"Slav people" and "Slav" redirect here. For the Slavs of the Early Middle Ages, see Early Slavs. For the First Nations ethnic group, see Slavey. For other uses, see Slav (disambiguation).
Beginning in the mid-19th century, a pan-Slavic movement has emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus of the movement was in the Balkans, whereas the Russian Empire was opposed to it.
Though the majority of Slavs are Christians, some groups, such as the Bosniaks, mostly identify as Muslims. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse, both genetically and culturally, and relations between them may range from "ethnic solidarity to mutual feelings of hostility" — even within the individual groups.[10]
The oldest mention of the Slavic ethnonym is from the 6th century AD, when Procopius, writing in Byzantine Greek, used various forms such as Sklaboi (Σκλάβοι), Sklabēnoi (Σκλαβηνοί), Sklauenoi (Σκλαυηνοί), Sthlabenoi (Σθλαβηνοί), or Sklabinoi (Σκλαβῖνοι),[11] and his contemporary Jordanes refers to the Sclaveni in Latin.[12] The oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic, dating from the 9th century, attest the autonym as Slověne (Словѣне). Those forms point back to a Slavic autonym, which can be reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ, plural Slověne.[citation needed]
The reconstructed autonym *Slověninъ is usually considered a derivation from slovo ("word"), originally denoting "people who speak (the same language)", meaning "people who understand one another", in contrast to the Slavic word denoting "German people", namely *němьcь, meaning "silent, mute people" (from Slavic *němъ "mute, mumbling"). The word slovo ("word") and the related slava ("glory, fame") and sluh ("hearing") originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew- ("be spoken of, glory"), cognate with Ancient Greek κλέος (kléos "fame"), as in the name Pericles, Latin clueō ("be called"), and English loud.[citation needed]
In medieval and early modern sources written in Latin, Slavs are most commonly referred to as Sclaveni or the shortened version Sclavi.[13]
Jordanes, in his work Getica (written in 551 AD),[17] describes the Veneti as a "populous nation" whose dwellings begin at the sources of the Vistula and occupy "a great expanse of land". He also describes the Veneti as the ancestors of Antes and Slaveni, two early Slavic tribes, who appeared on the Byzantine frontier in the early-6th century.
Procopius wrote in 545 that "the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a single name in the remote past; for they were both called Sporoi in olden times". The name Sporoi derives from Greek σπείρω ("to sow"). He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy and believed in one god, "the maker of lightning" (Perun), to whom they made sacrifice. They lived in scattered housing and constantly changed settlement. In war, they were mainly foot soldiers with shields, spears, bows, and little armour, which was reserved mainly for chiefs and their inner circle of warriors.[18] Their language is "barbarous" (that is, not Greek), and the two tribes are alike in appearance, being tall and robust, "while their bodies and hair are neither very fair or blond, nor indeed do they incline entirely to the dark type, but they are all slightly ruddy in color. And they live a hard life, giving no heed to bodily comforts..."[19]
Jordanes describes the Sclaveni as having swamps and forests for their cities.[20] Another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly-impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes.[21]
Menander Protector mentions Daurentius (r. c. 577 – 579) who slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I for asking the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars; Daurentius declined and is reported as saying: "Others do not conquer our land, we conquer theirs – so it shall always be for us as long as there are wars and weapons".[22]
According to eastern homeland theory,[citation needed] prior to becoming known to the Roman world, Slavic-speaking tribes formed part of successive multi-ethnic confederacies of Eurasia – such as the Sarmatian, Hun and Gothic empires. The Slavs emerged from obscurity when the westward movement of Germanic tribes in the 5th and 6th centuries AD (thought[citation needed] to be in conjunction with the movement of peoples from Siberia and Eastern Europe: Huns, and later Avars and Bulgars) started the great migration of the Slavs, who settled the lands abandoned by Germanic tribes who had fled from the Huns and their allies. Slavs, according to this account, moved westward into the country between the Oder and the Elbe-Saale line; southward into Bohemia, Moravia, much of present-day Austria, the Pannonian plain and the Balkans; and northward along the upper Dnieper river. It has also been suggested that some Slavs migrated with the Vandals to the Iberian Peninsula and even to North Africa.[23]
Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in large numbers.[24] Byzantine records note that Slav numbers were so great, that grass would not regrow where the Slavs had marched through[citation needed]. Military movements resulted in even the Peloponnese and Asia Minor being reported to have Slavic settlements.[25] This southern movement has traditionally been seen as an invasive expansion.[26] By the end of the 6th century, Slavs had settled the Eastern Alps regions.[27]
Pope Gregory I in 600 AD wrote to Maximus, the bishop of Salona (in Dalmatia), expressing concern about the arrival of the Slavs,
Latin:Et quidem de Sclavorum gente, quae vobis valde imminet, et affligor vehementer et conturbor. Affligor in his quae jam in vobis patior; conturbor, quia per Istriae aditum jam ad Italiam intrare coeperunt.
English: I am both distressed and disturbed about the Slavs, who are pressing hard on you. I am distressed because I sympathize with you; I am disturbed because they have already begun to arrive in Italy through the entry-point of Istria.[28]
Middle Ages
When Slav migrations ended, their first state organizations appeared, each headed by a prince with a treasury and a defense force. In the 7th century, the Frankish merchant Samo supported the Slavs against their Avar rulers and became the ruler of the first known Slav state in Central Europe, Samo's Empire. This early Slavic polity probably did not outlive its founder and ruler, but it was the foundation for later West Slavic states on its territory.
Pan-Slavism, a movement which came into prominence in the mid-19th century, emphasized the common heritage and unity of all the Slavic peoples. The main focus was in the Balkans where the South Slavs had been ruled for centuries by other empires: the Byzantine Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Venice. Austro-Hungary envisioned its own political concept of Austro-Slavism, in opposition of Pan-Slavism that was predominantly led by the Russian Empire.[30]
As of 1878, there were only three majority Slavic states in the world: the Russian Empire, Principality of Serbia and Principality of Montenegro. Bulgaria was effectively independent but was de jure vassal to the Ottoman Empire until official independence was declared in 1908. The Slavic peoples who were, for the most part, denied a voice in the affairs of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, were calling for national self-determination.[31]
In early 1941, Germany began planning Generalplan Ost, the genocide of Slavs in Eastern Europe which was supposed to start after a major expansion of German concentration camps in occupied Poland and the fall of Stalin's regime.[36][38][39] This plan was to be carried out gradually over 25 to 30 years.[32][38] After an approximate 30 million[40] Slavs would be killed through starvation and their major cities depopulated, the Germans were supposed to repopulate Eastern Europe.[39][41][42] In June 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa, Hitler paused the plan to focus on the extermination of the Jews.[42] However, some of the plan was nonetheless implemented. Millions of Slavs were murdered in Eastern Europe;[42] this includes victims of the Hunger Plan, Germany's intentional starvation of the region,[40] as well as the murders of 3.3. million Soviet prisoners of war.[43] Germany's Heinrich Himmler also ordered his subordinate Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben to start repopulating Crimea, and hundreds of ethnic Germans were forcibly moved to cities and villages there.[44] The Soviet Red Army took back their land from the Germans in 1944.[42] Stephen J. Lee estimates that, by the end of World War II in 1945, the Russian population was about 90 million fewer than it could have been otherwise.[45]
In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, and many former Soviet republics became independent countries.[35][50] Currently, former Soviet states in Central Asia such as Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have very large minority Slavic populations, with most being Russians.[50] Kazakhstan has the largest Slavic minority population.[51]
Proto-Slavic, the supposed ancestor language of all Slavic languages, is a descendant of common Proto-Indo-European, via a Balto-Slavic stage in which it developed numerous lexical and morphophonological isoglosses with the Baltic languages. In the framework of the Kurgan hypothesis, "the Indo-Europeans who remained after the migrations [from the steppe] became speakers of Balto-Slavic".[52]
Proto-Slavic is defined as the last stage of the language preceding the geographical split of the historical Slavic languages. That language was uniform, and on the basis of borrowings from foreign languages and Slavic borrowings into other languages, it cannot be said to have any recognizable dialects, which suggests that there was, at one time, a relatively-small Proto-Slavic homeland.[53]
Slavic linguistic unity was to some extent visible as late as Old Church Slavonic (or Old Bulgarian) manuscripts which, though based on local Slavic speech of Thessaloniki, could still serve the purpose of the first common Slavic literary language.[54]
The alphabets used for Slavic languages are usually connected to the dominant religion among the respective ethnic groups. Orthodox Christians use the Cyrillic alphabet while Catholics use the Latin alphabet; the Bosniaks, who are Muslim, also use the Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet in Serbia. Additionally, some Eastern Catholics and Western Catholics use the Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian and Montenegrin use both the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets. There is also a Latin script to write in Belarusian, called Łacinka and in Ukrainian, called Latynka.[citation needed]
South Slavs from most of the region have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with the local Proto-Balkanic tribes (Illyrian, Dacian, Thracian, Paeonian, Hellenic tribes), and Celtic tribes (particularly the Scordisci), as well as with Romans (and the Romanized remnants of the former groups), and also with remnants of temporarily settled invading East Germanic, Asiatic or Caucasian tribes such as Gepids, Huns, Avars, Goths and Bulgars.[citation needed] The original inhabitants of present-day Slovenia and continental Croatia have origins in early Slavic tribes who mixed with Romans and romanized Celtic and Illyrian people as well as with Avars and Germanic peoples (Lombards and East Goths). The South Slavs (except the Slovenes and Croats) came under the cultural sphere of the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine Empire), of the Ottoman Empire and of the Eastern Orthodox Church and Islam, while the Slovenes and the Croats were influenced by the Western Roman Empire (Latin) and thus by the Catholic Church in a similar fashion to that of the West Slavs.[citation needed]
Genetics
Consistent with the proximity of their languages, analyses of Y chromosomes, mDNA, and autosomal marker CCR5de132 shows that East Slavs and West Slavs are genetically very similar, but demonstrating significant differences from neighboring Finno-Ugric, Turkic, and North Caucasian peoples. Such genetic homogeneity is somewhat unusual, given such a wide dispersal of Slavic populations.[62][63] Together they form the basis of the "East European" gene cluster, which also includes non-Slavic Hungarians and Aromanians.[62][64]
The 2006 Y-DNA study results "suggest that the Slavic expansion started from the territory of present-day Ukraine, thus supporting the hypothesis placing the earliest known homeland of Slavs in the basin of the middle Dnieper".[67] According to genetic studies until 2020, the distribution, variance and frequency of the Y-DNA haplogroupsR1a and I2 and their subclades R-M558, R-M458 and I-CTS10228 among South Slavs correlate with the spread of Slavic languages during the medieval Slavic expansion from Eastern Europe, most probably from the territory of present-day Ukraine and Southeastern Poland.[68][69][70][71][72][73][74]
According to a 2017 study, Slavic speakers like Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians have similar genetic components. Ukrainians and Belarusians have near-equal amounts of two "European components", which are commonly found in North Europe and Caucasus respectively. There is also no evidence of Asian admixture. However, samples of Novosibirsk residents and Old Believers in Siberia have 5-10% Central Siberian ancestry despite being genetically close to European Slavs.[75]
The pagan Slavic populations were Christianized between the 7th and 12th centuries. Orthodox Christianity is predominant among East and South Slavs, while Catholicism is predominant among West Slavs and some western South Slavs. The religious borders are largely comparable to the East–West Schism which began in the 11th century. Islam first arrived in the 7th century during the early Muslim conquests, and was gradually adopted by a number of Slavic ethnic groups through the centuries in the Balkans.[citation needed]
Among Slavic populations who profess a religion, the majority of contemporary Christian Slavs are Orthodox, followed by Catholic. The majority of Muslim Slavs follow the Hanafi school of the Sunni branch of Islam.[76] Religious delineations by nationality can be very sharp; usually in the Slavic ethnic groups, the vast majority of religious people share the same religion.[citation needed]
Throughout their history, Slavs came into contact with non-Slavic groups. In the postulated homeland region (present-day Ukraine), they had contacts with the Iranian Sarmatians and the Germanic Goths. After their subsequent spread, the Slavs began assimilating non-Slavic peoples. For example, in the Northern Black Sea region, the Slavs assimilated the remnants of the Goths.[85] In the Balkans, there were Paleo-Balkan peoples, such as Romanized and Hellenized (Jireček Line) Illyrians, Thracians and Dacians, as well as Greeks and CelticScordisci and Serdi.[86] Because Slavs were so numerous, most indigenous populations of the Balkans were Slavicized. Thracians and Illyrians mixed as ethnic groups in this period.
A notable exception is Greece, where Slavs were Hellenized because Greeks were more numerous, especially with more Greeks returning to Greece in the 9th century and the influence of the church and administration,[87] however, Slavicized regions within Macedonia, Thrace and Moesia Inferior also had a larger portion of locals compared to migrating Slavs.[88] Other notable exceptions are the territory of present-day Romania and Hungary, where Slavs settled en route to present-day Greece, North Macedonia, Bulgaria and East Thrace but assimilated, and the modern Albanian nation which claims descent from Illyrians and other Balkan tribes.[citation needed]
The status of the Bulgars as a ruling class and their control of the land nominally left their legacy in the Bulgarian country and people, but Bulgars were gradually also Slavicized into the present-day South Slavic ethnic group known as Bulgarians. The Romance speakers within the fortified Dalmatian cities retained their culture and language for a long time.[89] Dalmatian Romance was spoken until the high Middle Ages, but, they too were eventually assimilated into the body of Slavs.[90]
In the Western Balkans, South Slavs and Germanic Gepids intermarried with invaders, eventually producing a Slavicized population.[citation needed] In Central Europe, the West Slavs intermixed with Germanic, Hungarian, and Celtic peoples, while in Eastern Europe the East Slavs had encountered Finnic and Scandinavian peoples. Scandinavians (Varangians) and Finnic peoples were involved in the early formation of the Rus' state but were completely Slavicized after a century. Some Finno-Ugric tribes in the north were also absorbed into the expanding Rus population.[65] In the 11th and 12th centuries, constant incursions by nomadic Turkic tribes, such as the Kipchak and the Pecheneg, caused a massive migration of East Slavic populations to the safer, heavily forested regions of the north.[91] In the Middle Ages, groups of Saxon ore miners settled in medieval Bosnia, Serbia and Bulgaria, where they were Slavicized.[citation needed]
Cossacks, although Slavic and practicing Orthodox Christianity, came from a mix of ethnic backgrounds, including Tatars and other peoples.[citation needed] The Gorals of southern Poland and northern Slovakia are partially descended from the originally Balkan Romance speaking Vlachs, who migrated into the region from the 14th to 17th centuries and were quickly absorbed into the local population, especially since the majority of Vlachs were already slavicized and the term became synonymous with Ruthenians. The populations of Moravian Wallachia, Carpathian Ruthenia and parts of northern Slovakia are also descended partially from the Vlachs.[98][99][100] Conversely, some Slavs were assimilated into other populations. Although the majority continued towards Southeast Europe, attracted by the riches of the area that became the state of Bulgaria, a few remained in the Carpathian Basin in Central Europe and were assimilated into the Magyar people. Numerous rivers and places in Romania have a name with Slavic origins.[101]
^Originally Eastern Orthodox, with some groups adopting Byzantine-Rite Catholicism under Polish and Austro-Hungarian rule and reverting to Eastern Orthodoxy starting in the late 19th Century.[citation needed]
^The 53,786 figure is the sum of 53,605 "Bosniaks" + 181 "Bosniaks-Muslims".[112][113]
^Including 16,000 single ethnic identity, 216,000 multiple ethnic identity Polish and Kashubian, 1,000 multiple ethnic identity Kashubian and another in Poland.[106]
^The 280,873 figure is the sum of 278,865 "Montenegrins" + 1,833 "Montenegrins-Serbs" + 175 "Montenegrins-Muslims".[112][113]
^The 20,977 figure is the sum of 20,537 "Muslims" + 183 "Muslims-Bosniaks" + 257 "Muslims-Montenegrins".[112][113]
^The 180,213 figure is the sum of 178,110 "Serbs" + 2,103 "Serbs-Montenegrins".[112][111]
^Živković, Tibor; Crnčević, Dejan; Bulić, Dejan; Petrović, Vladeta; Cvijanović, Irena; Radovanović, Bojana (2013). The World of the Slavs: Studies of the East, West and South Slavs: Civitas, Oppidas, Villas and Archeological Evidence (7th to 11th Centuries AD). Belgrade: Istorijski institut. ISBN978-86-7743-104-4.
^Željko Rapanić; (2013) O početcima i nastajanju Dubrovnika (The origin and formation of Dubrovnik. additional considerations) p. 94; Starohrvatska prosvjeta, Vol. III No. 40, [1]
^Rudnytskyi, Omelian et al. “The 1921–1923 Famine and the Holodomor of 1932–1933 in Ukraine: Common and Distinctive Features.” Nationalities Papers 48.3 (2020): 549–568. Web.
^J.P. Mallory and D.Q. Adams, The Oxford Introduction to Proto-Indo-European and the Proto-Indo-European World (2006), pp. 25–26.
^"Russian". University of Toronto. Retrieved 26 March 2022. Russian is the most widespread of the Slavic languages and the largest native language in Europe.
^A. Zupan; et al. (2013). "The paternal perspective of the Slovenian population and its relationship with other populations". Annals of Human Biology. 40 (6): 515–526. doi:10.3109/03014460.2013.813584. PMID23879710. S2CID34621779. However, a study by Battaglia et al. (2009) showed a variance peak for I2a1 in the Ukraine and, based on the observed pattern of variation, it could be suggested that at least part of the I2a1 haplogroup could have arrived in the Balkans and Slovenia with the Slavic migrations from a homeland in present-day Ukraine... The calculated age of this specific haplogroup together with the variation peak detected in the suggested Slavic homeland could represent a signal of Slavic migration arising from medieval Slavic expansions. However, the strong genetic barrier around the area of Bosnia and Herzegovina, associated with the high frequency of the I2a1b-M423 haplogroup, could also be a consequence of a Paleolithic genetic signal of a Balkan refuge area, followed by mixing with a medieval Slavic signal from modern-day Ukraine.
^Underhill, Peter A. (2015), "The phylogenetic and geographic structure of Y-chromosome haplogroup R1a", European Journal of Human Genetics, 23 (1): 124–131, doi:10.1038/ejhg.2014.50, PMC4266736, PMID24667786, R1a-M458 exceeds 20% in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, and Western Belarus. The lineage averages 11–15% across Russia and Ukraine and occurs at 7% or less elsewhere (Figure 2d). Unlike hg R1a-M458, the R1a-M558 clade is also common in the Volga-Uralic populations. R1a-M558 occurs at 10–33% in parts of Russia, exceeds 26% in Poland and Western Belarus, and varies between 10 and 23% in the Ukraine, whereas it drops 10-fold lower in Western Europe. In general, both R1a-M458 and R1a-M558 occur at low but informative frequencies in Balkan populations with known Slavonic heritage.
^Pamjav, Horolma; Fehér, Tibor; Németh, Endre; Koppány Csáji, László (2019). Genetika és őstörténet (in Hungarian). Napkút Kiadó. p. 58. ISBN978-963-263-855-3. Az I2-CTS10228 (köznevén "dinári-kárpáti") alcsoport legkorábbi közös őse 2200 évvel ezelőttre tehető, így esetében nem arról van szó, hogy a mezolit népesség Kelet-Európában ilyen mértékben fennmaradt volna, hanem arról, hogy egy, a mezolit csoportoktól származó szűk család az európai vaskorban sikeresen integrálódott egy olyan társadalomba, amely hamarosan erőteljes demográfiai expanzióba kezdett. Ez is mutatja, hogy nem feltétlenül népek, mintsem családok sikerével, nemzetségek elterjedésével is számolnunk kell, és ezt a jelenlegi etnikai identitással összefüggésbe hozni lehetetlen. A csoport elterjedése alapján valószínűsíthető, hogy a szláv népek migrációjában vett részt, így válva az R1a-t követően a második legdominánsabb csoporttá a mai Kelet-Európában. Nyugat-Európából viszont teljes mértékben hiányzik, kivéve a kora középkorban szláv nyelvet beszélő keletnémet területeket.
^Fóthi, E.; Gonzalez, A.; Fehér, T.; et al. (2020), "Genetic analysis of male Hungarian Conquerors: European and Asian paternal lineages of the conquering Hungarian tribes", Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 12 (1): 31, Bibcode:2020ArAnS..12...31F, doi:10.1007/s12520-019-00996-0, Based on SNP analysis, the CTS10228 group is 2200 ± 300 years old. The group's demographic expansion may have begun in Southeast Poland around that time, as carriers of the oldest subgroup are found there today. The group cannot solely be tied to the Slavs, because the proto-Slavic period was later, around 300–500 CE... The SNP-based age of the Eastern European CTS10228 branch is 2200 ± 300 years old. The carriers of the most ancient subgroup live in Southeast Poland, and it is likely that the rapid demographic expansion which brought the marker to other regions in Europe began there. The largest demographic explosion occurred in the Balkans, where the subgroup is dominant in 50.5% of Croatians, 30.1% of Serbs, 31.4% of Montenegrins, and in about 20% of Albanians and Greeks. As a result, this subgroup is often called Dinaric. It is interesting that while it is dominant among modern Balkan peoples, this subgroup has not been present yet during the Roman period, as it is almost absent in Italy as well (see Online Resource 5; ESM_5).
^Kushniarevich, Alena; Kassian, Alexei (2020), "Genetics and Slavic languages", in Marc L. Greenberg (ed.), Encyclopedia of Slavic Languages and Linguistics Online, Brill, doi:10.1163/2589-6229_ESLO_COM_032367, retrieved 10 December 2020, The geographic distributions of the major eastern European NRY haplogroups (R1a-Z282, I2a-P37) overlap with the area occupied by the present-day Slavs to a great extent, and it might be tempting to consider both haplogroups as Slavic-specic patrilineal lineages
^Goldblatt, Harvey (December 1986). "Orthodox Slavic Heritage and National Consciousness: Aspects of the East Slavic and South Slavic National Revivals". Harvard Ukrainian Studies. 10 (3/4). Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute: 336–354. JSTOR41036261.
^Zdravkovski, Aleksander; Morrison, Kenneth (January 2014). "The Orthodox Churches of Macedonia and Montenegro: The Quest for Autocephaly". Religion and Politics in Post-Socialist Central and Southeastern Europe. pp. 240–262. doi:10.1057/9781137330727_10. ISBN978-1-349-46120-2.
^The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC by John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, and N. G. L. Hammond, ISBN0-521-22717-8, 1992, page 600: "In the place of the vanished Treres and Tilataei we find the Serdi for whom there is no evidence before the first century BC. It has for long being supposed on convincing linguistic and archeological grounds that this tribe was of Celtic origin."
^Florin Curta's An ironic smile: the Carpathian Mountains and the migration of the Slavs, Studia mediaevalia Europaea et orientalia. Miscellanea in honorem professoris emeriti Victor Spinei oblata, edited by George Bilavschi and Dan Aparaschivei, 47–72. Bucharest: Editura Academiei Române, 2018.
^Magocsi, Paul Robert (2015). With their backs to the mountains: a history of Carpathian Rus' and Carpatho-Rusyns. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN978-615-5053-46-7.
^ abcdefghGłówny Urząd Statystyczny (January 2013). Ludność. Stan i struktura demograficzno-społeczna [Narodowy Spis Powszechny Ludności i Mieszkań 2011] (PDF) (in Polish). Główny Urząd Statystyczny. pp. 89–101. Retrieved 12 December 2014.
^This number is derived from the 2022 total population estimate of 3,816,459, multiplied by 0.501 based on the 2013 50.1% Bosniak share estimate. It is not certain that the Bosniak share was still 50.1% in 2022. The Factbook notes: "Republika Srpska authorities dispute the methodology and refuse to recognize the results." "Bosnia and Herzegovina - the World Factbook". 18 August 2022.
^Kolev, Yordan, Българите извън България 1878 – 1945, 2005, р. 18 Quote:"В началото на XXI в. общият брой на етническите българи в България и зад граница се изчислява на около 10 милиона души./At the beginning of the 21st century, the total number of ethnic Bulgarians in Bulgaria and abroad was estimated at about 10 million people."
^"Hrvatski Svjetski Kongres". Archived from the original on 23 June 2003. Retrieved 1 June 2016., Croatian World Congress, "4.5 million Croats and people of Croatian heritage live outside of the Republic of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina"
^An estimated 57.3% ethnic Czechs (2021) on an estimated 10,705,384 total population (2022) makes about 6.1 million. However, 31.6% was unspecified, so this may be far off the real figure. "Czech Republic". CIA - The World Factbook. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
^"Program političke stranke GIG". Do Nato intervencije na Srbiju, 24.03.1999.godine, u Gori je živelo oko 18.000 Goranaca. U Srbiji i bivšim jugoslovenskim republikama nalazi se oko 40.000 Goranaca, a značajan broj Goranaca živi i radi u zemljama Evropske unije i u drugim zemljama. Po našim procenama ukupan broj Goranaca, u Gori u Srbiji i u rasejanju iznosi oko 60.000.
^Topolinjska, Z. (1998), "In place of a foreword: facts about the Republic of Macedonia and the Macedonian language", International Journal of the Sociology of Language (131): 1–11, doi:10.1515/ijsl.1998.131.1, S2CID143257269
^Including 36,522,000 single declared ethnic identity, 871,000 multiple declared ethnic identities (Polish and another ethnic identity, especially 431,000 Polish and Silesian, 216,000 Polish and Kashubian and 224,000 Polish and another identity)."Przynależność narodowo-etniczna ludności – wyniki spisu ludności i mieszkań 2011"(PDF). stat.gov.pl. 29 January 2013. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
^Poulton, Hugh (1995). Who are the Macedonians?. C. Hurst & Co. Publishers. p. 167. ISBN1-85065-238-4. As often occurs with Yugoslav sources, there appears to be confusion about the numbers as there is about the numbers of Macedonians in Greek Macedonia at present: some Yugoslav sources put the latter figure at 350,000 but more sober estimates put it at 150–200,000.
^"Greece". State.gov. 4 March 2002. Retrieved 4 September 2015.
^"Základné údaje zo sčítania obyvateľov, domov a bytov 2011" [Basic data from the 2011 Census of Population, Houses and Apartments] (PDF). statistics.sk (in Slovak). Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic. July 2012. Archived from the original(PDF) on 14 November 2012. Retrieved 18 August 2022.
Verbenko, Dmitry A.; et al. (2005). "Variability of the 3'ApoB Minisatellite Locus in Eastern Slavonic Populations". Human Heredity. 60 (1): 10–18. doi:10.1159/000087338. PMID16103681. S2CID8926871.