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RUSSIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE
THROUGH THE CENTURIES

 
 

Slavs

 
 

The origin of the Slavs is obscure and we don't know if and when they came to Europe from Asia, as most other tribes. In the absence of specific historical data, the whole question has become a matter of individual interpretation o f a single or of a group of historians and archaeologists. The majority of Russian historians of the pre-Soviet era tend to agree that the Slavs existed as tribes previous to the appearance of the Scythians in Southern Russia. They believe that they lived next to other tribes, and sometimes mixed with them, for many centuries before they emerged as a distinctive ethnic group. Russian historians and especially Russian archaeologists are considerable more audacious. Some of them have already concluded that the forefathers of the Slavic tribes populated Eastern Europe some thirty to forty centuries B.C. and were experienced in cattle-rearing and knew quite much about land cultivation. The attempt of Soviet scholars to conceal the history of their ancestors and further sink it into oblivion deserves a note of praise, however one should be cautious not to accept their learned conjectures as substitute for facts. In all probability and long before history started to account for them, some Slavic tribes lived in relative security further north of the steppes in the remote regions (glush), protected from Asiatic incursions by deep and impenetrable woodlands, while the others, in the south, eventually shared the fate of those who inhabited the rich river basins. It was here the many sided intercourse of the Slavs with other tribes resulted in the assimilation of the Scythians and the Sarmatians and their disappearance as ethnic groups. Similar processes happened in the north between the Slavic and Finish tribes, but on a considerably smaller scale.

Russian archaeologists turned many stones and opened hundreds of burial mounds in search of vestiges that could support the "official " version of the Slavs' origin. They have found several remnants of ancient dwellings and many tombs. When excavated most of them clearly show that they belonged to the Scythians or Sarmatians and very seldom are these indications that the dead bodies were cremated- a custom typical of the funeral ceremony of the ancient Slavs; though the cremation was not practiced by the Slavs exclusively. Nevertheless, an increasing number of Russian archaeologists want to believe that there are certain genetic connections between the Slavs and the Scythians and Sarmatians, many of them readily see in the Scythians, the prestigious ancestors of the Slavs, while the old and less pretentious theory simply stated that the Scythians, the Sarmatians, the Khazars and other tribes were assimilated by the Slavs.

Latin sources of the first and second centuries A.D., including the works of their historian Tacitus mentioned Slavs for the first time, calling them Veneds, a name used primarily to identify the tribes that populated a that time the central part of Eastern Europe. Most historians agree that Veneds was merely another name for Slavs, a variation of which were recorded for the first time in the sixth century A.D. by some Latin and Greek authors. They called the Slavic tribes that menaced in the 6th century the northern borders of the Byzantine Empire; Sclavi, Sclavini (Slavs of the left bank of the Danube river), and in some cases Anti (Slavs of the Eastern European plains). At this time and during the first half of the 7th century there was an important movement of the Slavic tribes followed first by dissensions and then by their consolidation into three major groups: Western, South and Eastern Slavs. The Poles, Moravians and Checks belonged to the Western group and founded their new home in Moravia and Tchekhia (present day Bohemia). Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes compose the southern group that penetrated deep into the Balkans; and the largest group comprises the Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians Russians who are known as the Eastern Slavs.

 
 

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