Slavs, or SLAVONIANS (native name, Slovane or Slovane, probably connected with slovo, 'a word,' thus meaning the people who spoke intelligibly as distinguished from their neighbour, Niemets, the German, literally the 'dumb man'; this opinion is held by the majority of scholars, but lacks the support of Miklosich, who considers both to be tribal names), the general appellation of a group of nations belonging to the Aryan family, whose settlements extended from the Elbe to Kamchatka, from the Frozen Sea to Salonica, the whole of eastern Europe being occupied almost exclusively by them. They were settled in this continent before the historical times, as their migrations are never mentioned, and some modern scholars—Penka, Poesche, and others—regard them as inhabitants of Europe from the earliest period, and even assign the cradle of the human race to White Russia. It seems probable from the description given in the fourth book of Herodotus that at least one of the Scythian tribes, the Budini, was Slavonic, and to it may perhaps be added that of the Neuri. The original names of the Slavonic tribes seem to have been Winds or Wends (Venedi) or Serbs. The former of these names occurs among the Roman writers, and later, in Jordanis, in connection with the commercial peoples of the Baltic; the latter is spoken of by Procopius as the ancient name common to the whole Slavonic stock. The earliest historical notices represent the Slavs as having their chief settlements about the Carpathians, from which they spread northward to the Baltic, westward as far as the Elbe and the Saal, and later, after the overthrow of the kingdom of the Huns, southward beyond the Danube, and over the whole peninsula between the Adriatic and the Black Sea. These migrations ceased in the 7th century; the division of the Slavonic stock into separate branches became now more complete, and gradually they began to form independent states. The sections of the stock may be divided into two groups, the south-eastern and the western; the first comprehends (1) the Russians, (2) Bulgarians, (3) Illyrians (Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes); the second (1) Lechs (Poles, Silesians, Pomeranians), (2) Czechs or Bohemians (Czechs or Chekh, Moravians, Slovaks), (3) the Slavonic tribes of north Germany, among whom are to be reckoned the Polabes. The only tribes who have preserved their language are the Lusatian Wends or Sorbs dwelling in Saxony and Prussia. Of the Polabes there are now no traces; their language ceased to be spoken in the early part of the 18th century. Many of the old Slavonic states have lost their independence and are in a state of greater or less vassalage. At the present time Russia, Servia, and Montenegro are wholly independent. Bulgaria is a tributary state of Turkey, but practically independent. Bohemia and Moravia are united to Austria, and Croatia forms part of the kingdom of Hungary. Poland is distributed between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. Some Slavonic tribes have never enjoyed independence—e.g. the Sorbs and Slovenes. The sum total of the Slavonic populations is estimated at about 100,000,000.
The Slavs are represented by ancient writers as an industrious race, living by agriculture and the rearing of flocks and herds; as hospitable and peaceful, and making war only in defence. The government had a patriarchal basis, and chiefs were chosen by the assemblies. But in the west contact with the feudal institutions of the German empire, and in the east with Byzantium and the Mongols, greatly altered this primitive constitution; the Slavonic princes aimed at unlimited power, and the chiefs succeeded in binding the free peasants to the soil, as the feudal nobility had done. In the course of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries a hereditary nobility was formed in some of the Slavonic states. The people sank into the lowest condition of serfdom. Between them and the nobles there was no third or middle class, as the privileges of the nobility prevented the growth of towns, and such trade as there was was chiefly in the hands of foreigners.
The religion of the ancient Slavs, like that of the Teutonic nations, seems to have been in many of its features a kind of nature-worship—not without, perhaps, a predominating divinity: at least so Procopius tells us. But the whole subject of Slavonic mythology is up to the present time in a very confused state. For our information about Slavonic deities we are indebted to Nestor and the German chroniclers who wrote about the Baltic Slavs—e.g. Thietmar, Helmold, and others. We thus only know the gods of these peoples and the Russians. About those of the Poles, Bohemians, and southern Slavs we know almost nothing. The idols, from the accounts given of them, appear to have been of wood; and this is probably the reason why no genuine remains of them have come down to us. The chief deity, whose worship was probably common to all the western Slavs, was Sviatovit, with whom may be associated Perun and Radegast—and some have thought that these three names denote different personations or manifestations of the same power. Perhaps we may find parallels in Sviatovit to Mars and Zeus, Perun to Jupiter and Thor, and Radegast to Mercury and Odin. Of gods of an inferior order we may name Prove, perhaps a god of justice, and Chernobog, the black god, together with multitudes of demons and spirits good and bad. Thus, among the Russians there were rusalki, water-nymphs, licshie, satyrs; and among the Serbs and Bulgarians, vilas and sumodivas, a kind of malicious fairy.
Some of these deities were worshipped under monstrous forms: thus, Sviatovit had four heads, Rugewit, the god of war, had seven faces, and so on. The Slavs seem to have had some crude notion of existence and retribution after death. Worship was performed in groves and temples, cattle and fruits being offered by the priests, whose office was originally performed by the head of the family or chieftain; perhaps this may be the reason why there is a common name for priest and prince (knez) among the western Slavs: the word, how- ever, is certainly borrowed from the O. H. Ger. chuning. The eastern Slavs received Christianity from Byzantium in the 9th century, through the instrumentality of Cyril (q.v.) and Methodius; the western from Rome and Germany. They were Christianised with little opposition, for they had no religious caste, and there were no persons politically or socially interested in the cultus of their idols. Panslavism is the subject of an article (q.v.). See Schafarik, Slawische Alterthümer.
SLAVONIC LANGUAGE.—The term Slavonic, as applied to language or race, is a generic name (like Celtic or Teutonic) for a group of kindred languages and people belonging to the great Indo-European or Aryan family. The Slavonic languages are in a highly inflected state: the noun has seven cases, and all the numerals are declined. An article is implied in the termination of the adjective, as is shown by the form which it assumes when used as a predicate. As regards tenses, Russian, Polish, and Bohemian in their modern forms have lost the imperfect and aorist, but they are preserved in the Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian. The poverty of the tense-system is amply compensated by the so-called aspects, which are found in every Slavonic verb—e.g. the frequentative, the momentaneous, and others, which supply tenses that may be wanting to the simple verb and express very delicate distinctions of time and manner. The Slavonic family in preserving these aspects has been truer to the old Aryan type of language than Teutonic. Traces of them can be seen in Greek (as Curtius has shown) and in Old Irish. The prepositions in and out of composition are used with a delicacy reminding us of ancient Greek. These languages have great power of compounding words and rich vocabularies. The oldest form known is the Paleo-Slavonic or ecclesiastical Slavonic, so called because used in the Orthodox churches. The original home of this language has been the subject of much dispute, and has divided Slavists into two camps; some finding it in Bulgaria, others in the ancient Pannonia, now corresponding to the territory occupied by the Slovenes—viz. Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; hence it is sometimes called Old Bulgarian and sometimes Old Slovenish. It is, however, only an elder sister and not a mother language. The Slavonic family of languages may be grouped as follows: first, the south-eastern branch—(1) Russian, including Malo-Russian and White Russian. The second of these has great claims to be considered a distinct language, and is so treated by Miklosich. (2) Old and modern Bulgarian, the latter being in a somewhat decomposed form, having lost nearly all its cases and the infinitive mood. (3) Serbo-Croatian. (4) Slovenish. Secondly, the western—(1) Polish, including Kashubish. (2) Bohemian, including Slovak. (3) Lusatian-Wendish, or Sorbish, divided into two sharply defined dialects. (4) Polabish, which died out at the beginning of the 18th century, and like Cornish has been preserved in some vocabularies, &c.: from these fragments Schleicher constructed a grammar. See the sections on language and literature in the articles BOHEMIA, POLAND, RUSSIA, and SERVIA. We may here remark that in literature Russian, Polish, or Bohemian are richest, the two latter nations having developed a literature much earlier than the former. This remark applies especially to Bohemian, which can show good prose-writing in the 14th century. Many of the Russian and Polish poets have great merit. Slovenish and Sorbish are poor. The Serbs have developed a respectable literature in the 19th century, and the Bulgarians are already active. But both have only recently shaken off the Turkish yoke, fatal to all progress. Serbian, Russian, and Bulgarian are very rich in old ballads and popular songs. These are scanty in Bohemian, and almost entirely wanting in Polish. Old Bulgarian literature, such as it has come down to us, consists mainly of religious works, original and translated.
See Pypin and Spasovich, Istoriya Slavianskikh Literatur ('History of Slavonic Literature,' in Russian, 1879; there is a German translation); Miklosich, Vergleichende Grammatik der Slavischen Sprachen (4 vols. Vienna, 1879); Leskien, Altbulgarisches Lesebuch (2d ed. 1886). For grammars of special languages, see under respective headings. And see Talvi (Mrs Robinson), Literature of the Slavic Nations (New York, 1850); Slavonic Literature, by the present writer, W. R. Morfill (Lond. 1883).