Libmonster ID: RS-620
Author(s) of the publication: Yu. V. Bromley

Moscow, Nauka Publ., 1982, 357 p.

In modern conditions, there is a widespread growth of ethnic and national identity. In the world of socialism, this phenomenon is closely linked to the economic, social and cultural progress of nations, which causes each of them a legitimate national pride. If we take into account that the most important component of the ethnic and national identity of each nation is the idea of the common historical past, then it becomes clear why the problems of ethnic history of peoples are now of such acute interest.

Most of these problems relate to the distant past, but they are very complex. Being connected with various aspects of the life of society, they are in a certain sense dualistic, manifesting themselves not only in the objective properties of peoples, but also in their self-consciousness. Meanwhile, when studying the problems of ethnogenesis, the main attention is usually paid to the analysis of objective properties of emerging peoples, primarily objectified in culture. The processes of the emergence of their ethnic identity remain in the shadows. But this is an indispensable component of every ethnic group. It is no accident that when only objectified forms of culture are studied in order to develop ethnogenetic problems, the question of its ethnicity is often open.

This largely determines the importance of studying the formation of the peoples of the world of their ethnic identity, which is a kind of resultant of ethnogenetic processes. In addition, it should be borne in mind that most Western scientists do not consider this issue to be scientific at all: since there were no nations (this is a phenomenon of modern times), they argue, there was no ethnic identity (of any level); there was only religious unity and consciousness of state affiliation, citizenship.


* Authors ' team: L. A. Gindin, V. V. Ivanov, Ya. D. Isaevich, V. D. Korolyuk, G. G. Litavrin, E. P. Naumov, V. E. Orel, A. I. Rogov, G. E. Sanchuk, N. I. Tolstoy, B. N. Florya. Editorial Board: L. V. Zaborovsky (Executive Secretary), V. V. Ivanov, V. D. Korolyuk (Editor-in-chief), G. G. Litavrin (Deputy Editor-in-Chief), N. I. Tolstoy, B. N. Florya.

page 132


In the light of all this, the first experience in Russian Slavic studies of historical and comparative study of one of the central problems of the ancient ethnic history of the Slavs-the formation and development of their ethnic identity in the early Middle Ages - cannot but attract attention.

Since the main source for solving this problem is the evidence of written monuments, the author's team created for its development consisted mainly of historians. At the same time, it also includes linguists; the work makes extensive use of data from ethnolinguistics, toponymy (especially microtoponymy), hydronymy, and archeology (primarily materials about housing, worship, and burial rituals). In this sense, the work is essentially complex.

The authors set themselves the task to determine what forms of self-consciousness existed among certain groups of the Slavic population (and the Slavic community as a whole) in the period preceding the formation of the nation, to identify their gradual transformation, to determine the time of appearance of other forms of self-consciousness characteristic of the early feudal nation, to highlight the specifics of these forms of self-consciousness Finally, establish their place in the general hierarchy of ethnic representations. Based on the modern theory of ethnic communities, which considers not only a nation, but also a tribe as an ethnosocial organism, the authors consider ethnic processes themselves not in isolation, but in an indissoluble connection with the course of socio-economic and socio-political development of Slavic society in the early Middle Ages.

The monograph opens with a description of the ancient Slavic ethnic community, as well as early ethno-linguistic contacts of the Slavs in the Balkans. Further, in separate chapters, the formation of the ethnic identity of such Slavic early feudal peoples as the Bulgarian, Great Moravian, Czech, Serbian, Croatian, Old Russian, Polish and features of the ethnic identity of the Polabian Slavs are studied. The problems of the formation of ethnic identity of such Slavic peoples as Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian, as well as Slovenian, Slovak and Bosnian, are not considered in this paper. This is explained by the fact that some of these peoples had these processes in a later period, at the stage of developed feudalism, while others do not have enough written sources to study them.

The chronological framework of the study is not the same in all chapters, as the analyzed process developed in different parts of the Slavic world at different rates. As a rule, the authors of chapters finish their presentation at the moment when it is already possible to state with certainty, in their opinion, either the emergence of ethnic self-consciousness of the early feudal people with sufficient clarity or a gap in this process associated with the impact of unfavorable conditions.

The linguistic sections of the work are devoted to the problems of the influence of the Balkan substratum (in its linguistic aspect) on the southern Slavs, which is important for determining the specifics in the development of this part of the Slavs, the evolution of the language of the Slavic area in the considered era in comparison with its ethnic development, the influence on the ethnic representations of the Slavs and ethnic processes in the Slavic world of the existence of a single (for a number of nationalities) ancient Slavic literary language and a special Slavic script.

The most important part of the monograph is its conclusion, which not only summarizes the main conclusions, but also attempts to understand the whole process of the formation of ethnic identity among the Slavic peoples in the early Middle Ages. As a result, three stages of the development of ethnic identity are distinguished: self-awareness of the era of existence of a weakly differentiated and relatively limited territory of the Slavic community (this stage is established hypothetically), self-awareness during the period of intensive ethno-social and ethno-cultural differentiation of the Slavic community and the formation of military-territorial tribal unions, and, finally, self-awareness during the formation of early feudal states and the emergence of individual Slavic nationalities.

Especially carefully and comprehensively considered by the authors is the third stage - the stage of formation of a qualitatively new level of self-consciousness-national, i.e., ethnic self-consciousness of the early feudal people. Affirmation of the consciousness of belonging to a special soprovozhda nationality-

page 133


As it is specifically noted in a number of sections of the monograph, the elk was caused by the disintegration and disappearance of the old forms of tribal and union-tribal self-consciousness, which was replaced by the consciousness of territorial and state affiliation, sometimes not associated with any ethnic representations. This process spread to the entire population, affecting the consciousness of almost all social strata. According to the authors, not all Slavic peoples completed the process of forming national identity by the beginning of the 12th century.

The surviving sources allow us to study the ethnic self-consciousness, first of all, of certain strata of the ruling class, which in a number of respects could differ from the self-consciousness of other, broader social strata. The authors distinguish such features as the idea of a close connection of an ethnic group with a certain territory and state, with the presence of laws and customs characteristic of this state. The connection between the state and the people, which can be traced here, was manifested in the development of the cult of "holy patrons"- patrons of both the people and the "land", i.e., the state. Contrary to the opinion sometimes expressed by researchers (especially Western Slavs) that in the early Middle Ages the people were identified only with the ruling class, the authors state that in the ideas of medieval ideologists of the early XII century, representatives of various social strata were included in the composition of the people.

The degree of linguistic differentiation of the Slavs in the early Middle Ages was objectively quite insignificant - one of the most significant conclusions of the monograph, made simultaneously by historians and linguists. Accordingly, the components of the self-consciousness of the Slavic peoples did not yet include the idea of a particular language of each of them. In the early Middle Ages, the idea remained that all Slavic peoples (already referred to as special ethnonyms) nevertheless speak one, Slavic, language. In this fact, the authors see a certain difference in the ethnic identity of the early feudal people. However, this is even more typical for ethnic groups of classless societies.

In general, the monograph clearly shows a comprehensive approach to the problem under study, which is becoming increasingly characteristic of Soviet Slavic studies. Attention is also drawn to the authors ' widespread use of the modern theory of ethnos. At the same time, since many of the ethnic terms used in this work are relatively recently introduced into scientific use, it would be useful to make additional explanations about some of them; in particular, it would be necessary to clarify whether the concepts of "ethnosocial organism" and "ethnopolitical organism" are used synonymously (see, for example, p. 28) or not. a content distinction is made between them. In addition, the authors give reason to conclude that they contrast ethnosocial organisms and tribes (p. 253). Meanwhile, in another place they rightly consider tribes as one of the types of ethnosocial organisms (p. 7).

As you know, ethnic identity is formed in the "we" - "they" opposition. And this fact is repeatedly emphasized in the work (in particular, it is noted that self-consciousness is usually more clearly manifested in areas of interethnic contacts). Nevertheless, it seems that the authors should have paid more attention to those ethnic groups with which the Slavic peoples were in direct contact during the period under review. The general ethnic situation in which the formation of ethnic identity of the studied nationalities took place turned out to be somewhat impoverished. It is also a pity that by focusing on various types of ethno-social organisms, the authors practically left out of their field of view the ethnic groups that were "fragments" of the Slavic peoples.

When describing such a complex phenomenon as the formation of ethnic identity, the authors, as a rule, show due caution in their conclusions (all the more necessary since in many cases they are forced to rely on very scanty and contradictory evidence from sources). Still, not all of their findings are convincing enough. Such is the statement that " in the course of historical development, the descendants of the Moravians have lost ...your own ethnonym" (p. 94). After all, it is possible that the ethnonym "Slovene" ("Slovaks"), which now refers to the Slavic population of the modern territory of the former Great Moravian state, could

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This is supported not only by the great stability of ethnonyms, but also by the fact that the sources of that time, when ethnically describing the inhabitants of Great Moravia, call them Slovenes.

Although the authors try to limit their problem-related task to the sphere of ethnic identity, they inevitably find themselves forced to go beyond this sphere, often considering many other aspects of the origin of individual Slavic peoples. Of course, such excursions can not be expected to be exhaustive. But sometimes they seem too one-sided. In particular, this applies to the question of the main ethnic components of the formation of the Bulgarian nationality. In the corresponding chapter, this question is somewhat simplified, the formation of the Bulgarian nation is actually reduced to a symbiosis of two ethnic groups-Slavs and proto-Bulgarians (p. 50). Meanwhile, there was a third important ethnic component of this process - Thracian. As the author of the chapter admits, "traces of the influence of Thracian culture on the Slavs (including the Bulgarians) are indubitable" (p. 53). Apparently, the anthropological materials also show that the Thracian substratum played a significant role in the formation of the Bulgarian ethnic group.

It seems quite obvious that these remarks relate to the remaining controversial issues of the very complex problem of the origin of the Slavic peoples. In general, and this is the main thing - the peer-reviewed work raised its development to a new, much higher level both in methodological and concrete historical terms. The monograph showed that, contrary to the still fairly common idea of the emergence of ethnic groups among the Slavs almost immediately after their settlement, in reality this process was by no means a one-time act, but covered a significant period of time, proceeding very unevenly in different regions of the Slavic world. Attention is also drawn to the idea of two types of hierarchy of ethnic identity (p. 8), classification of ethnonyms (p. 256), etc.

Now it is important to extend the successful study of the ethnic identity of the Slavic peoples to later periods of their history. After all, the corresponding problems, while remaining poorly developed, are of great scientific interest.

Academician Yu. V. Bromley

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Yu. V. Bromley, DEVELOPMENT OF ETHNIC IDENTITY OF SLAVIC PEOPLES IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES // Belgrade: Library of Serbia (LIBRARY.RS). Updated: 29.01.2025. URL: https://library.rs/m/articles/view/DEVELOPMENT-OF-ETHNIC-IDENTITY-OF-SLAVIC-PEOPLES-IN-THE-EARLY-MIDDLE-AGES (date of access: 08.02.2025).

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