Who are Slavs? [PART 1: A peek into the Slavic history]

WHO ARE SLAVS? PART 1
A PEEK INTO THE SLAVIC HISTORY

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Music: Traditional folk Slavic music (Unknown artist)

Enjoy the video, like, subscribe and be updated for part 2!

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Slavs are the largest Indo-European ethno-linguistic group in Europe with roughly 360 million people. They share, to varying degrees, cultural traits, similar language and historical backgrounds.
If you truly want to understand who Slavic people really are, we need to take a look into the history.

Slavs were first mentioned under a name of the "Antes" and "Sclaveni" in Byzantine records in the early 6th century. Word "Antes" was used to describe an early Slavic tribes from the lower Danube and northwestern Black Sea. Word "Sclaveni" was used for an early South Slavic tribes that invaded and settled the Balkans in the Early Middle Ages.

Therefor we can say Slavs were emerging from the area of the Carpathian Mountains, the lower Danube and the Black Sea.

First description of Slavs written by Procopius in 545 was that both "Sclaveni" and the "Antes" once had a single name - Sporoi. Procopius stated that the Sclaveni and Antes once spoke the same language, but he did not trace their common origin back to the Vistula Veneti tribe, that are suspected as the ancestors of some or all of today's Slavs.

Procopius described Slavs as barbarians, who lived under democracy and believed in one god, "the maker of lightning" (Perun). He stated Slavs constantly changed settlements and were mainly foot soldiers with small shields, javelins and lightly clothed. He described in his words "the two tribes do not differ in appearance, being tall and robust, neither very fair or blond, nor indeed dark type."

The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germans in the 5th and 6th centuries started the great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes fleeing the Huns and their allies.

Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in great numbers. The Byzantine records note that grass would not regrow in places where the Slavs had marched through, so great were their numbers. After a military movement even the Peloponnese and Asia Minor were reported to have Slavic settlements. This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion. By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions.

When migration ended, first Slavic rudiments of state organizations started to evolve. In the 7th century, the Frankish merchant Samo, who supported the Slavs fighting Avars became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe stretching from Silesia to present-day Slovenia. This provided the foundation for creation of other Slavic states with Carantania being the oldest of them following Principality of Nitra and the Moravian principality.

In this period, there existed central Slavic groups and states such as the Balaton Principality however the expansion of the Magyars and Germanisation of Austria separated the northern and southern Slavs. The First Bulgarian Empire that was founded in 681 and the Slavic language Old Church Slavonic became the main and official till it's end in 864.
Bulgaria was vital in the spread of Slavic literacy and Christianity to the rest of the Slavic world.

Many decades later, specifically in 1878, there were only 3 FREE Slavic states (Sovereign states) in the world: the Russian Empire, Serbia and Montenegro.

In the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire around 46% of the population were Slavic. Due to lesser rights then Austrians and Hungarians, Slavs were calling for national self-determination.
In the 19th century, Pan-Slavism developed as a movement but it rarely influenced practical politics and did not find support in some Slavic nations due to association with Russian imperialism.

During World War I, representatives of the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes set up organizations in the Allied countries to gain sympathy and recognition. After World War I Slavs established independent states as Czechoslovakia, the Second Polish Republic, and the State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs.

Today there are 13 Slavic countries. Geographically divided into 3 groups. South Slavs, West Slavs and East Slavs.
Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Macedonia and Bulgaria being representatives of South Slavs.
Poland, Czechia (Recently renamed from Czech Republic) and Slovakia being representatives of West Slavs and
Ukraine, Belarusia and Russia being representatives of East Slavs.

[davidroman]

Slavs are one big strong tree with many branches and roots of many shapes and colors .   -Me 2016

[georgih]

Bulgarian here! Slavic girls are the prettiest, that is all you need to know about slavs ;)

[tonyritter]

i like how calm you just explained thousands of years of fighting and migrating

[Fightinc]

Has anyone else heard the tale of, ,Lech, Czech i Rus" when they were kids?

[Bersellum-ph]

Nice video!!!
But you made a mistake, early Slavs didn't believe in only one god. Perun was something like leader of all gods. But there was also Svarog, Crnobog, Dazbog, Jarilo, Devana, Perperuna, Svetovid, Triglav...

[yukimann]

Nie ma piękniejszych kobiet na Świecie niż Słowianki .

[NGB]

Briliant videao! Greetings from Bulgaria

[obabas]

Greetings Slavs from a Byzantine Greek. we are proud to have you as part of our history and you took our ways and spread them all over Europe!

[zychopiec]

how this chanel dont have more subs? Really great video keep up good work!!

[nvskorpio]

thank you for these videos - please continue and maybe one day all slavs will realize we are all brothers and sisters - that have great power in numbers - stay cheeki breeki

[jackaroo]

Awesome video, seemed very accurate based on what I know and also enlightened me to new information I was unaware of, looking forward to more videos!

[srbrale]

Awesome. Great video. well done. greets from serbia

[elimalinsky]

It would have been nice to include the ancient history of the Slavs before their migrations. The split between Balts and Slavs which took place between 1500 and 1000 BCE, and the even older split from the Indo-European parent group sometime between 3000 and 2500 BCE.
Also, the Slavs most probably originated around present-day Belarus.

[magdalenabuljan]

🇺🇦🇭🇷 Ethnic White Croats ( Bili Horvati) still live in Western Ukraine today. There is also still located settlement of STILSKO, capital city of pagan Croats. ❤

Croatia is named after White Croats who came in the 7th century from ancient pagan White Great Croatia once located in Ukraine, south-eastern Poland, north-eastern Slovakia-Czechia and Hungary.

When Hungarians conquered slavic Pannonia province in the 9th century, southern baptised Red Croatia separated from pagan White Croatia.

Ukraine and Croatia together for years celebrate common ethnic heritage of an ancient Croat people. ❤🇺🇦🇭🇷

[SilvesterHumaj]

Slovak/American here, just subscribed.

[sanelb]

We are probably the greatest improvisers of all nation's, we can fix anything with nothing

[RadekZielinski.]

A Slav can't hide it's identity to a Slav. We don't need close together borders to know who's where. :)

[gistgrl]

It's funny, because I'm both Slavic and Eastern Scandinavian, the two tribes who first formed the Kievan rus together

[antonstoyanov]

The Slavs, called by the old authors sklaviny, inhabited lands from the Carpathians to the Danube Delta and from the sources of the Vistula to the Don River. These are ancient Thracian lands. From Strabo we know that the possessions of the Getae extend far west to Germany (whose eastern border is the Vistula). This huge Thracian people inhabited even the Black Sea steppes. The lands described as Goth by Strabo coincide with the lands of the Sclavines described by Jordan. Confirmation that the Sklavins are a Thracian people we receive from the old historian Theophylact Simokata, who says: Getae, also called Sclavines cross the borders of Thrace ... Sclavins, or Getae because they were called so in ancient times. That the Sklavins are Getae, a Thracian people can be seen from the archaeological data. The Slavic and Thracian home pottery are identical.In the Name Book of the Bulgarian Knas it is mentioned that 515 years before Asparuh, our ancestors ruled north of the Danube. These lands belong to the ghettos and since our ancestors lived there in the 2nd century, they are also part of the ghetto family. This was actually explained long ago by Strabo, who wrote that the Getae were of the same genus as the Moesi, and that both tribes spoke the Thracian language. I will remind you that the Moesi have been identified with the Bulgarians for a thousand years. Sclavini-Getae and Moesi-Bulgarians belong to the same ethnic group. For centuries, the Getae and the Moesi were neighbors, and there were even large mixes. Strabo testified that in the first century BC, fifty thousand Getae settled among the Muses inhabiting the lands south of the Danube. However, a real military-political alliance was reached only in the Early Middle Ages, when our ancestors realized that only with united efforts would they win their complete freedom from Rome. The so-called "invasions from the north" of Sklavin detachments are nothing but liberation wars.Victor Obermüller, who in the distant 1872 says the following: “Those peoples who after the end of the so-called The "Great Migration of the Peoples" are called "Slavs", are in fact nothing but the remnants of the peoples who previously inhabited the respective lands and named by the Greeks and Romans in long lists Thracians, Getae, Mizi, Dacians, Agatirs, etc .. . "In reality, the name Bulgarians belongs to people belonging to the great Thracian people Moesi, and slaveni is the new name of the Thracian people Getae. This was said much more clearly by the Egyptian chronicler Theophylact Simokata. Only centuries later, the alternative name of the Slavic Getae in question was used and adopted by other people speaking related languages. The people in question who speak related languages ​​are the ancestors of Russians, Poles, Czechs, etc. The ancestors of Czechs, Poles, Russians, Sorbs and others were known in the past not as Slavs but as Veneti. The Veneti in question belong to the Illyrians, who are neighbors and relatives of the Thracians according to the Roman author Apian-.App. Bell.Ill. III.6.

[aptisme]

video is basicaly a regurgitation of 19th century German propopaganda which is still tought in schools, but is slowly being dismantled. Slavs did not "emerge" in the 5th or 6th century. Roman reference to Germania was for ALL people and teritories north or the Carpathian mountains, not just the modern day Germans that adapted the name. Genetics now indicate that the R1a haplogroup has resided in the area of central Europe since the bronze age, and Germans are nothing more than a genetic mixture of Slavs, Frank's and Scandinavians.