III.

Religion and Culture

Whereas the ancient Slavs probably exhibited considerable racial and cultural homogeneity, the modern Slavic peoples are united mainly by their linguistic affinity and a sense of common origins. Extensive contact with a variety of peoples has profoundly influenced the racial and cultural development of the Slavs. Today, the Slavic groups show a far greater range of diversity in both physical type and culture than is shown by any other Europeans.

Christianity was initially introduced to the Slavs by Greek missionaries during the 9th and 10th centuries. Their religious development, however, was altered by the separation of the Eastern and Western Churches in 1054. The Slavs quickly became the focus of intense rivalry between Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Catholicism and Western culture triumphed among the Poles, Slovaks, and Czechs; later, however, the Czechs were significantly affected by the Reformation, and, because of this, they are today the only Slavic people with a large Protestant minority. In the Balkans, the Slovenes and Croats also gave their allegiance to Roman Catholicism and fell into the sphere of Central European civilization. The Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, and a majority of the Eastern Slavs (Belorussians, Russians, Ukrainians) joined the Orthodox Church, adopting many aspects of Byzantine culture, including an adaptation of the Greek alphabet, which forms what is known as the Cyrillic alphabet.

During the 14th century the Ottoman Turks conquered much of south-eastern Europe; parts of what are now Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia remained under Ottoman rule until 1912. Centuries of Turkish domination had a profound effect on the Balkan Slavs, many of whom were forced to convert to Islam. Today the majority of Slavic Muslims are in Bosnia and southern Bulgaria.

Although the Slavs created a number of medieval kingdoms between the 9th and 11th centuries, much of their subsequent history was characterized by subjugation within foreign states. The present Slavic nations are, to a great extent, the result of the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires following World War I. With the exception of the Czechs, the Slavs remained a predominantly agrarian people until the mid-20th century. After World War II most of the Slavic nations came under the Soviet sphere of influence, and their Marxist governments embarked on ambitious programmes of industrialization and urbanization. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the breakdown of the Soviet Union, the various East European nations moved towards setting up independent democratic governments. In some areas, particularly the former Yugoslavia, this transition ignited conflict among Slavs of different national and religious groups.