The Glorious - A History of the Slavs
From Sarajevo to Red Africa, it was an exciting night! Last night, at the History Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, we had premiere of our latest documentary: The Glorious - A History of the Slavs.
There’s no denying that this is a moment in history when the Slavic world is exerting a huge pull on world affairs. But just as we cannot deny this, we also cannot deny that Slavic history is often a cavernous black hole of the unknown to many - including many of the people that opine most often about affairs in the Slavic world. These two truths should not exist at once, and that is precisely why we produced The Glorious.
About 1500 years ago, according to the currently accepted path of events, the Slavs poured out of what is now the tri-nation area of Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine. They came as shock troops for the Avar, but stayed in the largely depopulated lands of what is now Eastern, Central, and Southern Europe.
Pagan in beliefs, they came to a land that had largely been Christianized (at least officially) and for more than 300 years a new paganism ruled. The Byzantine Reconquista would spend centuries clawing back these areas, and at no point until the Reconquista was finished did it seem assured that Christianity would triumph.
United by the Slavonic language that even today is often remarkably intelligible across Slavic cultures, the Pan-Slavic movement meant to bring those Slavs under the rule of other nations is also often seen much differently than its actual origins. Often only available to outsiders through the window of propaganda set out by the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, a far more diverse picture appears on closer examination.
And, despite all the discussion about threats coming out of the Slavic world, the truth is that the Slavs fight each other far more often than they fight outsiders.
These misconceptions and dark areas are exactly why we brought together a diverse group of experts to discuss the history of the Slavs. History is not static, but it does have patterns. Our experts discuss the full picture so that, as today’s events become tomorrow’s history, we have a way to put them in a proper context that allows for a more full understanding of what is happening and why.
The last month has been dedicated to diving into various aspects of Slavic history here on our Substack, and there is so much more to learn. How did the Poles save Western Europe? What was the Bosnian Church? What was the first Slavic alphabet, and where did it develop? Where is the oldest Slavic church still standing? And how are all these things still affecting the Slavic world - and the entire world - today?