How Slavic peoples perish

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Somewhere this absorption looks like a natural process of one people entering another (due to mixed marriages, quantitative factors, wars, other reasons), and somewhere - the result of a tough state policy of forcibly imposing a different ethnic identity.

In some cases, assimilation lasts a very long time and affects only a small part of the population, not completely absorbing one or another group. In others, it is swift and fast. Sometimes, under the influence of external factors, a new Slavic people is formed with completely special cultural traits, political aspirations and character. Consider the forced and little-known attempts to include large Slavic national groups (with varying degrees of success) in other nationalities, reaching the problems of modern Russia.

The deeds of days gone by

One of the earliest examples of the assimilation of a large number of the Slavic population was the Slavs in the territory of modern Greece (especially the Peloponnese peninsula). This process was fully completed by the 11th century, where only to the north did the Slavs manage to preserve their national identity. Another well-known example is the almost complete absorption by the Germans of numerous Polabian Slavs, who from the 12th century fell under the rule of German princes and bishops. Due to the lack of a well-developed written culture of its own and the rapid degeneration of the Slavic nobility into the German elite, Germanization accelerated. As a result, Slavic influence in the east of modern Germany (the entire territory of the former GDR) was reduced to almost zero by the XIV century. Only the Lusatian Serbs (Sorbs), living on the outskirts of strategic roads and far from the coast, were able to survive in a very small (≈50 thousand) form to this day. The Slavs of the Eastern Alps found themselves in a similar situation, whose ethnic territory by the XIV century had decreased by two-thirds.

The consequences of the large-scale absorption of the Slavic population by the ancestors of modern Romanians and Moldavians are especially visible in the language of these peoples. Until now, more than 25% of their vocabulary is Slavonic. And if in Romania the South Slavic Bulgarian elements are stronger, then in Moldova - the East Slavic Russians. In historical Bessarabia, in ancient times, whole Slavic tribes generally lived - the Ulic and Tivertsy. The Slavs there had a significant impact on the formation of spiritual and material culture. Until the 18th century, the Slavic population accounted for one third of modern Moldova. Due to the large number of Russians in a number of medieval documents, this territory was even called Rusovlachia.

Under the Ottoman yoke

From the beginning of the 15th century, the southern Slavs began to experience discrimination on themselves, who fell under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. It was also reinforced by the violent Islamization carried out by official Istanbul until the end of the state's existence. Among them, special ethnic groups began to form, imitating the Turks (in religion, clothing, demeanor, way of life) and having lost their previous signs of identification. Over time, some of them completely entered the Turkish ethnos, and the other part retained their identity, mainly because of their language. This is how the Turchens arose - Bosnians, Gorans, Sanjakli (Muslim Serbs), Torbesh (Muslim Macedonians) and Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians), who, due to the crisis and metamorphosis of identity, almost always became fierce opponents of their former peoples, of which they ancestors recently "left".

In contrast to them, there are also Slavic Turchens who deliberately became part of the Turkish nation and switched to the Turkish language: according to various estimates, in today's Turkey there are from 1 to 2 million people. They live mainly in Eastern Thrace (the European part of the country, where the Slavs have been the majority since the 13th century) and are part of the indigenous population of Istanbul. After the liberation of Bulgaria and Serbia from the Ottoman yoke, an attempt was made in these countries to dissimulate - then some of the Turchians returned to Christianity and full Slavic identity.

In the Danube monarchy

In Austria-Hungary, Germanization was the official policy, since the Germans themselves accounted for only 25% of the total population of the state, and various Slavs - all 60%. Assimilation was carried out mainly with the help of schools and various pseudo-historical theories, according to which the Czechs, for example, are Germans who have switched to the Slavic language, Slovenes are "old Germans", etc. And although this policy did not bring particularly tangible results, which its ideologists were strenuously pursuing, as a result, part of the country was still Germanized.

The Austro-Hungarian authorities sought to assimilate the Slavs of the empire, who constituted the majority of the country's population.

The Hungarians did not lag behind. From the time of their appearance in Europe, they managed to seize the ancestral Slavic lands, and also include a huge number of Rusyns, Slovaks and Serbs in their composition. Those Slavs who betrayed their roots and took the position of the Hungarian state, adopting the culture, the Hungarian language and self-consciousness, were disparagingly called "Magyarons" by the former tribesmen. The pressure increased especially from the middle of the 19th century. The main method of assimilation of subordinate peoples, the Hungarian rulers made the spread of their language. The Magyars managed to assimilate most of the Slavic intelligentsia and part of the peasants. So, for example, the national Hungarian poet and people's leader Sandor Petofi (Alexander Petrovich) was one half Serb, and the other half Slovak. In Hungary, there are still compact groups of Christians of the Eastern Rite (Greek Catholics) among the population. These are the very former Slavs-Rusyns who have lost their native language.

Past century

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Bulgarians in Greece underwent assimilation. Due to the desire of the Greek government to tear them away from Bulgaria, the writing of the local Slavs was translated into the Latin alphabet. During World War II, the processes of assimilation of the Slavic population in Europe took on a threatening character. The government of the Third Reich approved, for example, the program of the "Final Solution of the Czech Question", which provided for the Germanization of the Western Slavs. The famous Czech writer Milan Kundera describes the history of his people of that period as follows: “All the time they wanted to prove to us that we have no right to exist, that we are Germans speaking the Slavic language”. Similar plans for absorption existed in relation to other nationalities - Poles, Slovaks, Slovenes and others.

Since the outbreak of World War II, Kosovo has been Albanized. Mainly by the government from above, in particular, the Slavic endings of the surnames "-ich" were canceled, geographical names were changed. First of all, the Muslim Slavs and the Goranians were subjected to it, while the Serbs were simply killed or expelled. The ethnicity of Rafchan is an example of a still incomplete Albanization. This group now has an Albanian identity, but to this day considers the native South Slavic language, which is called "Rafchan" or "Nashen".

The process of inter-Slavic assimilation, which was successful due to the closeness of kindred peoples, can be considered a special type of assimilation of one people by another. At one time, to strengthen the state, the Russian Empire carried out Russification in Poland and on other outskirts. After coming to power, the Bolsheviks began to pursue a diametrically opposite policy of de-Russification. So, for example, schools, institutes, theaters and even signboards in the former Novorossiya and Little Russia were now to be exclusively on the "mov". Ukrainization reached such proportions that it was impossible to get a job without knowing Ukrainian (and almost no one from the city dwellers knew it), and for missing the factory language courses where they studied it, they were fired. The Nazis continued the policy of Ukrainization by occupying Ukraine.

After the end of World War II and the annexation of Subcarpathian Rus to the Ukrainian SSR, Rusyns were forcibly assimilated, and the nationality of "Ukrainian" was automatically recorded in their passports, the Soviet authorities. At an accelerated pace, birth certificates were falsified, they recorded that all residents of Transcarpathia were born in Ukraine (and not in Austria-Hungary or Czechoslovakia). All schools were urgently translated into Ukrainian. To strengthen Ukrainian influence in the region, the state strongly supported the resettlement of ethnic Ukrainians from the central regions of Ukraine and Galicia, especially those with pedagogical education.

Contemporary Russian outlandishness

The national policy of modern Russia almost completely copies the course of the times of the USSR in its worst manifestations, not paying attention to the fact that in the new realities the ethnic composition and the quantitative ratio of nationalities have changed significantly. And the rhetoric of the past still remained. The official authorities became more afraid of infringing on the national interests of minorities than the main population of the country. Hence - a unique and rare in history process of artificially overstating the influence and presence of nationalities in the socio-political and cultural life of the state, as well as the partial assimilation of the titular people within the country by small ethnic groups, which was especially evident in the 1990s and 2000s. At the same time, new, often completely invented nationalities began to appear ("Siberians", "Orcs", "Cossacks" and others), as well as the search by some citizens of a "second identity" (Russian people were looking for some great-grandfather of a Greek or Jew in their family, they began to sincerely realize themselves as these Greeks and Jews, choosing a more advantageous identity for life in Russia).

Due to the weakness of politics on the national issue, the lack of a clear and openly declared Russian identity among the top leadership of the Russian Federation and other equally important reasons, on the one hand, a huge mass of people has arisen, which is quickly losing the clear features of Russian identity. Some part generally decides to voluntarily assimilate into other nations. For example, the desire of a certain number of Russian women to marry Tozheressians hurts the number of our people no less than the natural decline in the population. Such women, “incubators of multinationality,” in interethnic marriages give birth to children with often anti-Russian identification (there are exceptions, but they are rare). The authorities and most of the media are encouraging multiculturalism, which diminishes the number of ethnic Russians, which has already shown its failure in Europe. On the other hand, a Russian national revival began from below, the state leadership began to fear the significant successes of which. By the way, there are countries in the world that at the official level understand the danger of assimilation of the titular people. For example, in Israel, with the support of the government and the Jewish Agency "Sokhnut", they launched a propaganda campaign of the "Masa" project, the purpose of which is to explain to Jews the dangers of mixed marriages.