This 2006 book documents developments in the countries of eastern Europe, including the rise of authoritarian tendencies in Russia and Belarus, as well as the victory of the democratic 'Orange ...Revolution' in Ukraine, and poses important questions about the origins of the East Slavic nations and the essential similarities or differences between their cultures. It traces the origins of the modern Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian nations by focusing on pre-modern forms of group identity among the Eastern Slavs. It also challenges attempts to 'nationalize' the Rus' past on behalf of existing national projects, laying the groundwork for understanding of the pre-modern history of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The book covers the period from the Christianization of Kyivan Rus' in the tenth century to the reign of Peter I and his eighteenth-century successors, by which time the idea of nationalism had begun to influence the thinking of East Slavic elites.
This book offers an alternative approach to the problem of Slavic ethnicity in south-eastern Europe between c. 500 and c. 700, from the perspective of current anthropological theories. The conceptual ...emphasis here is on the relation between material culture and ethnicity. The author demonstrates that the history of the Sclavenes and the Antes begins only at around 500 AD. He also points to the significance of the archaeological evidence, which suggests that specific artefacts may have been used as identity markers. This evidence also indicates the role of local leaders in building group boundaries and in leading successful raids across the Danube. Because of these military and political developments, Byzantine authors began employing names such as Sclavines and Antes in order to make sense of the process of group identification that was taking place north of the Danube frontier. Slavic ethnicity is therefore shown to be a Byzantine invention.
The Chronicle of the Priest of Duklja is a mysterious narrative source covering the Slavic presence on the Adriatic coast and its hinterland. This study offers a new interpretation of the text, based ...on the recognition of the figures of model rulers.
The authors comprehensively analyze all the available information regarding the ritual practices of Slavic pre-Christian religion that can be found in written medieval texts. After investigating ...every kind of reference to such practices, they offer a reconstruction of Slavic pre-Christian religion on the basis of these medieval testimonies. In doing so, they overcome the challenges presented by the fact that all of these sources are indirect, since the Slavs did not acquire literacy until they became Christians. Thus the writers of these texts mostly professed a monotheistic religion, being Christians and in some cases Muslims. The picture that they offer is biased and determined by their own faith. The present analysis innovatively combines testimonies from every Slavic area (Eastern, Western, and Southern), showing their mutual correspondences and emphasizing the relationship between the Slavic pre-Christian religion and its Indo-European roots.
The Civilisational Identity of the Bulgarians: Traditional and Contemporary Dilemmas The article deals with the civilisational identity of the Bulgarian people, and the place of the Bulgarians on the ...civilisation map of Europe. The main problem here is the nature of their civilisational identity: they do not have precise geographical coordinates – they are the result of subjective human perception. In addition, the issue of civilisational identity is a matter of political propaganda. From their historical traditions, the Bulgarians inherited several macro cultural elements, (Proto-)Bulgarian, Slavic, Orthodox, Balkan and European. Considered separately, each of them can form the base required to construct a framework of contemporary Bulgarian identity and its cultural relationship with other nations in Europe. Some of these elements constitute strong spiritual foci around which their own cultural and civilisational circles are formed. On this basis, the Bulgarian nation enters into various spatial and cultural-historical configurations. Among them, there is a hierarchy, which in today’s open society primarily depends on the values and self-determination of each person. On the other hand, the interwoven cultural elements on the Bulgarian territory enable some researchers to talk about transitional identity structures – Bulgarian-Slavic, Slavic-Orthodox, Balkan-Slavic, Balkan-European and others. The author also investigates the geopolitical concept of the “civilisational choice”, which is supposed to determine the place of Bulgaria and the Bulgarians in Europe and in the world: is it in the West Euro-Atlantic sphere or in Eurasia?
Currently, the problem of identifying and comparing mythological characters from different folklore traditions remains relevant. Revealing common elements of mythological characters is necessary for ...compiling folklore indexes and mapping specific motives and plots associated with them. In this article, this problem will be examined using the example of the Polish zmora and other similar Slavic mythological characters. It attempts to compare the zmora from Polish folklore with mythological characters of this type from other Slavic traditions, relying on the similarities and differences of the motives, as well as functions and differential features associated with them. The article shows the features which are common for the Polish zmora and similar characters in Czech, Slovak, Moravian and Lusatian folk culture, Bulgarian, Croatian and Serbian traditions, as well as in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian folk culture. The author concludes that the West Slavic mora and the South Slavic mora are quite close to the Polish zmora in terms of the image and the plot-motive fund, and on this basis, the Western and South Slavs represent one ethnocultural area. Meanwhile, the Eastern Slavs do not have a corresponding character, so the motives and functions associated with such mythological characters among the Western and South Slavs are absent on the East Slavic territory or are passed to other characters.
The belief that only written records of ancient Greek science are relevant to our knowledge of past science and that there is nothing outside of that knowledge that is not contained in written ...sources is misleading. The ancient Slavs were able to develop their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy independently of ancient Greek science. Neglecting the knowledge of the ancient Slavs in comparing it with that of the ancient Greeks is misguided and cannot lead to useful findings.
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