech census)
28,996 Czechs in Slovakia (2021 Slovak census)
7,700 Gorani in Serbia (2022 Serbian census)
52,665 inhabitants of Poland spoke Kashubian at home (49,855 of them also spoke Polish at home) (2002 Polish census)
232,547 Kashubians in Poland (2011 Polish census)

Sources

; Primary sources

; Secondary sources

Curta Florin, The early Slavs in Bohemia and Moravia: a response to my critics
Lacey, Robert. 2003. Great Tales from English History. Little, Brown and Company. New York. .
Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East. Oxford Univ. Press.
Nystazopoulou-Pelekidou, Maria. 1992. The "Macedonian Question": A Historical Review. © Association Internationale d'Etudes du Sud-Est Europeen (AIESEE, International Association of Southeast European Studies), Comité Grec. Corfu: Ionian University. (English translation of a 1988 work written in Greek.)
Rębała, Krzysztof, et al.. 2007. Y-STR variation among Slavs: evidence for the Slavic homeland in the middle Dnieper basin. Journal of Human Genetics, May 2007, 52(5): 408–414.

External links

Mitochondrial DNA Phylogeny in Eastern and Western Slavs, B. Malyarchuk, T. Grzybowski, M. Derenko, M. Perkova, T. Vanecek, J. Lazur, P. Gomolcaknd I. Tsybovsky, Oxford Journals (archived 14 June 2010)