Slavs

The Slavic peoples are one of the most numerous ethnic and linguistic body of peoples in Europe, residing chiefly in eastern and southeastern Europe but extending also across northern Asia to the Pacific Ocean. Slavic languages belong to the Indo-European family. Customarily Slavs are subdivided into east Slavs (chiefly Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians), west Slavs (chiefly Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, and Wends, or Sorbs), and south Slavs (chiefly Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, and Macedonians). Bulgarians, though of mixed origin like the Hungarians, speak a Slavic language and are often designated as south Slavs. One must remember that in during of centuries also many other tribes were slavicised, for example Croats.

Slavs historically were described as '''Venedes''', but their connection to Veneds mentioned by Tacitus, Ptolomei and Plinius, is uncertain, and similarity of name may be accidental. Controversial is connection between Lugii and Slavs, since some authors connect them with Slavs, some with Germans, some claim that Lugii were compound tribe, or confederation of tribes of different ethnicity. Later names of Slavs were recorded as Sclavens, Sclovene, Ants. Jordanes mentions that Venets are divided into three groups: Venets, Ants and Sklavens. Even origin of word "Slav" is unsure. In Slavic languages that word is "Slowianie" "Slovene" etc, with obvious similarities to word "Slowo" meaning "Word", so "Slowianie" would mean "people who can speak" as opposed for Slavic word for Germans "Niemcy" that is, "dumb", "people who cannot speak". Other obvious similarity is to word "Slawa", that is "fame" (with common root with "Slowo"), however linguists believe that that obvious connections are false.

In religion, the Slavs traditionally divided into two main groups: those associated with the Eastern Orthodox Church: (Russians, most Ukrainians, some Belarusians, Serbs, and Macedonians) and those associated with the Catholic Church (Roman Catholic Church and Greek Catholic Church): Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, some Ukrainians, and most Belarusians). The division is further marked by the use of the Cyrillic alphabet by the former (but including all Ukrainians and Belarusians) and the Roman alphabet by the latter. There are also many minority religious groups, such as Muslims, Protestants, and Jews.

Prehistorically, the original habitat of the Slavs, as of all Indoeuropeans, was Asia, from which they migrated in the 3rd or 2nd millennium B.C. to populate parts of eastern Europe. Subsequently, these European lands of the Slavs were crossed or settled by many peoples forced by economic conditions to migrate. In the middle of the 1st millennium B.C., Celtic tribes settled along the upper Oder River, and Germanic tribes settled on the lower Vistula and lower Oder rivers, usually without displacing the Slavs there. Finally, the movement westward of the Germans in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. started the great migration of the Slavs, who proceeded in the Germans' wake westward into the country between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line, southward into Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, and the Balkans, and northward along the upper Dnieper River. When the migratory movements had ended, there appeared among the Slavs the first rudiments of state organizations, each headed by a prince with a treasury and defense force, and the beginning of class differentiation.

The were two theories in history about original homeland of Slavs: first, called autochtonic, was based on assumption that Slavs lived north from Carpathy (what are those mountains called in English) thousand years BC. Second, called allochtonic, assume that Slavs came there in V-VI century AD. Both theories were used as tools of political propaganda by Germans and different Slavic nations, with great harm to science. Some scientists consider both theories absurd (e.g. Kazimierz Godlowski or Zdenek Vana), because they think that Slavs as such appeared and differentiated from other tribes after AD. There is theory that there were two waves of Slavs: Proto-Slavs, called Wenetes or Veneds, and Slavs proper, and that two groups created todays Slavs. That theory at least tries to deal with very complicated question arising from archeological findings in the area. Nobody also is sure where was Slavic homeland before they start their big expansion.

In the centuries that followed, there developed scarcely any unity among the various Slavic peoples. The cultural and political life of the west Slavs was integrated into the general European pattern. They were influenced largely by philosophical, political, and economic changes in the West, such as feudalism, humanism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the French and Industrial Revolutions. As their lands were invaded by Mongols and Turks, however, the Russians and Balkan Slavs remained for centuries without any close contact with the European community; they evolved a system of bureaucratic autocracy and militarism that tended to retard the development of urban middle classes and to prolong the conditions of serfdom. The state's supremacy over the individual tended to become more firmly rooted.

A faint kind of Slavic unity sometimes appeared. In the 19th century, Pan-Slavism developed as a movement among intellectuals, scholars, and poets, but it rarely influenced practical politics. The various Slavic nationalities conducted their policies in accordance with what they regarded as their national interests, and these policies were as often bitterly hostile toward other Slavic peoples as they were friendly toward non-Slavs. Even political unions of the 20th century, such as that of Yugoslavia, were not always matched by feelings of ethnic or cultural accord; nor did the sharing of communism after World War II necessarily provide more than a high-level political and economic alliance.

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

The English word "slave" was originally a reference to the slavs.