Introduction

Almost two decades ago, in a conference paper entitled “Location in space and time,” the German historian Matthias Springer asked rhetorically how many people in his day were able to distinguish between Slovenia, Slovakia and Slavonia. ¹ His was a tongue-in-cheek remark about the then American President George W. Bush, who, in 1999, had told a Slovak reporter that he had learned about his country from its foreign minister visiting Texas. It turned out that that minister, however, was from Slovenia, not Slovakia. At the beginning of the second millennium, this was a politician’s gaffe de jour. Aware of that, Springer’s audience may have nodded and smiled approvingly. No record exists of the reaction that either the German historian or his audience had to the publication of a map just a few years later in a much used and praised handbook of Byzantine Studies. The map purports to show the Empire’s northern neighbors, and has Slovaks placed next to Avars, Pechenegs and Khazars. ² Meanwhile, prominent scholars write nonchalantly about the “Slavlands” being one of the vast and dynamic areas of Europe “whose transformations owed and brought so much to early medieval civilization.” ³ The same scholars explain that by the time Charlemagne was born, the “eastern reaches of the Frankish territory” were separated from Byzantium by the “dreaded Avars” and, beyond them, by the “Protobulgarian Empire, then expanding over a great swath [sic] of central Europe, from roughly the modern-day Republic of Moldova down into Greece.” ⁴ Others dread the migration of the (early) Slavs, who “broke the unity of the continuity of the continent” or, alternately, the Mongols, who “were almost entirely a negative force, with their tendency to mass killing and brutal exploitation.” ⁵ At least the Slavs receive occasional kudos: “they may have lacked circuses, togas, Latin poetry and central heating, but the Slavs were as successful in imposing a new social order across central and Eastern Europe as the Roman had been to the west and south.” ⁶ By contrast, the “pony-riding Avars” had only “aggressive impulses.” ⁷ Like them, several other “central Asian peoples entered Europe before the age of the barbarian invasions was over,” with the Bulgars and the Magyars at the head of the list. ⁸ Both groups came from “the grasslands where Europe meets Asia.” ⁹ The Magyars at least played “a significant role in western Europe’s eastern frontier,” while the Bulgar(ian)s could consider themselves lucky to have such a charismatic leader as “Boris the Bogomil.” ¹⁰ Under the pressure of the Bulgars and the Moravians from the south and from the east (!), the Poles had to embrace Catholicism. ¹¹ However, it took Emperor Otto II [sic] to establish the archdiocese of Gniezno “on the frontiers of the known world.” ¹² 2Being left out of history was not the only problem of Eastern Europe. In the 860s, the first wave of Viking invaders crossed the Baltic Sea “to what are now the Baltic states.” ¹³ When they got to Russia, they found there the Varangians, who are “another Slavic people.” ¹⁴ Like the Bulgarians, the Rus’ got lucky, though. First, they were able to overcome, albeit only gradually, “many of the Slavic, Lithuanian, Finnish and Magyar peoples who were then living on the steppe.” ¹⁵ Second, having tapped onto the resources of Russia, the Rus’ began to trade with their neighbors. That much results from “the presence of Iranian coins in eastern Europe.” ¹⁶ Moreover, since the Byzantines paid in cash, “Kiev had much more of a money economy than did western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries.” ¹⁷ Third, Cyril and Methodius knew Slavic, and the alphabet called Glagolitic “later developed into Church Slavonic.” ¹⁸ Even the Euchologion of Sinai was “composed in Glagolitic.” ¹⁹ Unfortunately, “successive Germanic and Scandinavian attacks threatened the survival of the principalities of Vladimir and Novgorod” after 1240. ²⁰