SLAVS IN THE POLITICAL SITUATION OF EARLY EUROPEAN MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Abstract

The article examines the political role, integration, and representation of Slavic communities in the early European Middle Ages, roughly from the sixth to the eleventh century. On the one hand, it reconstructs the factual political structures in which Slavic‑speaking groups participated: migration and settlement in the Balkans and Central Europe, formation of tribal unions and early states, relations with empires such as Byzantium, the Frankish realm, the Avar and Bulgar khaganates, and the emergence of polities like Great Moravia, early Rus’, and the Elbe Serb principalities . On the other hand, it analyzes how Slavs were perceived and instrumentalized in Byzantine, Latin, and Arabic sources, from notions of “democracy” and “barbarian raiders” to their depiction as allies, tributaries, and frontier populations. Special attention is paid to the interplay between external imperial strategies and internal processes of social stratification, militarization, trade (including slave trade), and urban development that underpinned Slavic political agency. The article argues that early medieval Slavs were not a politically “primitive” background to imperial expansion, but diverse actors whose military power, control of trade routes, and capacity for coalition formation were crucial to the political configuration of early medieval Europe.