Examining the Slavic Identity in the Middle Ages: Perception of Common Sense of Slavic Community in Polish and Bohemian Medieval Chronicles

The concept of Slavic solidarity is taken by some political or ideological movements as obviosity. In its later tradition it is based mainly on the language and cultural solidarity emphasised by romantic (and earlier) literature. The very origin of closeness of nowadays (and historical) Slavic nations is there traced to assumed bio-historical root. From the perspective of scientific analysis the examination of the whole term Slav should be done at first place. In medieval Polish and Bohemian chronicles we can observe a growing phenomenon of the identification with wider name Slav and with the common history of Slavs as well. In the Chronicle of Greater Poland, followed by chronicle of the Pulkava of Radenín and with the work of Jan Długosz was defined the model of biblical genealogy of Slavic nations. The solidarity was based mainly on the perception of similar languages and geographical closeness and was transformed in a literary way into blood relations. Reflection of this literary concept in foreing affairs is hardly to declare, but some dynastical representatives used the intelectual concept in a literary propaganda of their goals

Marquette University Slavic Institute Papers NO. 19

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Отголоски язычества в декоре уральской избы

Samples of a wooden carving of the XIX–XX centuries on Central Ural Mountains comprise basic symbolics of mythology of ancient Slavs. In the traditional dwelling elements of a mythological picture of the world are obviously traced. The myth represents model of a macrocosmos and the microcosm entered in it — the person. The traditional dwelling both in practical, and in symbolical aspect personifies the same relations. The mythological symbolics used as a decor had to fix, on the one hand, symbolical value of the house as center, Space as vital space of a sort, family, separately taken person. On the other hand, a number of symbols had to indicate specific preferences of some certain values of life of the owner of the house which, in turn, were caused by practical activity.Образцы деревянной резьбы XIX–XX веков на Урале представляют собой основную символику мифологии древних славян. Наиболее явно рудименты языческих культов были представлены в традиционном оформлении крестьянской избы. В избе прослеживаются элементы мифологической картины мира. Дом рассматривается и как центр пространства, и как элемент мироздания. Отсюда идет использование оберегающих знаков, защищающих проживающих в избе от разного вмешательства, идущего из внешнего мира

Христианизация западных славян и первые христианские храмы в Моравии

The religious ideas of the Western Slavs appear to us in the testimonies of Cosmas of Prague, who described Czech settlers. According to him, the Czechs, as the heathen worship waters, fire, rivers, trees, rocks, mountains, hills, and sometimes homemade graven images. The process of Christianization of the current territory of the Czech Republic took place in the intensity of the entire Moravian lands under the original influence of orthodox preachers. Striking examples of these events are historical and architectural sites of Great Moravia.Религиозные представления западных славян предстают перед нами в свидетельствах Козьмы Пражского, который описывал чешских поселян. По его словам, чехи, как язычники, поклонялись водам, огню, деревьям, рекам, горам, камням, холмам, а порой и самодельным истуканам. Процесс христианизации территории нынешней Чешской республики интенсивней всего проходил в Моравских землях под изначальным влиянием православных проповедников. Яркими примерами этих событий являются историко-архитектурные объекты Великой Моравии

Paleo-Balkan and Slavic Contributions to the Genetic Pool of Moldavians

Moldova has a rich historical and cultural heritage, which may be reflected in the current genetic makeup of its population. To date, no comprehensive studies exist about the population genetic structure of modern Moldavians. To bridge this gap with respect to paternal lineages, we analyzed 37 binary and 17 multiallelic (STRs) polymorphisms on the non-recombining portion of the Y chromosome in 125 Moldavian males. In addition, 53 Ukrainians from eastern Moldova and 54 Romanians from the neighboring eastern Romania were typed using the same set of markers. In Moldavians, 19 Y chromosome haplogroups were identified, the most common being I-M423 (20.8%), R-M17* (17.6%), R-M458 (12.8%), E-v13 (8.8%), RM269* and R-M412* (both 7.2%). In Romanians, 14 haplogroups were found including I-M423 (40.7%), R-M17* (16.7%), RM405 (7.4%), E-v13 and R-M412* (both 5.6%). In Ukrainians, 13 haplogroups were identified including R-M17 (34.0%), I-M423 (20.8%), R-M269* (9.4%), N-M178, R-M458 and R-M73 (each 5.7%). Our results show that a significant majority of the Moldavian paternal gene pool belongs to eastern/central European and Balkan/eastern Mediterranean Y lineages. Phylogenetic and AMOVA analyses based on Y-STR loci also revealed that Moldavians are close to both eastern/central European and Balkan-Carpathian populations. The data correlate well with historical accounts and geographical location of the region and thus allow to hypothesize that extant Moldavian paternal genetic lineages arose from extensive recent admixture between genetically autochthonous populations of the Balkan-Carpathian zone and neighboring Slavic group

German-language culture and the Slav stranger within

The aim of this article is to delineate the symbolic position of the Slavonic, and in particular the Czech, in German-language Austrian culture of the period 1890–1940. My approach will be informed by psychoanalysis. A subsidiary aim is to try to demonstrate uses of psychoanalysis in the study of central European culture. What is at issue here is an historical set of social power relations that find their expression in culture, that is to say, in art and literature, and that can be interpreted by psychoanalysis. All too often psychoanalysis avoids the social and the political outside the framework of the individual and her or his predictable traumas emanating from domestic life.1 This article, however, constitutes an exercise in inter- and intra-cultural psychoanalysis: intra-cultural as an investigation of psychoanalytic dynamics within German-language culture; inter-cultural as an examination of the relationship between German-language and Slav cultures in psychoanalytic terms

The Slavic-Orthodox community in Azerbaijan: the identity and social position of a once-dominant minority

Based on recent empirical findings and field observations, this article examines the Slavic-Orthodox community in Azerbaijan. Nowadays numbering about one and a half percent of the population, the main threat to its continuity is not persecution nor pressure to assimilate, but an ageing ethnic-demographic base which is not going to be kept up to level by either natural replacement or new adherents. Orthodox Christianity will nonetheless keep a presence in the country, yet its base of adherents will unavoidably become more heterogeneous

The Religious Beliefs and Practices of the Ancient Slavs

The religion of the pagan Slavs seems to have been a purely domestic religion with the idea of a state religion not entering into the S1avic concept of one’s relation to the supreme being. The religion of the early Slavs has also been characterized as of the non-fanatical type. It is a question as to whether such a statement permits of a broad application. As a matter of fact Orloff limits it to the religion or the Southern Slavs maintaining that it was of a purer kind than the Scandinavian or that of the northwestern Slavs

The slav reception of Gregory of Nyssa’s works: an overview of early slavonic translations

Although a lot has been written about the "translatio" of Byzantine Christianity in the mediaeval Slavia orthodoxa, advancing a critical assessment of the Slav reception of the Greek Fathers remains a precarious undertaking. Although the mere listing of patristic texts in Slavonic translation obviously falls short of the demands of the subject, a notion of the corpus of translated texts is called for. The modest aim of the present article, which deals with the reception of Gregory of Nyssa among the orthodox Slavs, is first and foremost to establish the nature and range of the material reception of his writings by means of an overview of Old Slavonic translations of his works and of substantiated traces of influence of his writings on Slavonic texts, from the time of the Moravian mission (863) throughout the Slav Middle Ages