Slavs

SLAVS. The Slays are the most numerous linguistic group in Europe. Outside Europe there are the Russians in Siberia, a mere extension of the main body, and emigrants in America.

Divisions and Distribution.

The Slays are divided geo graphically and linguistically into three main groups, Eastern, North-Western and Southern.

The Russians form the Eastern group. They hold all the East European plain from the 27th meridian to the Urals, the Finnish and Tatar tribes making up but a small proportion of the popula tion : to the east they stretch into central Siberia and thence in narrow bands along the rivers all the way to the Pacific ; on the west the Ruthenians of Galicia form a wedge between the Poles and the Magyars and almost touch the loth meridian.

The North-Western group includes the Poles, in the basin of the Vistula ; the Kashubes on the coast north-west of Danzig ; the High and Low Sorbs or Wends in Lusatia, Slays completely sur rounded by Germans, the Czechs and their eastern neighbours, the Moravians, now included in Czechoslovakia. Connecting up Ruthenians, Poles and Moravians, but most closely akin to the latter, are the Slovaks (q.v.). The now teutonized Slays of central Germany, once stretched as far to the north-west as Riigen and Holstein and to the south-west to the Saale. They are generally called Polabs (q.v.), or Slays on the Elbe.

The Southern Slays, Slovenes (q.v.), Serbo-Croats and Bul garians are cut off from the main body by the Germans of Austria proper and the Magyars, both of whom occupy soil once Slavonic, and have absorbed much Slavonic blood, and by the Rumanians of Transylvania and the Lower Danube. These Slays occupy the main mass of the Balkan Peninsula downwards from the Julian Alps and the line of the Muhr, Drave and Danube. North of this all three races have considerable settlements in southern Hungary. Their southern boundary is very ill-defined, various nationalities being closely intermingled. To the south-west the Slays march with the Albanians, to the south-east with the Turks, and to the south and along the Aegean coasts they have the Greeks as neighbours.

Linguistic Divisions.

Linguistically the separation is not sharp, though it coincides with the new political frontiers. Roughly speaking, the eastern half of the peninsula is held by the Bul garians, the western half by the Serbo-Croats. This is the most divided of the Slavonic races ; its members profess three forms of religion and use three alphabets—the Serbs and Bosnians being mostly Orthodox and using the Cyrillic alphabet, but including many Muslims; the Croats being Roman Catholics, writing with Latin letters; and the Dalmatians also Roman Catholics, but using, some of them, the ancient Glagolitic script for their Sla vonic liturgy. The language also falls into three dialects inde

pendent of the religions, and across these lines run the frontiers of the political divisions. In the extreme north-west, in Carniola, in the southern parts of Styria and Carinthia, and over the Italian border in the province of Udine and the Vale of Resia live the Slovenes, much divided dialectically. Between the Slovenes and the Croats there are transition dialects, and about 184o there was an attempt (Illyrism) to establish a common literary lan guage. In Macedonia and along the border are special varieties of Bulgarian, some of which approach Serbian. Akin to the Mace donians were the Slays, who once occupied the whole of Greece and left traces in the place-names, though they long ago dis appeared among the older population. Akin to the Slovenes were the old inhabitants of Austria and south-west Hungary before the intrusion of the Germans and Magyars.

History.

This distribution of the Slays can be accounted for historically. Though traditions (e.g., the first Russian chroni cle of Pseudo-Nestor) bring them from the basin of the Danube, most evidence goes to show that when they formed one people they were settled to the north-east of the Carpathians in the basins of the Vistula, Pripet and Upper Dnestr (Dniester). To the N. they had their nearest relatives, the ancestors of the Baltic tribes, Prussians, Lithuanians and Letts; to the E. Finns; to the S.E. the Iranian population of the Steppes of Scythia (q.v.) ; to the S.W., on the other side of the Carpathians, various Thracian tribes; to the N.W. the Germans; between the Germans and Thracians they seem to have had some contact with the Celts, but at first the Illyrians, Greeks and Italians probably came between. This location, arrived at by a comparison of the frag mentary accounts of Slavonic migrations and their distribution in historic time, agrees with the place taken by the Slavonic language among the other Indo-European languages (see below), and by what we know of the place-names of eastern Europe, see ing that within this area the place-names seem to be exclusively Slavonic, while outside it the oldest names belong to other languages.