SLAVS- the largest group of European peoples, united by a common origin and linguistic proximity in the system of Indo-European languages. Its representatives are divided into three subgroups: southern (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Bosnians), eastern (Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians) and western (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lusatians). The total number of Slavs in the world is about 300 million people, including Bulgarians 8.5 million, Serbs about 9 million, Croats 5.7 million, Slovenes 2.3 million, Macedonians about 2 million, Montenegrins less 1 million, Bosnians about 2 million, Russians 146 million (of which 120 million in the Russian Federation), Ukrainians 46 million, Belarusians 10.5 million, Poles 44.5 million, Czechs 11 million, Slovaks less than 6 million, Lusatians - about 60 thousand. Slavs make up the bulk of the population of the Russian Federation, the Republics of Poland, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, the State Community of Serbia and Montenegro, and also live in the Baltic republics, Hungary, Greece, Germany, Austria, Italy, countries of America and Australia. Most Slavs are Christians, with the exception of the Bosnians, who converted to Islam during Ottoman rule over southern Europe. Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Russians - mostly Orthodox; Croats, Slovenes, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Lusatians are Catholics, among Ukrainians and Belarusians there are many Orthodox, but there are also Catholics and Uniates.
Data from archeology and linguistics connect the ancient Slavs with the vast region of Central and Eastern Europe, bounded in the west by the Elbe and Oder, in the north by the Baltic Sea, in the east by the Volga, and in the south by the Adriatic. The northern neighbors of the Slavs were the Germans and Balts, the eastern - the Scythians and Sarmatians, the southern - the Thracians and Illyrians, and the western - the Celts. The question of the ancestral home of the Slavs remains controversial. Most researchers believe that this was the Vistula basin. Ethnonym Slavs first found among Byzantine authors of the 6th century, who called them “sklavins”. This word is related to the Greek verb "kluxo" ("I wash") and the Latin "kluo" ("I cleanse"). The self-name of the Slavs goes back to the Slavic lexeme “word” (that is, the Slavs are those who speak, understand each other through verbal speech, considering foreigners incomprehensible, “dumb”).
The ancient Slavs were descendants of pastoral and agricultural tribes of the Corded Ware culture, who settled in 3–2 thousand BC. from the Northern Black Sea region and the Carpathian region across Europe. In the 2nd century. AD, as a result of the movement of the Germanic tribes of the Goths to the south, the integrity of the Slavic territory was violated, and it was divided into western and eastern. In the 5th century The resettlement of the Slavs to the south began - to the Balkans and the North-Western Black Sea region. At the same time, however, they retained all their lands in Central and Eastern Europe, becoming the largest ethnic group at that time.
The Slavs were engaged in arable farming, cattle breeding, various crafts, and lived in neighboring communities. Numerous wars and territorial movements contributed to the collapse by the 6th–7th centuries. family ties. In the 6th–8th centuries. many of the Slavic tribes united into tribal unions and created the first state entities: in the 7th century. The First Bulgarian Kingdom and the Samo State arose, which included the lands of the Slovaks, in the 8th century. - Serbian state Raska, in the 9th century. - The Great Moravian state, which absorbed the lands of the Czechs, as well as the first state of the Eastern Slavs - Kievan Rus, the first independent Croatian principality and the Montenegrin state of Duklja. At the same time - in the 9th–10th centuries. - Christianity began to spread among the Slavs, quickly becoming the dominant religion.
From the end of the 9th - in the first half of the 10th century, when the Poles were just forming a state, and the Serbian lands were gradually being collected by the First Bulgarian Kingdom, the advance of the Hungarian tribes (Magyars) began into the valley of the middle Danube, which intensified by the 8th century. The Magyars cut off the Western Slavs from the southern Slavs and assimilated part of the Slavic population. The Slovenian principalities of Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia became part of the Holy Roman Empire. From the 10th century the lands of the Czechs and Lusatians (the only Slavic peoples who did not have time to create their own statehood) also fell into the epicenter of colonization - but this time of the Germans. Thus, the Czechs, Slovenes and Lusatians were gradually included in the powers created by the Germans and Austrians and became their border districts. By participating in the affairs of these powers, the listed Slavic peoples organically merged into the civilization of Western Europe, becoming part of its socio-political, economic, cultural, and religious subsystems. Having retained some typically Slavic ethnocultural elements, they acquired a stable set of features characteristic of the Germanic peoples in family and social life, in national utensils, clothing and cuisine, in the types of dwellings and settlements, in dances and music, in folklore and applied arts. Even from an anthropological point of view, this part of the Western Slavs acquired stable features that bring them closer to southern Europeans and residents of Central Europe (Austrians, Bavarians, Thuringians, etc.). The coloring of the spiritual life of the Czechs, Slovenes, and Lusatians began to be determined by the German version of Catholicism; have undergone changes, lexical and grammatical structure their languages.
Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians, Montenegrins formed during the Middle Ages, 8th–9th centuries, southern Greco-Slavic natural-geographical and historical-cultural area All of them found themselves in the orbit of Byzantine influence and were accepted in the 9th century. Christianity in its Byzantine (orthodox) version, and with it Cyrillic writing. Subsequently, under the conditions of the incessant onslaught of other cultures and the strong influence of Islam, which began in the second half of the 14th century. Turkish (Ottoman) conquest - Bulgarians, Serbs, Macedonians and Montenegrins successfully preserved the specifics of the spiritual system, features of family and social life, and original cultural forms. In the struggle for their identity in the Ottoman environment, they took shape as South Slavic ethnic entities. At the same time, no large groups Slavic peoples adopted Islam during the period of Ottoman rule. Bosnians - from the Slavic communities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Turchens - from Montenegrins, Pomaks - from Bulgarians, Torbeshi - from Macedonians, Mohammedan Serbs - from the Serbian environment experienced a strong Turkish influence and therefore took on the role of “border” subgroups of the Slavic peoples, connecting representatives Slavs with Middle Eastern ethnic groups.
Northern historical and cultural range Orthodox Slavs developed in the 8th–9th centuries on a large territory occupied by the Eastern Slavs from the Northern Dvina and the White Sea to the Black Sea region, from the Western Dvina to the Volga and Oka. Began at the beginning of the 12th century. the processes of feudal fragmentation of the Kievan state led to the formation of many East Slavic principalities, which formed two stable branches of the Eastern Slavs: eastern (Great Russians or Russians, Russians) and western (Ukrainians, Belarusians). Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians emerged as independent peoples, according to different estimates, after the conquest of the East Slavic lands by the Mongol-Tatars, the yoke and collapse of the Mongol state, the Golden Horde, that is, in the 14th–15th centuries. The state of the Russians - Russia (called Muscovy on European maps) - initially united the lands along the upper Volga and Oka, the upper reaches of the Don and Dnieper. After the conquest in the 16th century. Kazan and Astrakhan khanates, the Russians expanded the territory of their settlement: they advanced to the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia. After the fall of the Crimean Khanate, Ukrainians settled the Black Sea region and, together with the Russians, the steppe and foothill regions of the North Caucasus. A significant part of the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands was in the 16th century. as part of the united Polish-Lithuanian state of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and only in the mid-17th–18th centuries. found itself once again annexed to the Russians for a long time. The Eastern Slavs were able to more completely than the Balkan Slavs (who were either under Greek spiritual-intellectual or Ottoman military-administrative pressure) and a significant part of the Germanized Western Slavs, preserve the features of their traditional culture, mental-psychic makeup (non-violence, tolerance, etc.) .
A significant part of the Slavic ethnic groups that lived in Eastern Europe from Jadran to the Baltic - these were partly Western Slavs (Poles, Kashubians, Slovaks) and partly southern Slavs (Croats) - in the Middle Ages formed their own special cultural and historical area, gravitating towards Western Europe more than than to the southern and eastern Slavs. This area united those Slavic peoples who accepted Catholicism, but avoided active Germanization and Magyarization. Their position in the Slavic world is similar to a group of small Slavic ethnic communities that combined the features inherent in the Eastern Slavs with the features of peoples living in Western Europe - both Slavic (Poles, Slovaks, Czechs) and non-Slavic (Hungarians, Lithuanians) . These are the Lemkos (on the Polish-Slovak border), Rusyns, Transcarpathians, Hutsuls, Boykos, Galicians in Ukraine and Chernorussians (Western Belarusians) in Belarus, who gradually separated from other ethnic groups.
The relatively later ethnic division of the Slavic peoples and the commonality of their historical destinies contributed to the preservation of the consciousness of the Slavic community. This includes self-determination in a foreign cultural environment - Germans, Austrians, Magyars, Ottomans, and similar circumstances national development, caused by the loss of statehood by many of them (most of the Western and Southern Slavs were part of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empire, Ukrainians and Belarusians were part of Russian Empire). Already in the 17th century. among the southern and western Slavs there was a tendency towards the unification of all Slavic lands and peoples. A prominent ideologist of Slavic unity at that time was a Croat who served at the Russian court, Yuri Krizanich.
At the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th century. the rapid growth of national self-awareness among almost all previously oppressed Slavic peoples was expressed in the desire for national consolidation, resulting in the struggle for the preservation and dissemination of national languages, the creation of national literatures (the so-called “Slavic revival”). Early 19th century marked the beginning of scientific Slavic studies - the study of the cultures and ethnic history of the southern, eastern, and western Slavs.
From the second half of the 19th century. The desire of many Slavic peoples to create their own, independent states became obvious. Socio-political organizations began to operate on the Slavic lands, contributing to the further political awakening of the Slavic peoples who did not have their own statehood (Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Poles, Lusatians, Czechs, Ukrainians, Belarusians). Unlike the Russians, whose statehood was not lost even during the Horde yoke and had a nine-century history, as well as the Bulgarians and Montenegrins, who gained independence after Russia’s victory in the war with Turkey in 1877–1878, the majority of Slavic peoples were still fighting for independence.
National oppression and the difficult economic situation of the Slavic peoples in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. caused several waves of their emigration to more developed European countries in the USA and Canada, and, to a lesser extent, France and Germany. The total number of Slavic peoples in the world at the beginning of the 20th century. was about 150 million people (Russians - 65 million, Ukrainians - 31 million, Belarusians 7 million; Poles 19 million, Czechs 7 million, Slovaks 2.5 million; Serbs and Croats 9 million, Bulgarians 5 .5 million, Slovenians 1.5 million) At that time, the bulk of the Slavs lived in Russia (107.5 million people), Austria-Hungary (25 million people), Germany (4 million people) , countries of America (3 million people).
After the First World War of 1914–1918, international acts fixed the new borders of Bulgaria, the emergence of the multinational Slavic states of Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia (where, however, some Slavic peoples dominated over others), and the restoration of national statehood among the Poles. In the early 1920s, the creation of their own states - socialist republics - was announced - Ukrainians and Belarusians joined the USSR; however, the tendency towards Russification of the cultural life of these East Slavic peoples - which became obvious during the existence of the Russian Empire - persisted.
The solidarity of the southern, western and eastern Slavs strengthened during the Second World War of 1939–1945, in the fight against fascism and the “ethnic cleansing” carried out by the occupiers (which meant the physical destruction of a number of Slavic peoples, among others). During these years, Serbs, Poles, Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians suffered more than others. At the same time, the Slavophobes-Nazis did not consider the Slovenes to be Slavs (having restored Slovenian statehood in 1941–1945), the Lusatians were classified as East Germans (Swabians, Saxons), that is, regional nationalities (Landvolken) of German Central Europe, and the contradictions between the Croats and Serbs used to their advantage by supporting Croatian separatism.
After 1945, almost all Slavic peoples found themselves part of states called socialist or people's democratic republics. The existence of contradictions and conflicts on ethnic grounds in them was kept silent for decades, but the advantages of cooperation were emphasized, both economic (for which the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance was created, which existed for almost half a century, 1949–1991), and military-political (within the framework of the Warsaw Pact Organization, 1955–1991). However, the era of “velvet revolutions” in the people’s democracies of the 90s and 20th centuries. not only revealed latent discontent, but also led former multinational states to rapid fragmentation. Under the influence of these processes, which swept throughout Eastern Europe, free elections were held in Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the USSR and new independent Slavic states emerged. In addition to the positive aspects, this process also had negative ones - the weakening of existing economic ties, areas of cultural and political interaction.
The tendency for Western Slavs to gravitate towards Western European ethnic groups continues at the beginning of the 21st century. Some of them act as conductors of the Western European “onslaught on the East” that emerged after 2000. This is the role of the Croats in the Balkan conflicts, the Poles in maintaining separatist tendencies in Ukraine and Belarus. At the same time, at the turn of the 20th–21st centuries. The question of the common destinies of all Eastern Slavs: Ukrainians, Belarusians, Great Russians, as well as the Southern Slavs, again became relevant. In connection with the intensification of the Slavic movement in Russia and abroad in 1996–1999, several agreements were signed, which were a step towards the formation of a union state of Russia and Belarus. In June 2001, a congress of the Slavic peoples of Belarus, Ukraine and Russia was held in Moscow; in September 2002 the Slavic Party of Russia was founded in Moscow. In 2003, the State Community of Serbia and Montenegro was formed, declaring itself the legal successor of Yugoslavia. The ideas of Slavic unity are regaining their relevance.
Lev Pushkarev
All Slavic peoples are usually divided into 3 groups: Western Slavs (Czechs, Slovaks, Poles), Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians) and Southern Slavs (Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, Bulgarians).
East Slavic group
According to the 1989 census
There were 145.2 Russians in the USSR
million people, Ukrainians - 44.2 million people, Belarusians - 10 million people. Russians and Ukrainians have always been the most numerous nationalities in the USSR; Belarusians in the 1960s gave way to third place to the Uzbeks (16.7 million people in 1989).
Until recently, the name “Russians” was often indiscriminately assigned to all Eastern Slavs. Between the X and XIII centuries. the center of Rus' was Kyiv and its inhabitants were known as “Rusichi”. But as political conditions contributed to the strengthening of linguistic and cultural differences between the territorial groups of the Eastern Slavs, they were divided into Little Russians (Ukrainians), Belarusians (Belarusians) and Great Russians (Russians).
Over centuries of territorial expansion, the Russians assimilated the Varangians, Tatars, Finno-Ugrians and dozens of peoples of Siberia. All of them left their linguistic traces, but did not significantly influence Slavic identity. While Russians migrated throughout northern Eurasia, Ukrainians and Belarusians continued to inhabit their compact ethnic areas. The modern boundaries of the three states roughly correspond to ethnic boundaries, but all Slavic territories were never nationally homogeneous. Ethnic Ukrainians in 1989 made up 72.7% of the population of their republic, Belarusians - 77.9%, and Russians - 81.5%. 1
There were 119,865.9 thousand Russians in the Russian Federation in 1989. In other republics of the former USSR, the Russian population was distributed as follows: in Ukraine it amounted to 1 1 355.6 thousand people. (22% of the population of the republic), in Kazakhstan - 6227.5 thousand people. (37.8%, respectively), Uzbekistan - 1653.5 thousand people. (8%), Belarus - 1342 thousand people. (13.2% of the population of the republic), Kyrgyzstan - 916.6 thousand people. (21.5% of the population of the republic), Latvia - 905.5 thousand people. (37.6% of the population of the republic), Moldova - 562 thousand people. (13% of the population of the republic), Estonia - 474.8 thousand people. (30% of the population of the republic), Azerbaijan - 392.3 thousand people. (5.5% of the population of the republic), Tajikistan - 388.5
thousand people (7.6% of the population of the republic), Georgia - 341.2
thousand people (6.3% of the republic’s population), Lithuania - 344.5
thousand people (9.3% of the population of the republic), Turkmenistan - 333.9 thousand people. (9.4% of the population of the republic), Armenia - 51.5 thousand people. (1.5% of the republic's population). In non-CIS countries, the Russian population as a whole is 1.4 million people, the majority live in the USA (1 million people).
The emergence of regional differences among the Russian people dates back to the feudal period. Even among the ancient East Slavic tribes, differences in material culture between the north and south were noted. These differences further intensified after active ethnic contacts and assimilation of the non-Slavic populations of Asia and Eastern Europe. The formation of regional differences was also facilitated by the presence of a special military population on the borders.
Ethnographers and linguists also distinguish three transitional groups: Western (residents of the Velikaya, Upper Dnieper and Western Dvina river basins) - transitional between the Northern and Central Russian, Central and Southern Russian groups and Belarusians; northeastern (Russian population of the Kirov, Perm, Sverdlovsk regions), formed after the settlement of Russian territories in the 15th-1st-17th centuries, according to the local dialect close to the North Russian group, but having Central Russian features due to the two main directions along which settlement took place edges - from the north and from the center of European Russia; southeastern (Russians of the Rostov region, Stavropol and Krasnodar territories), close to the southern Russian group in terms of language, folklore and material culture.
Other, smaller, historical and cultural groups of the Russian people include Pomors, Cossacks, old-timers Kerzhaks and Siberian mestizos.
In a narrow sense, Pomors are usually called the Russian population of the White Sea coast from Onega to Kem, and in a broader sense - all residents of the coast of the northern seas washing European Russia.
The Pomors are the descendants of the ancient Novgorodians, who differed from the North Russian ones in the peculiarities of their economy and life associated with the sea and maritime industries.
The ethnic class group of the Cossacks is unique - Amur, Astrakhan, Don, Transbaikal, Kuban, Orenburg, Semirechensk, Siberian, Terek, Ural, Ussuri.
The Don, Ural, Orenburg, Terek, Transbaikal and Amur Cossacks, although they had different origins, differed from the peasants in their economic privileges and self-government. Don Cossacks, formed in the 16th-18th centuries. from Slavic and Asian components, historically divided into Verkhovsky and Ponizovsky. Among the Verkhovsky Cossacks there were more Russians; among the Ponizovsky Cossacks, Ukrainians predominated. The North Caucasian (Terek and Greben) Cossacks were close to the mountain peoples. The core of the Ural Cossacks in the 16th century. were people from the Don, and the core of the Transbaikal Cossacks, who appeared later, in the 19th century, was formed not only by Russians, but also by Buryats and Evenks.
The old-timers of Siberia are the descendants of settlers from the 16th to 16th centuries. from Northern Russia and the Urals. Among Western Siberian old-timers, Okanye are more common, and in Eastern Siberia, in addition to Okanye Russians, there are also Akayas - people from the southern Russian lands. Akanye is especially widespread in the Far East, where descendants of new settlers of the late 19th century predominate.
Early 20th century
Many Kerzhaks - Siberian Old Believers - have retained their ethnographic characteristics. Among them are: “masons”, descendants of white Old Believers from the mountainous regions of Altai, living along the Bukhtarma and Uimon rivers; “Poles” speaking an Akai dialect, descendants of Old Believers resettled after the partition of Poland from the town of Vetki in the Ust-region
Kamenogorsk; “Semeyskie”, descendants of Old Believers evicted from European Russia to Transbaikalia in the 18th century
Among the Siberian mestizos, the Yakuts and Kolyma residents, the descendants of mixed Russian-Yakut marriages, the Kamchadals, the Karyms (Russified Buryats of Transbaikalia) and the descendants of the tundra peasants who adopted the Dogan language and customs, living along the Dudinka and Khatanga rivers, stand out.
Ukrainians (4362.9 thousand people) live mainly in the Tyumen region (260.2 thousand people), Moscow (247.3 thousand people), and in addition, in the Moscow region, in the areas bordering Ukraine , in the Urals and Siberia. Of these, 42.8% consider Ukrainian to be their native language, and another 15.6% are fluent in it; 57% of Russian Ukrainians consider Russian to be their native language. There are no Ukrainian ethnographic groups within Russia. Among the Kuban (Black Sea) Cossacks, the Ukrainian component predominates.
Belarusians (1206.2 thousand people) live dispersed throughout Russia and mainly (80%) in cities. Among them there is a special ethnographic group of Poleschuks.
The origin of the term “Slavs,” which has attracted great public interest lately, is very complex and confusing. The definition of the Slavs as an ethno-confessional community, due to the very large territory occupied by the Slavs, is often difficult, and the use of the concept of “Slavic community” for political purposes over the centuries has caused a serious distortion of the picture of real relationships between the Slavic peoples.
The origin of the term “Slavs” itself is unknown to modern science. Presumably, it goes back to a certain pan-Indo-European root, the semantic content of which is the concept of “man”, “people”. There are also two theories, one of which derives the Latin names Sclavi, Stlavi, Sklaveni from the ending of names “-slav”, which in turn is associated with the word “slava”. Another theory connects the name "Slavs" with the term "word", citing in support the presence of the Russian word "Germans", derived from the word "mute". Both of these theories, however, are refuted by almost all modern linguists, who claim that the suffix “-Yanin” clearly indicates belonging to a particular locality. Since the area called “Slav” is unknown to history, the origin of the name of the Slavs remains unclear.
Basic knowledge available to modern science about the ancient Slavs, are based either on data from archaeological excavations (which in themselves do not provide any theoretical knowledge), or on the basis of chronicles, as a rule, known not in their original form, but in the form of later lists, descriptions and interpretations. It is obvious that such factual material is completely insufficient for any serious theoretical constructions. Sources of information about the history of the Slavs are discussed below, as well as in the chapters “History” and “Linguistics”, but it should immediately be noted that any study in the field of life, everyday life and religion of the ancient Slavs cannot claim to be anything more than a hypothetical model.
It should also be noted that in the science of the 19th-20th centuries. There was a serious difference in views on the history of the Slavs between Russian and foreign researchers. On the one hand, it was caused by the special political relations of Russia with other Slavic states, the sharply increased influence of Russia on European politics and the need for historical (or pseudo-historical) justification for this policy, as well as a back reaction to it, including from openly fascist ethnographers - theorists (for example, Ratzel). On the other hand, there were (and are) fundamental differences between the scientific and methodological schools of Russia (especially the Soviet one) and Western countries. The observed discrepancy could not but be influenced by religious aspects - the claims of Russian Orthodoxy to a special and exclusive role in the world Christian process, rooted in the history of the baptism of Rus', also required a certain revision of some views on the history of the Slavs.
The concept of “Slavs” often includes certain peoples with a certain degree of convention. A number of nationalities have undergone such significant changes in their history that they can be called Slavic only with great reservations. Many peoples, mainly on the borders of traditional Slavic settlement, have characteristics of both the Slavs and their neighbors, which requires the introduction of the concept "marginal Slavs". Such peoples definitely include the Daco-Romanians, Albanians and Illyrians, and the Leto-Slavs.
Most of the Slavic population, having experienced numerous historical vicissitudes, one way or another mixed with other peoples. Many of these processes occurred already in modern times; Thus, Russian settlers in Transbaikalia, mixing with the local Buryat population, gave birth to a new community known as the Chaldons. By and large, it makes sense to derive the concept "Mezoslavs" in relation to peoples who have a direct genetic connection only with the Veneds, Antes and Sclavenians.
It is necessary to use the linguistic method in identifying the Slavs, as suggested by a number of researchers, with extreme caution. There are many examples of such inconsistency or syncretism in the linguistics of some peoples; Thus, the Polabian and Kashubian Slavs de facto speak German, and many Balkan peoples have changed their original language several times beyond recognition in just the last one and a half millennia.
Such a valuable method of research as the anthropological one, unfortunately, is practically inapplicable to the Slavs, since a single anthropological type characteristic of the entire habitat of the Slavs has not been formed. The traditional everyday anthropological characteristic of the Slavs refers primarily to the northern and eastern Slavs, who over the centuries assimilated with the Balts and Scandinavians, and cannot be attributed to the eastern and especially the southern Slavs. Moreover, as a result of significant external influences from, in particular, Muslim conquerors, the anthropological characteristics of not only the Slavs, but also all inhabitants of Europe, changed significantly. For example, the indigenous inhabitants of the Apennine Peninsula during the heyday of the Roman Empire had an appearance characteristic of the inhabitants of Central Russia in the 19th century: blond curly hair, blue eyes and rounded faces.
As mentioned above, information about the Proto-Slavs is known to us exclusively from ancient and later Byzantine sources of the early 1st millennium AD. The Greeks and Romans gave completely arbitrary names to the proto-Slavic peoples, referring them to the terrain, appearance or combat characteristics of the tribes. As a result, there is a certain confusion and redundancy in the names of the Proto-Slavic peoples. At the same time, however, in the Roman Empire Slavic tribes were generally called terms Stavani, Stlavani, Suoveni, Slavi, Slavini, Sklavini, having obviously a common origin, but leaving wide scope for speculation about the original meaning of this word, as mentioned above.
Modern ethnography rather conventionally divides the Slavs of modern times into three groups:
Eastern, which includes Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians; some researchers single out only the Russian nation, which has three branches: Great Russian, Little Russian and Belarusian;
Western, which includes Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and Lusatians;
Southern, which includes Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians, Bosnians, Montenegrins.
It is easy to see that this division corresponds more to linguistic differences between peoples than to ethnographic and anthropological ones; Thus, the division of the main population of the former Russian Empire into Russians and Ukrainians is very controversial, and the unification of the Cossacks, Galicians, Eastern Poles, Northern Moldovans and Hutsuls into one nationality is more a matter of politics than of science.
Unfortunately, based on the above, a researcher of Slavic communities can hardly rely on a research method other than the linguistic one and the classification that follows from it. However, despite all the richness and effectiveness of linguistic methods, in the historical aspect they are very susceptible to external influences, and, as a consequence of this, in a historical perspective they may turn out to be unreliable.
Of course, the main ethnographic group of the Eastern Slavs are the so-called Russians, at least due to its numbers. However, with regard to Russians, we can only speak in a general sense, since the Russian nation is a very bizarre synthesis of small ethnographic groups and nationalities.
Three ethnic elements took part in the formation of the Russian nation: Slavic, Finnish and Tatar-Mongolian. While asserting this, we cannot, however, definitely say what exactly the original East Slavic type was. Similar uncertainty is observed in relation to the Finns, who are united into one group only due to a certain similarity of the languages of the Baltic Finns themselves, Lapps, Livs, Estonians and Magyars. Even less obvious genetic origin Tatar-Mongols, who, as is known, have a fairly distant relationship with modern Mongols, and even more so with the Tatars.
A number of researchers believe that the social elite of ancient Rus', which gave its name to the entire people, was made up of a certain people of Rus, who by the middle of the 10th century. subjugated the Slovenes, Polyans and part of the Krivichi. There are, however, significant differences in hypotheses about the origin and the very fact of the existence of the Rus. The Norman origin of the Rus is assumed to be from the Scandinavian tribes of the Viking expansion period. This hypothesis was described back in the 18th century, but was received with hostility by the patriotically minded part of Russian scientists led by Lomonosov. Currently, the Norman hypothesis is considered in the West as basic, and in Russia as probable.
The Slavic hypothesis of the origin of the Rus was formulated by Lomonosov and Tatishchev in defiance of the Norman hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, the Rus originate from the Middle Dnieper region and are identified with the glades. Many archaeological finds in the south of Russia were fitted under this hypothesis, which had official status in the USSR.
The Indo-Iranian hypothesis assumes the origin of the Rus from the Sarmatian tribes of the Roxalans or Rosomons, mentioned by ancient authors, and the name of the people comes from the term ruksi- "light". This hypothesis does not stand up to criticism, first of all, due to the dolichocephalic skulls inherent in the burials of that time, which is characteristic only of northern peoples.
There is a strong (and not only in everyday life) belief that the formation of the Russian nation was influenced by a certain nation called the Scythians. Meanwhile, in a scientific sense, this term has no right to exist, since the concept of “Scythians” is no less generalized than “Europeans”, and includes dozens, if not hundreds of nomadic peoples of Turkic, Aryan and Iranian origin. Naturally, these nomadic peoples, to one degree or another, had a certain influence on the formation of the Eastern and Southern Slavs, but it is completely wrong to consider this influence decisive (or critical).
As the Eastern Slavs spread, they mixed not only with the Finns and Tatars, but also, somewhat later, with the Germans.
The main ethnographic group of modern Ukraine are the so-called Little Russians, living in the territory of the Middle Dnieper and Slobozhanshchina, also called Cherkassy. There are also two ethnographic groups: Carpathian (Boikos, Hutsuls, Lemkos) and Polesie (Litvins, Polishchuks). The formation of the Little Russian (Ukrainian) people occurred in the XII-XV centuries. based on the southwestern part of the population of Kievan Rus and genetically differed little from the indigenous Russian nation that had formed at the time of the baptism of Rus. Subsequently, there was a partial assimilation of some Little Russians with Hungarians, Lithuanians, Poles, Tatars and Romanians.
Belarusians, calling themselves so by the geographical term “White Rus'”, they represent a complex synthesis of Dregovichi, Radimichi and partly Vyatichi with Poles and Lithuanians. Initially, until the 16th century, the term “White Rus'” was applied exclusively to the Vitebsk region and the northeastern Mogilev region, while the western part of the modern Minsk and Vitebsk regions, together with the territory of the current Grodno region, was called “Black Russia”, and the southern part of modern Belarus - Polesie. These areas much later became part of “Belaya Rus”. Subsequently, the Belarusians absorbed the Polotsk Krivichi, and some of them were pushed back to the Pskov and Tver lands. The Russian name for the Belarusian-Ukrainian mixed population is Polishchuks, Litvins, Rusyns, Rus.
Polabian Slavs(Vends) - the indigenous Slavic population of the north, north-west and east of the territory occupied by modern Germany. The Polabian Slavs include three tribal unions: the Lutichi (Velets or Weltz), the Bodrichi (Obodriti, Rereki or Rarogi) and the Lusatians (Lusatian Serbs or Sorbs). Currently, the entire Polabian population is completely Germanized.
Lusatians(Lusatian Serbs, Sorbs, Vends, Serbia) - the indigenous Meso-Slavic population, lives in the territory of Lusatia - former Slavic regions, now located in Germany. They originate from the Polabian Slavs, occupied in the 10th century. German feudal lords.
Extremely southern Slavs, conventionally united under the name "Bulgarians" represent seven ethnographic groups: Dobrujantsi, Khurtsoi, Balkanjis, Thracians, Ruptsi, Macedonians, Shopi. These groups differ significantly not only in language, but also in customs, social order and culture as a whole, and the final formation of a unified Bulgarian community is not completed even in our time.
Initially, the Bulgarians lived on the Don, when the Khazars, after moving to the west, founded big kingdom on the lower Volga. Under pressure from the Khazars, part of the Bulgarians moved to the lower Danube, forming modern Bulgaria, and the other part moved to the middle Volga, where they subsequently mixed with the Russians.
Balkan Bulgarians mixed with local Thracians; in modern Bulgaria, elements of Thracian culture can be traced south of the Balkan Range. With the expansion of the First Bulgarian Kingdom, new tribes were included in the generalized Bulgarian people. A significant part of the Bulgarians assimilated with the Turks in the period of the 15th-19th centuries.
Croats- a group of southern Slavs (self-name - Hrvati). The ancestors of the Croats are the tribes Kačići, Šubići, Svačići, Magorovichi, Croats, who moved along with other Slavic tribes to the Balkans in the 6th-7th centuries, and then settled in the north of the Dalmatian coast, in southern Istria, between the Sava and Drava rivers, in the north of Bosnia .
The Croats themselves, who form the backbone of the Croatian group, are most closely related to the Slavonians.
In 806, the Croats fell under the rule of Thraconia, in 864 - Byzantium, and in 1075 they formed their own kingdom.
At the end of the 11th - beginning of the 12th centuries. the bulk of the Croatian lands were included in the Kingdom of Hungary, resulting in significant assimilation with the Hungarians. In the middle of the 15th century. Venice (which had captured part of Dalmatia back in the 11th century) took possession of the Croatian Littoral region (with the exception of Dubrovnik). In 1527, Croatia gained independence, falling under the rule of the Habsburgs.
In 1592, part of the Croatian kingdom was conquered by the Turks. To protect against the Ottomans, the Military Border was created; its inhabitants, border residents, are Croats, Slavonians and Serbian refugees.
In 1699, Turkey ceded to Austria the captured part, among other lands, under the Treaty of Karlowitz. In 1809-1813. Croatia was annexed to the Illyrian provinces ceded to Napoleon I. From 1849 to 1868. it constituted, together with Slavonia, the coastal region and Fiume, an independent crown land, in 1868 it was again united with Hungary, and in 1881 the Slovak border region was annexed to the latter.
A small group of South Slavs - Illyrians, the later inhabitants of ancient Illyria, located west of Thessaly and Macedonia and east of Italy and Raetia up to the Istra River in the north. The most significant of the Illyrian tribes: Dalmatians, Liburnians, Istrians, Japodians, Pannonians, Desitiates, Pyrustians, Dicyonians, Dardanians, Ardiaei, Taulantii, Plereians, Iapyges, Messapians.
At the beginning of the 3rd century. BC e. The Illyrians were subjected to Celtic influence, resulting in the formation of a group of Illyro-Celtic tribes. As a result of the Illyrian Wars with Rome, the Illyrians underwent rapid Romanization, as a result of which their language disappeared.
Modern Albanians And Dalmatians.
In formation Albanians(self-name shchiptar, known in Italy as arbreshi, in Greece as arvanites) tribes of Illyrians and Thracians took part, and it was also influenced by Rome and Byzantium. The Albanian community was formed relatively late, in the 15th century, but was subject to the strong influence of Ottoman rule, which destroyed economic ties between the communities. At the end of the 18th century. Two main ethnic groups of Albanians were formed: Ghegs and Tosks.
Romanians(Dacorumans), who until the 12th century were a pastoral mountain people who do not have a stable place of residence are not pure Slavs. Genetically they are a mixture of Dacians, Illyrians, Romans and South Slavs.
Aromanians(Aromanians, Tsintsars, Kutsovlachs) are descendants of the ancient Romanized population of Moesia. With a high degree of probability, the ancestors of the Aromanians lived in the northeast of the Balkan Peninsula until the 9th – 10th centuries and are not an autochthonous population in the territory of their current residence, i.e. in Albania and Greece. Linguistic analysis shows almost complete identity of the vocabulary of Aromanians and Daco-Romanians, which indicates that these two peoples were in close contact for a long time. Byzantine sources also testify to the resettlement of the Aromanians.
Origin Megleno-Romanian not fully studied. There is no doubt that they belong to the eastern part of the Romanians, which was subject to a long-term influence of the Daco-Romanians, and are not an autochthonous population in the places of modern residence, i.e. in Greece.
Istro-Romanians represent the western part of the Romanians, currently living in small numbers in the eastern part of the Istrian peninsula.
Origin Gagauz, people living in almost all Slavic and neighboring countries (mainly in Bessarabia) is very controversial. According to one of the common versions, this Orthodox people speaks a specific Gagauz language Turkic group, represents Turkified Bulgarians who mixed with the Cumans of the southern Russian steppes.
Southwestern Slavs, currently united under the code name "Serbs"(self-name - srbi), as well as those isolated from them Montenegrins And Bosnians, represent the assimilated descendants of the Serbs themselves, the Duklans, the Tervunians, the Konavlans, the Zakhlumians, the Narechans, who occupied a significant part of the territory in the basin of the southern tributaries of the Sava and Danube, the Dinaric Mountains, the southern. part of the Adriatic coast. Modern southwestern Slavs are divided into regional ethnic groups: Sumadians, Uzicians, Moravians, Macvanes, Kosovars, Sremcs, Banachans.
Bosnians(Bosans, self-name - Muslims) live in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are actually Serbs who mixed with Croats and converted to Islam during the Ottoman occupation. Turks, Arabs, and Kurds who moved to Bosnia and Herzegovina mixed with the Bosnians.
Montenegrins(self-name - “Tsrnogortsy”) live in Montenegro and Albania, genetically they differ little from the Serbs. Unlike most Balkan countries, Montenegro actively resisted the Ottoman yoke, as a result of which it gained independence in 1796. As a result, the level of Turkish assimilation of Montenegrins is minimal.
The center of settlement of the southwestern Slavs is the historical region of Raska, uniting the basins of the Drina, Lim, Piva, Tara, Ibar, Western Morava rivers, where in the second half of the 8th century. An early state emerged. In the middle of the 9th century. the Serbian Principality was created; in the X-XI centuries. the center of political life moved either to the southwest of Raska, to Duklja, Travuniya, Zakhumie, then again to Raska. Then, at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries, Serbia became part of the Ottoman Empire.
Western Slavs, known by their modern name "Slovaks"(self-name - Slovakia), on the territory of modern Slovakia began to prevail from the 6th century. AD Moving from the southeast, the Slovaks partially absorbed the former Celtic, Germanic, and then Avar populations. The southern areas of settlement of the Slovaks in the 7th century were probably included within the borders of the state of Samo. In the 9th century. Along the course of the Vah and Nitra, the first tribal principality of the early Slovaks arose - Nitra, or the Principality of Pribina, which around 833 joined the Moravian Principality - the core of the future Great Moravian state. At the end of the 9th century. The Great Moravian Principality collapsed under the onslaught of the Hungarians, after which its eastern regions by the 12th century. became part of Hungary and later Austria-Hungary.
The term “Slovaks” appeared in the mid-15th century; Previously, the inhabitants of this territory were called “Sloveni”, “Slovenka”.
The second group of Western Slavs - Poles, formed as a result of the unification of the Western Slavic tribes Polans, Slenzans, Vistulas, Mazovshans, Pomorians. Until the end of the 19th century. there was no single Polish nation: the Poles were divided into several large ethnic groups, differing in dialects and some ethnographic features: in the west - the Velikopolans (which included the Kuyawis), Łenczycans and Sieradzians; in the south - the Malopolans, a group of which included the Gurals (population of mountainous regions), Krakowians and Sandomierzians; in Silesia - Slęzanie (Slęzak, Silesians, among whom were Poles, Silesian Gurals, etc.); in the northeast - the Mazurs (these included the Kurpies) and the Warmians; on the coast of the Baltic Sea - the Pomeranians, and in Pomerania the Kashubians were especially prominent, preserving the specificity of their language and culture.
The third group of Western Slavs - Czechs(self-name - Czechs). The Slavs as part of the tribes (Czechs, Croats, Luchans, Zličans, Decans, Pshovans, Litomerz, Hebans, Glomacs) became the predominant population in the territory of the modern Czech Republic in the 6th-7th centuries, assimilating the remnants of the Celtic and Germanic populations.
In the 9th century. The Czech Republic was part of the Great Moravian Empire. At the end of the 9th - beginning of the 10th centuries. The Czech (Prague) Principality was formed in the 10th century. which included Moravia in its lands. From the second half of the 12th century. The Czech Republic became part of the Holy Roman Empire; Then German colonization took place in the Czech lands, and in 1526 Habsburg power was established.
At the end of the 18th – beginning of the 19th centuries. a revival of Czech identity began, culminating with the collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918, with the formation of the national state of Czechoslovakia, which in 1993 split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
The modern Czech Republic includes the population of the Czech Republic proper and the historical region of Moravia, where regional groups of Horaks, Moravian Slovaks, Moravian Vlachs and Hanaks are preserved.
Leto-Slavs are considered the youngest branch of northern European Aryans. They live east of the middle Vistula and have significant anthropological differences from the Lithuanians living in the same area. According to a number of researchers, the Leto-Slavs, having mixed with the Finns, reached the middle Main and Inn, and only later were partially displaced and partially assimilated by Germanic tribes.
Intermediate people between the southwestern and western Slavs - Slovenes, currently occupying the extreme north-west of the Balkan Peninsula, from the headwaters of the Sava and Drava rivers to the eastern Alps and the Adriatic coast up to the Friuli Valley, as well as in the Middle Danube and Lower Pannonia. This territory was occupied by them during the mass migration of Slavic tribes to the Balkans in the 6th-7th centuries, forming two Slovenian regions - the Alpine (Carentanians) and the Danube (Pannonian Slavs).
From the middle of the 9th century. Most of the Slovenian lands came under the rule of southern Germany, as a result of which Catholicism began to spread there.
In 1918, the kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was created under the common name of Yugoslavia.
M. 1956: New Acropolis, 2010. M. Book one. History of the ancient Slavs. Part IV. East Slavs.
Chapter XVII. Eastern Slavs and the ethnic composition of the ancient population of Eastern Europe.
Territory of the Eastern Slavs. First neighbors: Thracians and Iranians.
About how differentiation occurred in the Slavic ancestral home, dividing the Slavs, previously linguistically almost united, into three large groups - western, southern and eastern. In the ancient Slavic ancestral home of the Western Slavs, only the Poles firmly settled, then the remnants of the southern Croats and Serbs, and in the east - part of the Eastern Slavs, who differed linguistically from other Slavs in a number of phonetic, grammatical and lexical features.
The most characteristic among them is the transition of the Proto-Slavic tj and dj in the sound “ch” and “zh”, emergence of full-voice groups wow, olo, ere, ele from Proto-Slavic or, ol, er, el. For example, a group such as tort, which in South Slavic languages is represented by trat, in Czech trat, in Polish trot, in Russian corresponds to the group torot; the tert group also corresponds to teret, and the change in the old vowels b and b (ers) in —her about . We can supplement these three facts with many others, less important and less obvious1.
The ancestral home of the Eastern Slavs there was an eastern part Proto-Slavic cradle: the entire Pripyat basin (Polesie) , then the territory on the lower river Berezina, on the Desna and Teterev, Kiev region, And all of present-day Volyn, where there were the most favorable conditions for existence. From the beginning of our era, the homeland of the Eastern Slavs was quite extensive, since in the 6th and 7th centuries we already see a large number of Slavs in the north, on Lake Ilmen, and in the east, on the Don, near the Sea of Azov, “’Άμετρα εθνη”, - Procopius says about them (IV.4). “Natio populosa per immensa spatia consedit,” Jordanes simultaneously notes (Get., V.34), when he writes about the conquests of Germanarich until 375. There can be no question that the ancestral home of the Russian Slavs was ever in the Carpathians. This was once tried to be proven by I. Nadezhdin, and later with even greater diligence by Professor Ivan Filevich, but to no avail2.
Initially there were no Slavs in the Carpathians at all, but in the Slavic ancestral homeland, in the closest proximity to the Carpathian Mountains, were the ancestors of the South Slavic Croats, Serbs and Bulgarians . East Slavs came to the Carpathians later, after leaving Bulgarians , namely, in the 10th century . I also exclude the possibility of the Eastern Slavs coming to their homeland, the Dnieper, only in the 3rd century AD, after the departure of the Goths, as A. Shakhmatov tried to prove, or in the 5th–6th centuries, as I.L. believed based on archaeological data . Peach3. Such a movement, of which there is not the slightest mention in history, is completely excluded for that era.
Couldn't be more convenient places for a cradleEastern Slavs than on the Middle Dnieper . This is probably the most convenient place on the entire Russian Plain . There are no continental mountains here, but there are endless forests and a dense network of navigable rivers. This water network connects like remote areas the vast East European Plain, and the seas surrounding it: the Baltic, Black and Caspian. Even now, after the destruction of many forests and land reclamation work, there is enough water everywhere, but a thousand years ago there was much more. Everywhere during the spring flood itself, and at other times dragged 4 boats passed from one river to another , from one large water basin to another, and in this way from one sea to another. Such There were many waterways in all directions and connected by portages in ancient Rus'. But the most famous of them was the Dnieper route, connecting the Black Sea and Constantinople with the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia, that is three ancient cultural worlds: the East Slavic world, the Greek and the Scandinavian-Germanic.
Having entered the mouth of the Dnieper, boats with goods or people were sent along this path up to the rapids between Aleksandrovsk (Zaporozhye) and Ekaterinoslav (Dnepropetrovsk). Then the boats swam across the rapids or were dragged around the shore, after which a clear path opened up before them all the way to Smolensk. Before reaching Smolensk, they turned along the small tributaries of the Usvyat and Kasple to the Dvina and then were dragged along the Lovat, along which they freely went to Lake Ilmen and further along the Volkhov River, past Veliky Novgorod, to Ladoga, and then along the Neva to the Gulf of Finland.
Pripyat River basin and Pinsk Polesie
Along with this direct route, boats could sometimes be directed in other ways; yes, in the west they could turn to the Pripyat and along its tributaries go to the Neman or to the Western Dvina, and along it to the Gulf of Riga or in the east go to the Desna and Seim and further to the Don 5.
From the Desna it was possible along the rivers Bolva, Snezhet, Zhizdra, Ugra,Oke to reach the Volga , which was the largest cultural artery; Finally, other routes followed the latter, connecting the Dnieper near Smolensk with the north (volok) and Volga tributaries Vazuza, Osmaya, Ugra and Oka 6.
Obvious meaning East Slavic homeland on the middle Dnieper, located on the great cultural, trade and colonization routes, at the most important junction of the intersecting trade roads. If in such a place lived a strong people who could preserve and use the advantages provided to them by the land, then great prospects opened up for the Slavic people in the future both from a cultural point of view and especially from a colonization and political point of view. The eastern branch of the Slavs, who lived for a long time on the middle Dnieper , was so strong that she could begin further expansion from ancient times without weakening the native land , which she did.
However, the successful development of the Eastern Slavs was determined not only exclusively favorable location of the area, on which they developed, but also because in their neighborhood over a very large area there were no people who would offer any noticeable resistance to their spread or he could conquer them firmly and for a long time. Thus, relative passivity and the weakness of neighbors was the second condition , which contributed to the development of the Eastern Slavs.
Only in the west there were strong and unyielding neighbors. These were Poles, who not only resisted, but also successfully, albeit later, in the 16th century, the Lithuanian and Russian lands were polonized. Russian border in the West almost hasn't changed and is currently almost in the same place where it was 1000 years ago, near the Western Bug and San 7.
In other places the neighbors of the Eastern Slavs retreated before their onslaught, Therefore, we need to get to know them and, in particular, establish their original places of settlement. We are talking about the Thracians and Iranians.
Thracian Slavs north of the Danube, in the basin of the Carpathian Mountains
Thracians , just like the Iranians, they supported close relations with the Proto-Slavs , as evidenced by belonging languages to the Satem group of languages, different from the Centum group of languages. Along with this, other data indicate that the ancestral home of the Thracians was originally located significantly to the north of their historical habitats and fit north of the Danube, in the basin of the Carpathian Mountains , and further in the mountains themselves, where the toponymy of the main mountain ranges is clearly not Slavic (Carpathians, Beskydy, Tatra, Matra, Fatra, Magura) and where Even in Roman times, there lived tribes known under the collective name of Dacians . Probably these are the ones the Thracian Dacians were the original neighbors of the Slavs, as evidenced by the presence in their languages of a certain amount of conspicuous phonetic and lexical similarities 8. As an example, I will only point out the suffix common to both language areas - hundred in the names of rivers.
Everything indicates that The southern neighbors of the Slavic ancestral home were originally the Thracians, who lived in the Carpathians and on their northern slopes. Only later, between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC. e. some Gallic tribes appeared from the west, and with them Scytho-Gothic tribes who were the first to announce the movement of the Germanic wave, if only they (the Scythian-Gothic tribes) were indeed Germanic tribes. The last to penetrate the Carpathians were individual Slavic tribes, whose presence here is apparently indicated by Ptolemy’s map (Sulany, Care, Pengits), as well as the name of the Carpathians “Οόενεδικά όρη”.
The Thracians were neighbors of the Slavs to the east between the Carpathians and the Dnieper
In addition to the Carpathians, the Thracians were neighbors of the Slavs in areas extending further east between the Carpathians and the Dnieper. I believe that the tribes related to the Scythians - Κιμμέριοι) , who lived in this territory before the arrival of the Scythians and were forced out by them partly to the Crimea (Taurs?), and partly to the Carpathian Mountains, where Herodotus at one time knew the Thracian tribe of Agathyrsians (in present-day Transylvania), are Thracians, since simultaneously with the invasion of the Scythians at the end of the 8th and beginning of the 7th century BC. in Asia Minor there appears a people called in Assyrian sources (himirra), and in Greek also by another name - "TriROS" — « Τρήρες ", therefore, the name of a famous Thracian tribe9. It is very likely that Himirra in Asia Minor represented part of the pushed back Scythians to Asia Minor.
Iranians. Other neighbors of the Eastern Slavs in the south of the ancient Russian ancestral home there were Iranians. The fact that it was the Iranian element that has long maintained ties with the Proto-Slavs is evidenced by the mentioned linguistic coincidences in the Satem language group 10. However historical evidence confirming this, until the 8th century BC. not available. Based on historical sources, we can attribute to this and the period that followed it the appearance of Iranians in the southern Russian steppes, who dominated here until the arrival of the Huns. These were the Scythians, and after them the Sarmatians.
The first Iranian wave to pour into these lands in the 8th–7th centuries BC. uh ., and probably even earlier, there were Scythians ; detailed description of them settlements and Scythians in the 5th century BC. e. left us in his fourth book (lived 484–425 BC) , which visited north shore (Black Sea). According to the idea, it occupied a space limited to , in the east – , beyond which the Sarmatians lived even further to the east, and in the north - a line stretching from the origins Dniester (Danastris; Tiras river) and Bug through the Dnieper rapids to Tanais (Don) (Herod., IV. 100, 101).
Pechenegs- a new wave of Turkic-Tatar tribes20 began its movement from the territory between Volga and Yaik , where they previously lived, already at the beginning of the 9th century, but the first raids on Slavic Rus' were made only in the 10th century, which is confirmed by the Kyiv Chronicle, where under the year 915 we read: “ The first Pechenesi came to the Russian land, and made peace with Igor, and came to the Danube.” The Pechenegs completely undermined the influence and power of the Khazar state, and from the second half of the 10th century we already read about their constant wars with the Russian princes. The ties between both peoples were so close that the Pechenegs, according to Arabic reports, learned to speak Slavic 21. The fight with the Pechenegs ended only after they were pushed out of the Russian steppes by new enemies - tribes related to the Pechenegs, the Torks, or Uzes, and then the Cumans, or Cumans . First torques Pliny and Pomponius Mela are mentioned, then in the 6th century John of Ephesus, not far from Persia22, but in In 985, the Kiev prince Vladimir was already undertaking a campaign against the Bulgarians in alliance with the Torci. Thus, Torques were already on the Volga and came to Europe at the beginning of the 11th century, pressed by the Polovtsians and, in turn, displacing the Pechenegs. The Pechenegs, who suffered a serious defeat near Kiev in 1036, came to the Danube, and soon, in the middle of the 11th century, and to Bulgaria, where a huge mass followed them in 1064 torques . Other part torques under the name of Black Klobuks, she remained with the Polovtsians in the Russian steppes .
The later raids of the Cumans and Tatars go far beyond the scope of our presentation. But even from what has been said, it is clear with what difficulty the Slavs moved south. P the movement of the Slavs and their advanced colonies were constantly attacked by more and more waves of Turkic-Tatar tribes, of which the last ones are Tatars - were a dam that stopped the advance of the Slavs for a long period. True, even in these conditions and even even before the 10th century the Slavs were moving forward, however, as a result of disastrous Pecheneg and Polovtsian invasion of the Slavs in the 11th and 12th centuries fully were driven out of the area between the Dnieper and the Danube and pushed beyond the Suda River, Ros and into the Carpathian Mountains.
Finns.
On Finnish tribes lived north and east of the Slavs. We don’t know where their ancestral home was, but the latest theories establishing a close connection between and the Proto-Finns, give reasons to look for it close to the European homeland of the Indo-Europeans, that is, on the eastern outskirts of Europe, in the Urals and beyond the Urals. It has been established that the Finns have lived since ancient times on the Kama, Oka and Volga, where approximately at the beginning of our erapart of the Finnish tribes separated and went to the Baltic Sea, occupying the shores Gulf of Bothnia and Gulf of Riga (later Yam, Estonia and Liv) . How far have we come? Volga Finns to Central Rus' and where exactly they first met the Slavs is unknown. This is a question that still cannot be answered accurately, since we do not have data preliminary work, both archaeological (study of Finnish graves) and philological - collection and study of ancient Finnish toponymy of central Russia. Nevertheless, it can be said that the Yaroslavl, Kostroma, Moscow, Vladimir, Ryazan and Tambov provinces were originally inhabited by Finnish tribes and that the Finns previously lived even in the Voronezh province, but we do not yet know how far they moved to the west. IN Oryol province , according to A.A. Spitsyna, there are no traces of Finnish culture anymore 23. In the Kaluga, Moscow, Tver and Tula provinces, the Finns clashed with the Lithuanians. True, Shakhmatov assumed that in the time of Herodotus, the Finns occupied the Pripyat River basin, that they even penetrated from there and in the upper reaches of the Vistula (neuras) , however, the linguistic evidence he provided for this controversial as well as previous linguistic and archaeological theories. The latter have never been sufficiently substantiated to refute the thesis about the Slavic ancestral home between the Vistula and the Dnieper. If we accepted Shakhmatov’s point of view, then in Eastern Europe there would be no place left at all for the cradle of the great Slavic people, since where Shakhmatov places it, between the lower Neman and Dvina , it could not be both for linguistic reasons (toponymy is not Slavic) and according to archaeological data24.
Therefore I cannot help but insist that there were no Finns in Volyn and Polesie , and if the point of view of some philologists is correct, which is that there is no connection at all between the ancient Slavic and ancient Finnish languages, then the Finns during the period of proto-Slavic unity were separated from the Slavs in the north by a strip of Lithuanian tribes (from the Baltic through Smolensk to Kaluga) , and in the east either a strip of uninhabited lands, which were already mentioned by Herodotus, or most likely a wedge of Iranian, possibly Turkic-Tatar, tribes. Finnish connections with the Slavs were established only after already at the beginning of our era, the Eastern Slavs advanced in the north beyond the upper reaches of the Dnieper, and in the east beyond the Desna and Don, when the Finns began to move north, to the Baltic Sea. But even in this case, the Finns did not influence the entire Russian land, since the Russian language as a whole, with the exception of the northern and eastern outskirts of Russia, is not influenced by the Finnish language. However, these are all linguistic problems; We must leave judgment about them and their resolution to specialists - philologists.
We can speak more definitely about the appearance of the Finns in history only from the 1st century AD. e. Although we have a number of references and ethnic names indicating the presence of Finnish tribes in the Don and Volga regions five or six centuries before this time, it is impossible to say with certainty about some of them whether they are Finnish. Budins – the numerous tribe that lived between the Desna and Don are most likely Slavs. Finns, apparently, are also melanchlenes, androphages and Herodotus (Herod., IV.22, 23). Name comes first Fenni Tacitus (Germ., 46), followed by Ptolemy (III.5, 8, φίννοι). Otherwise, Ptolemy's map contains the same data as Herodotus. Among the peoples he listed, there are undoubtedly Finnish ones. This is also evidenced by the name Volga – “Ra” (’Ry) (cf. Mordovian rhau - water)25 - but we cannot say which of them were Finnish.
In the 4th century AD e. Jordan in the news about the peoples whom he conquered before his death, along with Lithuanians (Aestians) gives a number of names, mostly distorted and inexplicable, among which, however, there are several obvious names of later Finnish tribes.26 Thus, under the name Vasinabroncas should be understood all, and probably Permian; under names Merens, Mordens - Merya and Mordovians. This to some extent also includes the name Gothic name - Thiudos , since from it a Slavic (Russian) collective name for Finns arose - Chud 21.
Important messages about the neighborhood of Finns and Slavs , dating back to the 9th–10th centuries, are available only in the Kyiv Chronicle. The Slavs by that time had advanced to Lake Ilmen, Neva, Ladoga, Vladimir, Suzdal, Ryazan and the lower Don and everywhere they came into contact with Finnish tribes. The chronicler knows three groups of Finnish tribes: 1) near the Baltic Sea, 2) near the Volga and then 3) in the north, “beyond the portages,” in the Oka forests (Zavolochskaya Chud). Separately, the chronicle names tribes near the Baltic Sea: actually Chud and Liv in the south of the Gulf of Finland (the neighboring water is not mentioned in the Kyiv Chronicle), then eat or yam in present-day Finland; further “beyond the portages” near Belozero was the entire somewhere near the Dvina in Biarmia of Scandinavian sources - Perm, and even further to the northeast - Yugra, Ugra, Pechora and Samoyad.
In the 13th century to the north of the Emi, Karelians are mentioned. They belonged to the eastern Volga group cheremisy, previously lived further west than now, mainly in the Kostroma province; Mordovians - in the Oka River basin (now further east); in the north their neighbors were Murom tribes on the Klyazma River, Merya on the Rostov and Kleshchinskoye lakes between the Volga and Klyazma and to the south of the Mordovians the Meshchera, which later ceased to exist28.
We can establish that wherever the Slavs in their advance came into contact with these tribes, the Finns always retreated and were generally very passive. Although the struggle was carried out, the Finnish element behaved passively and constantly ceded his land to the Slavs. Already Tacitus mentions the lack of weapons among the Finns, and the designation of Jordan "Finni Mitissimi" (Get., III.23) is also not unreasonable. Another reason for the weakness of the Finnish tribes was, obviously, sparsely populated , the complete absence of any strong concentration of the population around certain centers, and this was precisely the superiority of the Slavs, who had strong starting positions in the rear of their advance, organized Varangian-Russians.
Only one Finnish tribe achieved major successes, subjugating a large number of Slavs, and then probably because it was previously subjected to strong influence Turkic-Tatar culture. These were Magyars - people related to the Ostyaks and Voguls from the Ob, who went south approximately in the 5th–6th centuries. At the beginning of the 9th century they appeared near the Don in the neighborhood of the Khazars, in an area called Swan . From there about 860 of the year Magyars moved to southern Moldova (to an area called Athelkuza) and then, after several invasions to the Balkans and Pannonia, around 896, settled for a long time in the Hungarian lowland , Where Magyars penetrated through the eastern or northern Carpathian passes. Further history Magyar is already associated exclusively with the Western and Southern Slavs.
Lithuanians.
Lithuanians have lived since ancient times by the Baltic Sea. This is indicated by linguistic data on the relationship Lithuanian language to the languages of other Indo-European peoples , then topographical nomenclature, as well as all historical data. Long-term close relations Lithuanians with Slavs can be considered a scientifically established fact, and existence of Balto-Slavic unity during the period when the remaining Indo-European peoples had already divided into separate branches, can also be considered indisputable, despite the doubts expressed by A. Meillet29. But even if there was no absolute unity, it was only with the Slavs that they had such close relationships that led to the formation two dialect areas unified Balto-Slavic region , and the peoples of both regions understood each other well. It is difficult to say when the final division took place here. True, based on the fact that the word passed into the Slavic language from the Iranian language churn (chicken), which is absent in the Lithuanian language, or on the basis that the Finnish name for honey (Finnish hunaja) passed into the Lithuanian language (cf. Lithuanian vârias vargien, Latvian varč - honey), while the Slavic language has its own word “honey”, it was concluded that during the arrival of the Scythians in southern Rus' and even earlier, at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e., in the Bronze Age, both peoples - Slavs and Lithuanians already lived separately 30. However, such evidence for determining the date of the division of these peoples is completely unconvincing at the present time, except for the fact that at the beginning of our era this division had already occurred here. We can only say that both the Slavic tribes and the Lithuanians represented independent associations at that time.
It is also impossible to give an exact answer to the question of where the border between the two peoples originally lay. The present territory of Lithuania and Latvia is separated from the Germans, Russians and Finns by a line stretching from the sea, starting from the mouth of Memel through Goldap, Suwalki, Grodno, Druskeniki on the Neman, Vilnius, Dvinsk (Daugavpils), Lucin (Ludza) to Lake Pskov and further through Valk (Vulka) back to the sea to the Gulf of Riga31. This territory is insignificant compared to the territory occupied by the Germans or Slavs neighboring Lithuania and Latvia. The population is also small: according to statistical data for In 1905, there were slightly more than 3 million Lithuanians and Latvians in Russia. But initially the Lithuanians were not so few in number. The territory they occupied once extended in the west all the way to the Vistula (Lithuanian Prussians) , and in the north before the arrival of the Finns - all the way to the Gulf of Finland; the border separating them from the Proto-Slavs and Proto-Finns also ran much further from the sea than it does now.
In 1897, Professor Kochubinsky, based on an analysis of the topographic nomenclature of present-day Belarus, tried to determine territory of prehistoric Lithuania 32. Many shortcomings were noted in his work, and indeed, Kochubinsky's knowledge of the Old Lithuanian language was insufficient to solve such a difficult problem. It should also be noted that the newest linguists were looking for Celtic nomenclature in the Neman and Dvina basin and that A.A. Shakhmatov even considered such names as Neman, Viliya, which were previously considered Lithuanian, as Celtic33.
However, despite this, it can be said with confidence that the territory of present-day Belarus was originally largely inhabited by Lithuanians, that the ancient Lithuanians penetrated to the Lomzha Polesie, to the northern part of the Pripyat River basin and to part of the Berezina River basin, and that on the Dvina they went so far east34 that somewhere in the territory of the former Moscow province they encountered the Volga Finns, which is also confirmed by numerous examples similarities in the Lithuanian language and the language of the Volga Finns. Even the famous Lyadinsky burial ground near Tambov was declared by archaeologists a monument of Lithuanian culture, which, however, is very doubtful. But, on the other hand, there is no doubt that in the 12th century on the Protva River people lived in the Moscow province Lithuanian origin- look, - apparently representing the remnants of the original Lithuanian inhabitants of this area, and also that back in the 13th century, Lithuanian settlements were located at the sources of the Dvina, Volga, on Vazuza and in parts of the Tver and Moscow provinces35. The appearance of loach here is explained by the fact that the wide wedge of Slavic colonization, moving forward with great effort, cut through the area occupied by the Lithuanians and separated them from the Volga Finns.
In history, Lithuanians appear for the first time under the name “Ostiev” (Ώστιαΐοι) in Pytheas36, if, of course, we assume that the Aestii of Tacitus’ “Germany” are Lithuanians and that later their name was transferred to the Finns who came to the Gulf of Finland. This explanation, although accepted, is not at all necessary37.
Ptolemy in his map of Sarmatia (III.5, 9, 10) gives a large number of names of tribes along the Baltic Sea coast, and some of them are undoubtedly Lithuanian. However, we cannot say which of these names are indisputably Lithuanian, with the exception of two - Galinday — Γαλίνδαι and Soudinoi - Σουδινοί. Galinday identical with Russian golyad and with the name of the Galindia region, which is known to later historical sourcesin East Prussia , in area Mazurov . Soudinoi - Σουδινοί identical to the name of the region Sudavia , located next to Galindia towards Suwalki. Finally, and Borovsky — Βοροΰσκοι , erroneously placed by Ptolemy far into Sarmatia, are Lithuanian tribe Boruski (Prussia - Borussia) . But, however, the name Oueltai - ’Ουέλται is not identical, as Müllenhoff believed, to the name Lithuania, but is Slavic name veleta 38.
After Ptolemy, a long period of time passed when there was no news of Lithuania. Only Russian chronicles, primarily the ancient Kiev one, give us a description of Lithuania as it was known Russians in the 10th and 11th centuries . During that period the Prussians lived off the coast of the Varangian Sea, occupying an area stretching east from the lower Vistula and Drvenets. Further to the east are the Lithuanians themselves, to the north of them and to the west of Polotsk zimegola , then on the right bank of the Dvina River letgoal ; south of the Gulf of Riga, by the sea, lived Korsi tribe , finally, somewhere else, in a place not exactly identified, a tribe called narova, noroma (neroma) 39. I have already mentioned above about the Golyad tribe, localized on the Protva River, separated from the rest of the Lithuanians.
In a later period, there was a further movement of tribes and a change in their names. The Prussians began to disappear from the 13th century, especially after they were finally enslaved in 1283. Even in the 16th century, the Prussian language eked out a miserable existence, and already in 1684, according to Hartknoch, there was not a single village where Prussian was understood. Lithuania was divided into two parts: Upper Lithuania (in the region of Neman and Viliya), called Aukshtot, and Nizhnyaya (west of Nevyazha) Samogitia, in Polish – zhmud. Galindia and Sudavia in East Prussia have already been mentioned above.
The last significant tribe in the 13th century wereYatvingians (in Polish Jadzwing). This tribe is known, however, in the Kyiv Chronicle from Vladimir’s campaign against them in 983 , however, where this tribe lived, only the later chronicles of the 13th century say, placing it for the Narev and Bobru rivers , to lake areas Prussia , where they had arrived shortly before from their original settlements further to the east40. Thus, Yatvingians lived in Polesie, and current Russian and Polish Poleshans (Pollexiani in the Polish Chronicle) – descendants of the Yatvingians. Drogichin on the Bug, however, was not their district, as was previously believed. There is no historical evidence in favor of this, and old archaeological finds in the vicinity of Drogichin, as far as I know, are Slavic in nature.
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1. See A. Meillet, Le monde Slave, 1917, III–IV, 403.
2.I. Filevich, History of Ancient Rus', I, p. 33, Warsaw, 1896; N. Nadezhdin, Experience in Historical Geography, 1837.
3. A. Shakhmatov, Bulletin de l’Acad. imp. des sc. de St. Petersburg, 1911, 723; I. L. Pic, Staroźitnosti, II, 219, 275.
4. A portage was a low and narrow isthmus between two rivers, through which it was easy to drag a boat with goods from one river to another. In a figurative sense, a portage also called the area where there were such portages, in particular the area at the sources of the Dnieper, Dvina and Volga. Hence, in ancient Rus', the lands beyond this region were called Zavolochye.
5. The Don was connected to the Volga by a well-known portage between Tsaritsyn and Kalach.
6. See N.P. for more details on this. Barsova, Essays on Russian Historical Geography, Warsaw, 2nd ed., 1885.
7. See “Slov. star.”, III, 231.
8. On the basis of this relationship and ancient neighborhood, famous theories about the Slavic origin of the Dacians, which, of course, are erroneous if we consider the Dacians to be Slavs themselves.
9. See “Slov. star.”, I, 217.
10. You should pay attention at least to the words god, vatra, plow, chicken, poleaxe, ax etc.
11. J. Peisker, based on a number of presumptive Turkic-Tatar words adopted by the Slavs even before our era, speaks of the cruel slavery from which the Slavs have long suffered while under the Turkic-Tatar yoke. The culprits of this slavery, in his opinion, were starting from the 8th century BC. e. Scythians.
12. See “Slov. star.”, I, 512. Among Russian historians we can name, for example, D. Ilovaisky, V. Florinsky, D. Samokvasov.
14. lord., Get., 119, 120.
15. Theories about the supposed Slavic status of the Huns in historiography, in fact, have already been forgotten. This theory was put forward in 1829 by Yu. Venelin in his essay “Ancient and Present Bulgarians” (Moscow), and after him a number of Russian and Bulgarian historians, including late XIX century and V. Florinsky, I. Zabelin and Dm. Ilovaisky. The credit for refuting this theory (at the same time as the Huns, the Bulgarians and Roxolans themselves were also considered Slavs) belongs to M. Drinov, V. Miller and especially V. Vasilievsky (see his work “On the imaginary Slavism of the Huns, Bulgarians and Roxolans”, ZhMNP, 1882–1883 ).
16. Theoph. (ed. Boor), 356, 358; Nicephoros (ed. Boor), 33. In addition to these oldest sources on the history of Bulgaria, among modern works, see first of all Zlatarsky, History of the Bulgarian State, I, Sofia, 1918, 21 151.
17. B In 922 these Bulgarians converted to Islam and maintained close cultural and especially economic relations with the Eastern Slavs. State of the Volga Bulgarians was a granary for Slavic Rus' in times of crop failure and famine. As a result of these connections, there was also a significant mixing of the Bulgarians with the Slavic element, therefore Ibn Fadlan and some others erroneously declared Volga BulgariansSlavs . Arab writers, unlike the Volga Bulgarians designate Western Bulgarians by the name Burdzan .
18. See “Slov. star.”, II, 201–202.
19. Meanwhile, during the 9th century, they also passed through Southern Rus' Ugrians - tribes of Finnish origin who left the Don around 825 and around 860 they found themselves on the lower Danube, finally occupying Hungary at the end of the 9th century (896). See further, on p. 185. Between 851–868, on the way from Kherson to the land of the Khazars, the Slavic apostle Constantine met them.
20. “The Tale of Bygone Years”, ed. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1950, vol. I, p. 31.
21. Ibrahim ibn Yaqub, op. op., 58.
23. Notes of the Russian Archaeological Society, vol. XI, New episode, St. Petersburg, 1899, p. 188. According to archaeological data, we can currently trace traces of Finnish culture all the way to Tambov, Ryazan, Moscow and the sources of the Volga.
24. See above, p. 30–32, and what I wrote about this in the article “New theories about the ancestral home of the Slavs” (SSN, 1915, XXI, 1). However, in his latest works, Shakhmatov himself admitted the inadequacy of his evidence (Revue des Etudes slaves, I, 1921, 190).
25. See R. Meckelein. Finn. ugr. Elemente im Russischen. – Berlin, 1914. – 1.12.16.
26. In this place Jordanes writes (Get., 116, 117): "Habebat si quidem quos domuerat Golthescytha, Thiudos, Inaunxis, Vasinabroncas, Merens, Mordens, Imniscaris, Rogas, Tadzans, Athaul, Navego, Bubegenas, Goldas." Among the literature that has paid attention to the interpretation of this passage in Jordan, I will point out the main works: Miilenhoff, Deutsche Altertum skunde, II, 74; Th. Grienberger (Zeitschrift f. d. Alt., 1895, 154) and I. Mik kola (Finn. ugr. Forschungen, XV, 56 et seq.).
27. See Miklosich, Etymologisches Worterbuch, 357. This expression in the mouth of the Slavs originally meant stranger ; Czech cuzi , Russian stranger , Church Slavonic alien are the same word. Russians still call some Finnish Chud tribes .
28. Meshchera is usually identified with the Burtases eastern sources. In the topographic nomenclature of the Oka basin, for example in the vicinity of Ryazan, many traces of their names are still preserved.
29. Meillet, Les dialects indoeuropeens, Paris, 1908, 48 si.
30. Hehn, Kulturpflanzen und Haustiere (VI vyd., 324); Krek, Einleitung in die slavische Literaturgeschichte, Graz, 1887, 216.
31. F. Tetzner (Globus, 1897, LXXI, 381); J. Rozwadowski. Materiały i prace korn. jęz. – 1901.1; A. Bielenstein. Atlas der ethnol. Geographie des heute und prach. Lettenlandes. – Petersburg, 1892; L. Niederle. Slovansky svgt. – Prague, 1909. – 15.
32. A. Kochubinsky, Territories of prehistoric Lithuania, ZhMNP, 1897, I, 60.
33. See above, p. 30. A. Pogodin derives the name “Neman” from the Finnish language.
34. See E.F. Karsky. Belarusians. I. – Warsaw, 1903. – 45, 63.
35.Golyad mentioned in the oldest Russian chronicles (Lavrentievskaya, Ipatievskaya) under 1058 and 1146. See also A.I. Sobolevsky, Izv. imp. acad., 1911, 1051. Part of the lobster, of course, later under pressure from the Slavs moved west to Prussia (Galindia) .
36. Steph. byz. s. v. Ώστιωνες.
37. During that period, the Germans began to cross the name aestiev with Germanic ost (Alfred); Ostland – people in the east, region in the east. 38. See p. 151.
39. PVL, USSR Academy of Sciences, I, 13, 210.
40. N.P. Barsov. Essays on Russian historical geography. – Warsaw, 1885.–40, 234.
Western Slavs — these are Croats, Czechs, Serbs, Obodrits, Lyutichs, Moravians, Slovenians, Slovaks, Slenzanes, Pomeranians, Polyanas, Kujaws, Sieradzians, Lencians, Dulebs, Vistulas, Mazowsans, Prussians, Jatvingians, Wolanians. The Slavs are a kind of community of different peoples.
The Slavs never represented a single whole in the full sense of the word. They, like every ethnic group, have always had somatological, cultural, linguistic and territorial differences. These initial differences were insignificant for a long time, then they increased due to resettlement and interbreeding with other ethnic groups. After the initial impulses of resettlement, the Slavic unified community broke up into a number of new formations that finally took shape over the following centuries. 
The settlement of the Slavs took place in three main directions: - to the south, to the Balkan Peninsula; - to the west, to the Middle Danube and the region between the Oder and Elbe; - to the east and north along the East European Plain. The path to the north was blocked by the sea, as well as lakes and swamps. As a result of the settlement, tribes of the Eastern, Western and Southern Slavs were formed, on the basis of which numerous Slavic peoples later arose. Their fate was different. 
Some of the Slavs moved to the northeast, to the East European Plain, into the remote forest wilds, where there was no cultural heritage - this is East Slavs.
They
They left in two streams: one part of the Slavs went to Lake Ilmen, the other to the middle and lower reaches of the Dnieper. Others remained in Europe. Later they will get a name southern Slavs
. The South Slavs, the ancestors of the Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Macedonians, and Montenegrins, went south to the Adriatic Sea and the Balkan Peninsula and fell into the sphere of influence of the Mediterranean civilization. And the third part of the Slavs - Western Slavs
- these are the Czechs, Poles, Slovaks who moved further west to the Odra and Labe and even further than this river - to the Saale, and in a southwestern direction - to the middle Danube up to present-day Bavaria.
The process of identifying the West Slavic branch began before our era and ended in general terms in the first millennium of our era. The place of settlement of the Western Slavs was the eastern half of the vast region, which from the 1st century BC. e. was called Germany and the border, which in the west was the Rhine, in the south - first the Main River and the Sudeten Mountains, and later the Danube, in the east it was established along the Vistula. Western Slavs, who have been subjected to other cultural influences than the Eastern Slavs, over time they found themselves in new, even more distinctive conditions and in a new environment. The distinction between the Eastern and Western Slavs began in the 10th century, when two competing states emerged - Kievan Rus and Poland. The alienation was also deepened by the fact that in the countries there was Christianity of different rites (Catholicism and Orthodoxy). The connection with the eastern branch of the Slavs weakened also because between it and the western branch the endless and impassable Rokyten swamps stretched on one side, and the Lithuanian Prussians and Yotvingians wedged in on the other side. Thus, the western branch of the Slavs, its language, culture and foreign policy destinies began to further develop independently and independently of the southern and eastern Slavs.
A large group of West Slavic tribes at the end of the 1st and beginning of the 2nd millennium AD. e. inhabited the territory from the Laba River and its tributary the Sala River in the west to the Odra River in the east, from the Ore Mountains in the south and to the Baltic Sea in the north. To the west of all, starting from the Kiel Bay, the Obodrits settled, to the south and east along the Baltic coast lived the Lyutichs, on the island of Rügen, close to the territory of the Lyutichs, lived the Ruyans. Pomeranians related to them lived along the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, approximately from the mouth of the Odra to the mouth of the Vistula, in the south along the Notech River, bordering on Polish tribes. Those Slavs who in past centuries occupied vast areas on the Baltic coast are usually called Baltic Slavs. The groups were independent of each other. Only danger forced them to unite for a while with each other or with other West Slavic tribes in tribal unions:
- Bodrichi (military-tribal union), Vagr, Glinyan, Drevani;
- Lyutichs (military-tribal union), Ratari, Ruyans, Slovintsy, Smolintsy;
- Lusatian Lusatian Serbs (military-tribal union), Milchanians;
- Pomeranians, ancestors of today's Kashubians, Slenzans, Bohemians and others.
All these tribes are still called Polabian Slavs
. They lived along the Laba River, hence their name, which was a collective name for a number of small tribes. Each of these groups consisted of smaller tribes, to which belonged the Vetnichi, or Betenchi, Pyzhichan, Volinyan, Vyzhychan, etc., who settled along the banks of small rivers. As a result of the lack of reliable relationships, small tribes were not connected into an independent state association. In the second half of the 6th century, at least a third of the lands of the modern German state in the north and northeast were covered by the Polabian Slavs. The Slavs replaced the “Germanic” tribes of the Lombards, Rugs, Lugii, Chizobrads, Varins, Velets and others who lived here in ancient times and headed south from the Baltic Sea coast. The eastern half of Germany (up to the Elbe), significantly deserted with the departure of most of the Germanic tribes living there, was gradually occupied by the Slavs. Confirmation that the Slavs lived in Germany from the very first centuries of our era is the coincidence of the tribal names of the Polabian, Pomeranian and other Western Slavs with the oldest ethnic names known in this territory mentioned in Roman sources. In total, about fifteen such paired, coinciding ancient and medieval Slavic names of tribes living in a given area are known. This is evidenced by the multiple toponyms that they left behind. “German” Berlin is a distorted name for the ancient city of the Polabian Slavs, founded in the 1st millennium BC. e., and in translation meant (burlin) “dam”. 
From the 10th century, German feudal lords began a systematic attack on the Polabian Slavs, first for the sake of receiving tribute, and then with the aim of spreading their power on their lands by establishing military regions (marks). The German feudal lords managed to subjugate the Polabian Slavs, but as a result of powerful uprisings (983, 1002), most of them, with the exception of the Lusatian Serbs, again became free. The scattered Slavic tribes could not provide adequate resistance to the conquerors. The unification of individual tribes under a single princely authority was necessary for their joint protection from the aggression of the Saxon and Danish feudal lords. In 623, the Polabian Serbs, together with the Czechs, Slovaks, Moravians, Black Croats, Dulebs and Horutans, united under the leadership of the merchant Samo to resist the Avars. In 789 and 791, together with the Czechs, the Polabian Serbs again participated in the campaigns of Charlemagne against the Avar Kaganate. Under the successors of Charlemagne, the Polabian tribes several times came out from under Saxon rule and again fell into dependence.
In the 9th century, part of the Polabian Slavs submitted to the Germans, the other part became part of the Great Moravian Empire that emerged in 818. In 928, the Polabian Slavs united to provide successful resistance to the Saxon king Henry the Fowler, who seized the territory of the Polabian-Serbian tribe of Glomacs and imposed tribute on the Luticians. However, under Otto I, the Lusatian Serbs were again completely enslaved by the Germans, and their lands were given into fief ownership to knights and monasteries. In the Polabian lands, German feudal lords were appointed small-scale princes. In 983, the Polabian Slavs rebelled. Their troops destroyed the fortresses built by the Germans and devastated the border areas. The Slavs regained their freedom for another century and a half. 
The Slavic world, both evolutionarily and under the pressure of the Roman Empire, has long passed the stage of tribal structure. It was, although not clearly organized, a system of proto-states. Long wars with the German feudal lords had a detrimental effect on the economic development of the Polabian Slavs and slowed down the process of their formation of relatively large early feudal states. Vendian power
- the early feudal state of the Polabian Slavs: Bodrichi, Lyutich and Pomeranians, existed from the 1040s to 1129 on the Baltic Sea coast between the mouths of the Laba and Odra rivers. It was headed by Gottschalk (1044-1066), the prince of the Bodrichis. Trying to unite the emerging alliance of the Polabian Slavs in the fight against the Billungs and their allies, Gottschalk chose Christianity as the dominant religion for the Obodrites and Lutichians. As a result of his reign, churches and monasteries were revived on the lands of the Obodrite tribes, and departments were restored: in Stargard among the Wagers, in Veligrad (Mecklenburg) among the Obodrites, and in Ratibor among the Polabs. Liturgical books began to be translated into Vendian. The process of Christianization undermined the local power of the Polabian tribal nobility, which was actually removed from governance on the lands of the Vendian state. A conspiracy arose against Gottschalk's policies among members of his family, representatives of the tribal nobility, pagan priests and the Lutichs he conquered. At the head of the conspiracy of the tribal nobility stood Bluss, whose wife was Gottschalk’s sister. In 1066, simultaneously with the removal of Archbishop Adalbert from power and his loss of political influence, an uprising against Gottschalk began in Slavonia, the center of which became the city of Retra, located in the land of the Luticians. “Because of loyalty to God,” the prince was captured and killed in the church by the pagans. They also killed the Mecklenburg Bishop John, whose arms and legs were cut off, and his head was stuck on a spear as a sign of victory and brought as a sacrifice to the gods. The rebels devastated and destroyed Hamburg, as well as the Danish border lands in the Hed region. The popular uprising was suppressed by Prince Henry (son of Gottschalk), he called back the German bishops and ruled as a vassal of the Saxon Billungs. Some tribes, for example, the wounds did not recognize Henry and, together with the Polish princes, continued to fight against German aggression. Weakened by territorial losses and internal dynastic turmoil, the Vendian state finally collapsed around 1129. In the 12th century. The final stage of the struggle of the Polabian Slavs, led by the Bodrichi prince Niklot, began against German aggression, the organizers of which were Henry the Lion and Albrecht the Bear, who sought to finally enslave the Slavs beyond Laboi by the forces of the unique crusaders.
Bishops took part in the campaign, and above all bishops of the Slavic regions, forced after the Slavic uprisings of the late 10th and early 11th centuries. leave their dioceses. These bishops, led by the Bishop of Havelberg, who was appointed papal legate to the crusaders, dreamed of returning the lost tithes and other incomes and lands once granted to them by Otto I. The Danes, who suffered from Slavic raids, and even the Burgundians, Czechs and Polish also joined the campaign. feudal lords. After failure in the first Crusade against the Slavs in 1147, Henry the Lion managed, as a result of subsequent campaigns to the east, to capture almost the entire territory of the Bodrichis and become the owner of a vast territory east of the Elbe. Thus, from 1160, the possessions of the Slavic princes in Mecklenburg became fief-dependent to the Germans. In 1167, the lands of the Bodrichis, with the exception of the County of Schwerin, were returned to Niklot's son Pribislav, who converted to Christianity and recognized himself as a vassal of Henry the Lion. In 1171 he founded the Doberan monastery, allocated funds for the bishopric of Schwerin and accompanied Henry to Jerusalem in 1172. Christianization was for the German feudal lords only a plausible pretext for theft in the Slavic lands beyond the Laba.
The Slavs did not have the organizing politics that the Germans became acquainted with in the south - in the former Rome, having adopted Christianity, and in fact having adopted many of the principles by which the Roman Empire was built. Since the second half of the 12th century, the Polabian-Baltic Slavs have been under German citizenship. This meant for them not only the loss of political freedom, their faith and culture, but also their nationality, since those who were not destroyed began to undergo increased Germanization, consolidated by the reverse colonization by the Germans of those areas in which they once lived in the beginning ad.
From the Oder to the Vistula, those who were named according to their coastal place of residence settled, occupying the territory east of the Oder and to the border of the Prussian region: Pomeranians.
The exact boundaries of the settlement of the Pomeranians are unknown. The border between the Lutichians and the Pomeranians ran along the Oder and separated these hostile tribes. After the collapse of the Lyutich union, some lands of the Lyutichs west of the Oder passed to the Pomeranians, and the territory of their settlement changed. There were other neighbors from the east - the Prussians. The Prussians crossed the borders of this region only in the 12th century, conquering the so-called Pomezania, located between the Vistula and Drwenza. In the 13th century, the lands of the Prussians were captured by the Teutonic Order. A massive influx of Lithuanian and Polish populations into the region began. As a result, at the beginningThe 18th century saw the complete disappearance of the Prussians as a separate nation. In the south, the border between the Pomeranian and Polish regions was the Warta and Notec rivers, but this was only in name, since the actual border was a vast impenetrable virgin forest. Only along the lower reaches of the Vistula did the Poles advance to the areas of Kocevo and Chelmno, and soon they began to advance to the sea...
Pomeranians - this is a union of tribes, which included tribes that differed significantly from each other - these are the Kashubians, who occupied the area from the mouth of the Vistula to Lake Zarnow, extending to the line of Bytov, Lebork, Miastko, Ferstnow, Kamen, and the Slovinians, who settled near Lake Lebski. In the west, their lands border on Germany. In the Middle Ages, the Kashubians settled in the western regions of Pomerania, in the Parsenta River basin near the city of Kołobrzeg. In the 13th century, Western Pomerania was called Kashubia. The Kashubians are descendants of the ancient Pomeranians, currently living on the Baltic Sea coast, in the northeastern regions of Poland.
The only Pomeranian language that has survived to this day is Kashubian; speakers of other Pomeranian languages have switched to German. The preservation of the Kashubian language was facilitated by the fact that the part of Pomerania west of Gdansk maintained ties with the Polish state and was part of it for a long time. Regarding the language of the Pomeranian Slavs, there is still a debate about whether to classify it as a Polish language and consider it only as a dialect of the Polish language, or to classify it as a group of independent languages.
Each region included in Pomerania had its own political center - a city, with the territory surrounding it. Further on there were other, smaller cities.
In the 9th century, some Slavic settlements near the mouth of the Odra, such as Szczecin and Wolin, as well as Kolobrzeg, were transformed into densely built-up settlements surrounded by fortifications, with trading centers in which auctions were held, for example in Szczecin twice a week. The population - artisans, fishermen, merchants - was mostly free, burdened only by appropriate tributes and duties in favor of public authorities. In some places, aliens settled and enjoyed considerable freedom of action.
Already in the 10th century. from the fortified points around which many Slavic villages were originally located, cities grew up, representing the military-administrative centers of individual tribes or their alliances: Branibor - the center of the Gavolian tribe, Retra - the main point of the four Lutean tribes, Michelin or Mecklenburg - in the land of the Obodrites. These cities in the X-XI centuries. conducted brisk trade with Saxony, Denmark, Sweden and Russia, exporting grain, salt and fish. Gradually, handicraft production also developed in Slavic cities: weaving, pottery, jewelry and construction. The buildings in Slavic cities were distinguished by their beauty, which amazed their contemporaries. Numerous cities of the Western Slavs were built of wood, as later in Rus'. The word “city” itself meant “enclosed space.” Most often, the fence consisted of ditches filled with water, a stream with a changed bed, and ramparts. Shafts are logs covered with earth into which powerful stakes pointed at the ends were inserted, pointing outward.
Such protective structures reached a height of five (and above) meters, and the same amount in width. It was precisely such settlements that were excavated by German archaeologists. For example, Tornov on the banks of the Spree. In total, a dozen and a half fortifications of the 9th–11th centuries have been excavated to the west of the Oder in the lands of the Polabian Slavs, but this is only a small part of the cities that once existed here.
In the 40s - 60s of the 12th century, Pomerania was a federation of Slavic principalities, headed by the Slavic city of Szczecin, whose decisions were significant for other principalities and cities. Szczecin represented the interests of Pomerania before the Polish prince, seeking a reduction in tribute. The supreme body - the People's Assembly - VECHE met in the city, but the Slavic population also participated in it from the rural surroundings of the city. The will of the prince was adamant for all the Pomeranians: when the Pomeranian prince in the winter of 1107-1108, upon meeting with the Polish prince Boleslav Wrymouth, approached Boleslav, bowed before him and declared himself a loyal knight and servant to him, the Polish prince, without a single battle, was able to annex almost the entire Principality of Pomerania.
The annexation of Pomerania and the Serbian-Lusatian lands contributed to the strengthening of the Slavs in these lands and their subsequent resistance to Germanization. In the 11th and 12th centuries, the princes of Pomerania made campaigns against Poland.
Like all Slavs, the basis of the Pomeranian economy was agriculture and cattle breeding, supplemented by forestry, hunting and fishing. Pomeranians sowed millet, rye, wheat, barley, and at the beginning of the Middle Ages, oats. In the 7th-8th centuries, beef predominated in the diet, but in subsequent centuries it was almost completely replaced by pork. Forestry and hunting were well developed in the spacious forests. Many rivers and lakes and the sea contributed to the development of fishing. In Kołobrzeg, Pomeranians had been brewing salt since the 6th-7th centuries.
Around 1000, Pomeranian saltworks became famous far beyond the borders of Pomerania. Salt was one of the most important items of trade, both imported and exported, depending on its availability in a particular Slavic region. There were areas inhabited by the Slavs where there was no salt, but there were areas rich in this mineral, where the salt trade developed. Salt was known to the Indo-Europeans, who had a common name for it, and from this it follows that the Slavs also knew and used salt already in prehistoric times. We do not know how it was mined in those days, since there are no reports about it; perhaps it was obtained, like other northern peoples, by pouring salt water on burning firewood, from which the ashes mixed with salt were then collected.
The first reports of the Slavs using salt in food and as an item of trade appear only in the 9th century AD. e.; At that time, the Slavs were already using several methods of obtaining salt, depending on the conditions of its location. The coasts of the Adriatic, Aegean and Black Seas were dominated by ancient saltworks, where water was evaporated by the sun. They also evaporated water in large iron frying pans, called sartago in Latin sources, and chren, cheren in Slavic sources. To this day, salt is produced this way in Bosnia or Galicia, where salt-bearing raw materials are dug out of pits. Pieces of salt were removed from the frying pans like loaves of bread, then these pieces were divided into parts, for which several ancient terms have been preserved, for example: golvazhnya, pile. Boiled salt was an expensive commodity, so the Varangian salt makers were well armed and united to protect their product on the road, which they traded everywhere. Initially, the Varangians were entirely Slavic, and later their number began to include passionate youth from Scandinavia. The word “Varangian” itself meant “salt maker” from the word variti, that is, to evaporate and cook salt. Hence the name mitten - varega, which was used by salt workers to protect their hands from burns, and later the mitten was also useful in the northern regions in winter to protect their hands from frost. There is another interpretation of the word “Varangian” - from the Sanskrit meaning of the word water - “var”. In this case, “Varyags” means people living near the water, Pomors.
In the 10th century, long-distance trade flourished there. Free tribes of the Pomeranians by the 10th century AD. e. gradually merged into larger unions. Pomorie has contacts with almost all European countries. From here grain was exported to barren Scandinavia, and salted herring was exported to the interior of Poland. In addition to connections with Scandinavia, which were supported by the cities of Wolin, Szczecin, Kamen, Kolobrzeg, Gdansk, stable relationship with Russia and other Slavic lands, among which the internal Polish regions should be especially highlighted. In addition, relations with the Prussians, Byzantium, some Arab countries, England and Western Europe. Connections with the Prussians manifested themselves not only in the appearance of imported Prussian products, but also in the formation of some new cultural features, for example, the spread of metal frames for knife sheaths, and also, perhaps, in the appearance of some pagan idols. On the other hand, the Prussians adopted the forms of Pomeranian pottery. The influence of Pomeranian ceramic production also spread to Scandinavia. Large shopping centers Szczecin and Wolin, in which auctions were held and in Szczecin, for example, twice a week.
Local production is flourishing. Quite early, amber beads began to be made here on a lathe. By the 6th or 7th century. refers to a find in Tolishchek: in a clay vessel there were silver rings and beads made of glass, amber and clay, a necklace made of glass beads, and another made of amber, including polished ones. Excavation materials, for example, in Kołobrzeg-Budzistowa indicate that in subsequent centuries, work on amber, bone and horn was carried out by the same artisans or in the same workshops.
Metallurgy and blacksmithing are developing. The basis for the growth of metallurgy was created by swamp, meadow and partly lake ores. The main centers of iron mining were located mainly in villages. Kritsy (kritsa is a loose, spongy iron mass impregnated with slag, from which kritsa or steel is obtained through various treatments) were smelted in furnaces. Charcoal was used for heating. Processing of raw materials took place in the settlement centers; forges also appeared there. In the towns of Radaszcze in Kendrzyno, Wolin, Szczecin, Kolobrzeg and Gdańsk, production workshops producing tin and lead appeared. Rich deposits of silver were discovered in the lands of the Slavs. Among silver jewelry there are forms that were undoubtedly made in Pomerania.
The territory of free Pomerania passed several times to the power of Poland or Germany, which at that time was part of the Roman Empire. Only in 995 did Pomerania recognize its dependence on the Polish prince Boleslav the Brave. At the beginning of the 11th century (1018), Boleslav the Brave annexed Lusitia to Poland, but already in 1034 it again fell under German rule. During the same period, the Pomeranian lands regained independence for some time. In 1110, the Polish king Boleslav Wrymouth again annexed the Pomeranians, who retained Slavic paganism, to Poland, while the Pomeranian princes did not lose their inheritances.
Polish rule over Pomerania did not last long. The Pomeranians resisted Polish power and raised uprisings over and over again, especially since the Poles not only tried to have political power over the Pomeranians, but also to Christianize them, which caused particular indignation among the latter. In 1005 Wolin rebelled, but by 1008 Boleslav managed to restore his power over Pomerania. But as a result of a new uprising of the Volinians after 1014, Poland’s position in Pomerania weakened again. The previously founded bishopric in Kołobrzeg was liquidated and the process of Christianization of Pomerania was interrupted.
The annexation of Pomerania to Poland in the second half of the 10th century had far-reaching socio-political consequences for these lands. Many cities were destroyed, and some of them, which served as castellan centers in the 12th century, were expanded. Bolesław the Brave located his main church center in Kołobrzeg. In the 12th century, Boleslav Wrymouth managed to subjugate eastern Pomerania with the city of Gdansk to his power, and bring the princes of western Pomerania into political dependence. The emerging Pomeranian principality of Wartislaw largely imitated the structure of the Polish Piast monarchy, borrowing many elements of its system, which was manifested in the functioning of the system of tributes and duties, the organization of the court, administration, courts, etc.
From the end of the 13th century, German feudal lords resumed the consistent seizure of the lands of the Polabian and Pomeranian Slavs, accompanied by their Germanization. In cities it is forbidden to speak the Slavic language, all office work is translated into German, education is conducted in German in schools, and you can engage in any privileged craft only if you speak German. Such conditions forced the Serbian population to adopt the language and culture of the Germans. Slavic dialects are preserved almost only in rural areas. Due to the devastating wars with the Danes, the Pomeranian feudal lords welcomed the settlement of the devastated lands by the Germans. The most active process of Germanization took place in the western lands of the Polabian Slavs. During the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), more than 50% of the Serbs died here, as a result of which the area of distribution of the Slavs in Germany was significantly reduced. The language of the Slavs and their customs were maintained longest in the Duchy of Mecklenburg and Hanoverian Wendland.
The Western Slavs preserved the pagan tradition for a long time. It received particular development among the inhabitants of Polish Pomerania. New King Poland Boleslav Krivousty realized that in order to annex Pomerania to Poland, it was necessary to eliminate religious differences. Bishop Otto of Bamberg volunteered to preach in Pomerania after Boleslav approached him with this request. At first, the pagans show some resistance, but the planting of the new cult is carried out very aggressively, using cruel measures against the adherents of the old days. Having traveled through several cities, Otto arrived in Wolin in 1127. Before that, he visited Shchetin. To discuss the issue of accepting Christianity, countless people were convened in Szczecin - pagans from villages and towns. Some of the noble people of the city, who were already inclined towards Christianity, decided to expel the pagan priests “from the borders of the fatherland” and follow the leadership of Otto in religion. After this, Otto did not meet any resistance in Wolin. The city followed the example of Shchetin, as was customary there, and Otto continued on his way. This was the beginning of the Christianization of Pomerania. Among the Pomeranians it spread along with the adoption of Christianity by Great Moravia and Poland, among the Polabian Slavs - along with the spread of German (Saxon) power. Among the Pomeranians, their discontent with the Poles weakened - now they had one religion.
The main sanctuary of the Pomeranians was located in Szczecin. There were four continuations in the city of Szczecin, but one of them, the main one, was built with amazing diligence and skill. Inside and outside it had sculptures, images of people, birds and animals protruding from the walls, so faithful to their appearance that they seemed to breathe and live. There was also a triple statue here, which had three heads on one body, called Triglav.
Triglav is a three-headed statue whose eyes and mouth are covered with a golden bandage. As the priests of idols explain, the main god has three heads, because he oversees the three kingdoms, that is, heaven, earth and the underworld, and covers his face with a bandage, since he hides the sins of people, as if not seeing or talking about them. They also had other gods. They worshiped Svyatovit, Triglav, Chernobog, Radigost, Zhiva, Yarovit. Temples and groves were dedicated to the gods. To this day, in the lands inhabited by the Polabian and Pomeranian Slavs, evidence of pagan culture is found. One of them is the Zbruch idol, as well as Mikrozhin runic stones.
The inhabitants of Kolobreg worshiped the sea as the home of some gods. Like other pagans, the Pomeranians brought sacrifices to the gods. But they did not practice human sacrifice.
All Baltic Slavs had priests. But unlike the Lyutichs and Ruyans, the power and influence of the priests among the Pomeranians was not significant. Important information about the level of medicine of that time is provided by Slavic bodily burials of the 10th-12th centuries. Of greatest interest are the most complex operations on the skull—trepanations. They are known in much earlier times - for example, skulls with trepanations are also known from the megalith culture in Mecklenburg. And if their purpose is not completely clear, and it is assumed that they had a mystical and cult character, then it is unnecessary to talk about the complexity of such operations. The end of Slavic paganism in Polabie was the destruction of the Svyatovit sanctuary in Arkona.
In addition to trepanation itself, symbolic trepanation is also known among the Baltic Slavs. In this case, part of the patient’s skull was not completely removed, but only the top layer of bone was cut or scraped off.
It is believed that head wounds could be “treated” in this way. It is most likely that the operations were carried out by pagan priests. There is no direct medieval evidence of such practices among Slavic priests, but it is known that the Celtic priests were skilled in such healing. The technique of performing such complex operations as trepanation disappeared immediately with the adoption of Christianity - when the priesthood was destroyed. The Slavs maintained the belief that pagan idols could cure diseases. When a plague epidemic broke out in the Pomeranian city of Szczecin, which had just converted to Christianity, the city residents perceived it as the revenge of Triglav, whose idol had been overthrown by Christians shortly before. The widespread epidemics that have plagued Europe since the Middle Ages are directly linked to the fact that, along with the destruction of paganism in Europe, the medical knowledge of the priests, accumulated over thousands of years, was also lost.
The Polabian and Pomeranian Slavs have now been almost completely assimilated by the German and Polish peoples. Of the numerous tribes that inhabited the vast territories of Polabie in the 6th – 11th centuries AD, only the Lusatians (Federal Republic of Germany) and the Kashubians (Polish Republic) now associate themselves with the Slavs. Currently, Western Pomerania is part of the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the rest is Polish territory.
