SLAVS, slạvz, the general designation for
a group of peoples inhabiting eastern and
Europe and forming one of the most
important branches of the Indo-European family
of nations. The name is derived from the native
term Slovenia, the origin of which is obscure, some connecting is with slovo, word, speech, and others with slava, glory. In support of the former etymology is the fact that the Slavic term for foreigner is nientsy, dumb, marking the differentiation between those whose speech was intelligible to the Slav ear, that is, the Slavs themselves, and those who made use of an incomprehensible tongue. The connection between Slav and slave, though supported by the analogy of servus and Serb, is nevertheless merely fanciful. The Slavic group comprises the following nationalities: Russians (including the Great Russians, the Little Russians, or Ruthenians, and the White Russians), Bulgarians, Serbo-Croatians, Slovenians, Czechs (comprising the Bohemians, the Moravians and the Slovaks), Wends or Sorbs (consisting of the inhabitants of Upper and Lower Lusatia, and Poles with the allied Kashubes). The Polabians, a Slavic people formerly living on the Elbe, have been extinct since the middle of the 18th century. The early history of the Slavs is veiled in obscurity, and only an approximate idea as to their original home is to be obtained. In Pliny and Tacitus the name Venedæ (whence the modern Wenden) appears as the designation of a group of non-Germanic tribes living to the northeast of the Carpathian Mountains and extending to the shores of the Baltic and the lake country of the Finns. Ptolemy in the 2d century of our era gives a description of the peoples residing between the Vistula and the Don which would undoubtedly tend to connect a part at least of these tribes with the Slav family. Roughly the home of the Slavs in the first centuries of the Christian era may be given as extending from the Vistula and the Carpathians northeastward to the headwaters of the Volga and along that stream to its junction with the Oka, and southeastward to the Bug and Dnieper, comprising thus the southwestern third of the present Russia. South and southeast of the Baltic, however, were the Lithaunians, a non-Slavic people, though nearest to the Slavs of all Indo-European stocks. In the 6th century Procopius and Jardanes speak of two great Slavic nations, the Sclaveni and the Antes, as established on the left bank of the Danube and to the north. From this it would seem that in the 3d or 4th century the Slav peoples began to migrate from their homes southward, and westward, under pressure probably of the Baltic tribes to the north. In the 5th century they took possession of the country between the Vistula and the Elbe, left unoccupied by the southward migration of the Germanic Burgundians, Goths, Suevi, etc. Slav tribes entered Bohemia and Moravia about the same time, while others advanced from beyond the Carpathians and made themselves masters of western Hungary, whence they passed into Styria, Carinthia and Camiola. At the beginning of the 7th century the Slavs on the Danube crossed into Mœsia and overran Thracia and Macedonia. At the same time Serbs and Croats made their homes in the ancient Illyricum and Dalmatia. A second great wave of Slav migration, starting from the original home north of the Carpathians, spread east and north,
pushing the Finns before them. Under Scandinavian
rulers these tribes became the nucleus of
the Russian nation. Of this wide area of
conquest they have lost in the process of time the
regions of the Oder and the Elbe, Upper
Austria and part of Carinthia and Styria, of
all of which they were deprived by the
Germans; large parts of Transylvania and Hungary
which fell to Rumanians and Magyars; and
parts of the regions south of the Danube which
later passed to the Greeks and the Turks.