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Ivanov A.O. [Military democracy — poetry, glory and origin of the Slavs] World of Science. Series: Sociology, Philology, Cultural Studies, 2024, Vol. 15, No. 4. Available at: https://sfk-mn.ru/PDF/03FLSK424.pdf (in Russian).

Military democracy — poetry, glory and origin of the Slavs

Ivanov Alexei Olegovich
E-mail: lesha-ivanov@yandex.ru

Abstract. We study typological parallels in societies that are in a state of military democracy. The first thing we pay attention to is the formation of a social group of poets praising the exploits of their warriors. Speaking in poetic glosses becomes prestigious and this, judging by Arabic, ancient Greek, ancient Indian Prakrits, etc., actually leads to the creation of a new language. We also analyze one of the main terms used in laudatory glosses of Indo-European poetics — the polysemantic lexeme «slava». The central point of our reasoning is the justification of the origin of the ethnonym «Slavs» from this lexeme. In addition to the obvious homophony of these words, we consider a number of linguistic factors and historical sources indicating the presence of Slavic-speaking peoples surrounded by the Huns and Ostrogoths. We present arguments that until the middle of the 5th century. the term «slava» denoted the language in which the Proto-Slavic communities spoke within themselves and with each other. The collapse of the Hunnic state after the death of Attila in 453, the wars for his succession, and the departure of the Ostrogoths from the Pannonian Valley in 470 led to the Proto-Slavs, who participated in the wars on the side of the Huns and Ostrogoths and in the economic provision of their troops, gaining ethnic independence as «Slavens», i.e. «people of glory». The formation of Slavic military democracy led to a change in the semantics of this ethnonym from formally linguistic to laudatory and heroic. We also touch upon the issue of Slavic identity and show that some Slavic-speaking communities learned that they were Slavs only after acquiring writing.

Keywords: military democracy; glory; proto-Slavs; Huns; Ostrogoths; Slavs; ethnic identity

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