of Truth, perhaps is why they call us Orthodox. Christians have appropriated this word for themselves, and call themselves correctly glorifying their God. Perhaps that is why Christians call themselves Slavs. The next meaning of this word is glorious, glorious people. The compatibility of the suffix -yane is consonant with the names of the landscape (glade, drevlyane, kyane, buzhane). Perhaps this version has led many linguists to one of the understandings about the origin of the Slavs. In this case, it is possible that this is the name of one Slavic tribe, which later spread to all peoples (specific tribal ethnonyms for words – Slovaks, Slovenes, Slovenes, Ilmen Slovenes). There is a theory that it comes from the Slovutich River – the poetic name of the Dnieper; Sluya, Polish. The names of the rivers SawaAwa, SɫAwica, Serbian Slavnica. These words go back to the Indo-European root *leleu- meaning «to wash», «to purify». Everything also points to the Lithuanian village of Šlavėnai on the Šlavė River as the exact parallel name of «slovene», formed at the same time from the hydronym.
One of the versions says that the Slavs, Slovene, are people who speak «in words», that is, in our language, in their own language. For comparison, we can take a foreign-speaking tribe – the «dumb» ones. Of similar origin, the self-name of the Albanians is shqiptarët («speaking clearly»). In addition, the wordзыzyk («language») was used in the meaning of «people». The very essence of the meaning of «word», i.e. Slavs are people who have the gift of words, in comparison with other foreign-speaking peoples. According to the theory, this version was common among many peoples, – friend or foe. The author B.A. Rybakov interprets that the Slavs were related to the tribes of the Veneds are «sla» + «vienna», that is, the ambassadors of the Veneds. If we believe the historical data, then the first archaeological Slavic culture is the subclavian culture of the 5th – 2nd centuries BC. The area of distribution of this culture is southern Poland, the north of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the southeast of Germany and the Carpathian region. This place is associated with the separation of the Slavic language from the Balto-Slavic language community. The Slavs bordered on the north with the Balts and Germans. On the east with the Iranian-speaking tribes of the Scythians and Sarmatians, on the south with the Illyrians and Thracians, on the west with the Celts.
According to another version, the self-name «Slavs» goes back to glory – these are «glorious», «famous people». These were the people in question, about whom the rumor speaks, about whom there is fame.
An equally popular theory tells that the «Slavs» originated from the name of the first community of the people, which gave this word spread to other territories in the process of emigration, especially during the Great Migration.
The Slavs migrated to Europe during the Great Migration of Peoples – this is an Indo-European people who were part of some ancient «Germanic-Slavic» community. The community of Slavs, having separated from the Germans, because, having found themselves on the border with wild Eastern peoples, lagged behind in their development, the flourishing Roman civilization became inaccessible to them at that time. This event served as a decline in the development of the community. Archaeology confirms the existence of strong cross-cultural ties between the Germans and the Slavs, and in general, the theory more than deserves respect if you remove the Aryan roots of the Slavs from it.
The first Slavic settlers on the territory of modern Ukraine and Russia were Drevlyans (inhabitants of forests) and Polyans (inhabitants of fields). It is known from the chronicles that at that time each family lived separately.
Little is known about the history of the origin of the Slavs, it is unanimously believed that they existed from 4—5 centuries. From unreliable information, it is known that before Europe, the Slavs lived in Egypt and Ethiopia, India and Palestine, Atlantis and the Arctic. Somewhere in the 1st millennium AD, the Slavs were divided into three groups: eastern, western and southern.
The Eastern Slavs adopted Orthodoxy. Eastern tribes are Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. The Slavic Eastern branch included numerous tribes. The list of names of the tribes of Ancient Russia includes: Vyatichi, Bujan (Volynyan), Drevlian, Dregovich, Duleb, Krivichi, Polochan, Polyana, Radimichi, Slovenes, Tivertsev, Ulich, Croats, Bodrichi, Vislyan, Zlichan, Luzhichan, Lyutich, Pomoryan. After the adoption of Christianity, the Slavs did not willingly say goodbye to the gods. The adoption of Christianity was voluntary. Pagans were not burned at the stake; villages were not cut out, as the Crusader Catholics did with the Western Slavs and Lithuanians. Christianity and paganism existed peacefully and for quite a long time.
The Western Slavs are Pomorians, Obodrichs, Vagras, Polabs, Smolinians, Glinians, Lyutichs, Velets, Ratari, Drevans, Ruyans, Luzhichans, Czechs, Slovaks, Koshubians, Slovenes, Moravians, and Poles. Military actions on the part of the Germans forced them to leave their lands and retreat to the east.
The Southern Slavs adopted Christianity before anyone else because they lived close to Byzantium. The South Slavs included Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Zahlumlans, and Bulgarians. These Slavic peoples settled the lands after predatory raids; they had to experience the strong influence of the Byzantine Empire. Later, some of them mixed with the Turkic-speaking Bulgarians, they gave rise to the Bulgarian kingdom, the predecessor of modern Bulgaria.
What the Slavs had in common was the similarity of the language and the cohesion of the association. The basis of the language was precisely the Gothic ethnosubtract. Linguistically, these are Lusatians, Poles, Litvins-Belarusians, Czechs, Slovaks, Macedonians, Croats, Slovenes, Bosnians, Montenegrins, Serbs, Bulgarians, Rusyns-Ukrainians and Russified Finno-Ugrians. Slavic languages belong to the Indo-European language family.
Slavic tribes began to develop new territories in the 6th-8th centuries. The tribes diverged in three main directions: the southern – the Balkan Peninsula, the western – between the Oder and the Elbe, to the east and northeast of Europe. Many Slavic tribes inhabited the eastern part of Russia. The Eastern Slavs remained on this land and gradually became the main inhabitants of the territory. In Russia, the ancient Slavic tribes were engaged in agriculture, beekeeping, fishing, and were also hunters and shepherds. The Slavs withstood the attacks of the Huns from Central Asia in the 3rd and 4th centuries, as well as the invasions of the Goths from Germany and Sweden. By about 600, the Slavs had become the dominant ethnic group on the Eastern European Plain. By the 7th century, they had established villages along all the major rivers of what is now eastern Russia. In the early middle Ages, the Slavs lived between the Viking kingdoms in Scandinavia, the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, the Byzantines in Turkey and the Mongol and Turkish tribes in Central Asia. The most common version is that the roots of the Slavs go to the lands adjacent to the Danube, and then scattered across Central, Southern and Eastern Europe. In general, scientists agree with the beginning of the penetration of Indo-European tribes close in lifestyle, rituals and language into the center of Europe in the 3rd millennium BC.
The Slavs, as an already established ethnic group, originally appeared in the area of the Laba River (Elbe), their language was mixed with Baltic and Gothic, which gave a peculiarity to their communication. Some Russian historians believe that the Slavs themselves are a mixture of Goths and Balts from the territory of Belarus (that is, Belarusians Gutov-Gepids) and, possibly, Poland. The formation of the Slavs took place in this campaign, in which Iranian-speaking Alans or Sarmatians took part, also possibly a composite group. It is believed that the real Slavs in origin and genetic terms are the Slavs who settled the territories of the present northern Germany (Obodrites, Rusyns, etc.), the Czech Republic and Southern Poland (Lyakhs). The rest of the group are not Slavs, they are considered «Slavs» only because they adopted the language from the Slavs who captured them. Close in location in genetics and anthropology to the Slavs are the Western Balts, Belarusians and Mazurs. Not all other Slavs are Slavs, there is nothing in common between them except the language, Russians, who, being Finno-Ugrians and Turks, are not even Indo-Europeans. Slavic princes and similar Sarmatian Bulgarians who came to us from the Volga are not the «Slavic Slavs». The only language as close as possible to Slavic is Bulgarian (the rest are synthetic). This shows that the Bulgarians have not completed the transition to the Slavic language. This is confirmed in the Novgorod expedition of academician Valentin Yanin in the