Slavs

The Slavic peoples are one of the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern and southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Slavic languages belong to the Indo-European family. Customarily Slavs are subdivided into east Slavs ,(including Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians and Lippovan Russians), west Slavs (chiefly Poles, Kaschubians, Slovincians, Masurians, Czechs, Slovaks, and Sorbs and south Slavs (including Serbs, Croats, Bosnian Muslims, and the Serbo-Croat groups, the Bunjevci or 'Bunjewatsen', Sokci, other South Slavic groups the Slovenes, Macedonian Slavs, properly, the Paeonian Slavs, the Bulgariansand the Pomaks/ or Agrinians. Originally the Bulgarians were a conquering Asiatic tribe, possibly related to the Hungarians, but their language has long since been assimilated to a Slavic tongue.

Slavs historically were described as Venedes or Wends, but their connection to Veneds mentioned by Tacitus, Ptolomei and Plinius, is uncertain, and similarity of name may be accidental. Controversial is connection between Lugii and Slavs, since some recent authors connect them with Slavs, some with Germans, some claim that Lugii were 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). The German city of Liegnitz in Silesia was named for Lug, Ligo.

Later names of Slavs were recorded as Sclavens, Sclovene, Ants. Jordanes mentions that Venets are divided into three groups: Venets, Ants and Sklavens. Even origin of word "Slav" is unsure. In Slavic languages that word is "Slowianie" "Slovene" etc, with obvious similarities to word "Slowo" meaning "Word", so "Slowianie" would mean "people who can speak" as opposed for Slavic word for Germans "Niemcy" that is, "dumb", "people who cannot speak". Other obvious similarity is to word "Slawa", that is "fame" (with common root with "Slowo"), however linguists believe that that obvious connections are false.

In religion, the Slavs traditionally divided into two main groups: those associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church: (Russians, most Ukrainians, some Belarusians, Serbs, and Macedonians) and those associated with the Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church and Greek Catholic Church): Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, some Ukrainians, and most Belarusians). The division is further marked by the use of the Cyrillic alphabet by the former (but including all Ukrainians and Belarusians) and the Roman alphabet by the latter. There are also many minority religious groups, such as Muslims, 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 B.C. 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 B.C., Celtic tribes settled along the upper Oder River, and Germanic tribes settled on the lower Vistula and lower Oder rivers, usually without displacing the Slavs there. Actually the land at the Elbe, Oder 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 Oder and the Elbe-Saale line, southward into Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and the Balkans, and northward along the upper Dnieper River. When the 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, who pledged allegiance to the Frankish and Holy Roman Emperors.

There were two theories in history about original homeland of Slavs: first, called autochtonic, was based on assumption that Slavs had lived north of the Carpathian Mountains since 1000 BC. Second, called allochtonic, assumed that Slavs came there in V-VI 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 AD. There is theory that there were two waves of Slavs: Proto-Slavs, called Wenetes or Veneds, and Slavs proper, and that two groups created today's Slavs. That theory at least tries to deal with very complicated question arising from archeological findings in the area. Nobody also is sure where was Slavic homeland before they start their big expansion. Slavs have first been recorded in the Pripjet Marshes area.

In the centuries that followed, there developed scarcely any unity among the various Slavic peoples although a faint kind of Slavic unity 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 nationalities 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; nor 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 majority of population. Hitler's aim, as evidenced in Mein Kampf, was for the Slavs to serve the Third Reich as a permanent slave class.