Великая Хорватия. Этногенез и ранняя история славян Прикарпатского региона

Summary

The permanent contacts with the Iranian-speaking peoples, mostly Sarmathians, were the important feature of the ethnogenesis and the early history of the Slavs in the region near the East Carpathians during the period of their coexistence for several centuries.

The appearance of the ancient tribal union of the Croats with the name of probably Iranian origin had become one of the results of ethnical and cultural synthesis of the Slavs and the Iranians. The Slavs of the Upper Dniester having become the part of the Croatian tribal group inhabited the new territories in Central Europe and the Balkans during the process of the Great Slavonic settlement.

De administrando imperio by Constantine the Porphyrogenitus is the first written test containing the information on the origin and the history of Croats' settling, Great and White Croatias. Both the names, "Great" and "White Croatia", correspond to the traditional geographical nomination known to the contemporary science. Decoding of the symbols of the colour in the names of the peoples and the lands is based mostly on the analogies in the Sino-Tibetan, Iranian, Turkic and Mongolian languages, while the closest parallels for the names with the adjective great are found in the European toponymy.

And still, the simultaneous use of several symbolical names to produce the ethnical and geographical names must be accepted as artificial one. The case of Constantine the Porphyrogenitus' Great and White Croatia ("Great Croatia, called White…") is explained by the intention to agree the contradiction between different, sometimes competitive, versions of the history of the Croats.

The name "Great Croatia" origins in the common Slavonic and European tradition connecting the meanings great and old to indicate the territory the people had lived before at, pre-motherland, sometimes having been already abandoned and kept only in memory.

Byzantine emperor's information on the early Croatian histoiy corresponds to and concerns the meaning of "Great Croatia" as the territory of pre-motherland of the Croatian people the following migrating resulted in new names, that of the land — "White Croatia", and that of the people "White Croats", took place from.

The ideas of Great and White Croatia differ not only as the historical and typological ones, they do not mean the same geographical place. This conclusion is based on the direct indications of Constantine himself compared with the other sources. If one can surely put White Croatia with its White Croats on the Upper Elbe and the Upper Vistula, the land of Great Croatia, the historical pre-motherland for the Croats must be looked for to the East of the Carpathians and may be in Transcarpathia.

The ancient Croats cannot be connected with tribes of the Ants' group, representatives of the Penkovo archaeological culture only. The region the Croats lived in covers the Sclavenian area of the Prague-Corchak archaeological culture including the Smaller Poland. This testifies the Croatian union having formed in the epoch preceding the first reliable Slavonic archaeological cultures — in the Chemyachovo time.

The earliest written evidence of the name connected directly with the ethnonym "Croats" in the form of the anthroponym "Croat" is seen in the inscriptions dated back to the 1–2 c. found in the ancient Greek city of Tanais in the mouth of the Don. The anthroponym "Croat", probably, belonged to the members of the Alanian-Sarmathian tribe living in this region. Their leaders had certain position in the town community of Tanais. The fact, that Croats belonged to the Sarmathian-speaking environment is shown by the morphological similarity of the names: Sarmatae and Croats (slav. horvatü, Lat. Chroates) .

Still there are no traces of the Croats living to the West of the Don river in the first centuries A. D. This situation could have changed only in the process of the Great Migration. The ethnonym Crоates seems to be slavonized, as well as its first bearers, after the tremendous ethnic processes had taken place during the Huns' invasion.

In all probability, the Croats' appearance in Central Europe and in the Balkans was connected with the Avars' invasion. According to the archaeological and linguistic data the Croats had been already slavonized that time. It means that the Slavs had taken the name of Croats earlier. Since the greater part of the Alans who took part in the Huns' conquest broke off and moved to the West together with the Goths and other German tribes in the beginning of the 5th c., the proposed contacts of the Alans and the Slavs of South-Western Europe and the Carpathian region particularly could have taken place in the beginning of the Huns expansion only, therefore they could not be long.

The suggestion that the Slavs' adoption of the Iranian name Croats (horvatu) resulted not from the process of the multiethnical synthesis but from the intensive political interaction having influenced strongly the Slavonic peoples in the turbulent epoch of the Great Migration seems the most probable.

The important role played by the Alans in the Slavic wars with the Goths and the overthrowing of their power resulted in the spreading of the name Croats among the Dniester Slavs. Having become the allies of the Huns, the Alans-Tanaites appeared the main force of their army acting against the Goths in the south of Eastern Europe.

The decisive battle of the river Erax (localized in the basin of the Dniester) where the Goths were finally defeated by the joined Slavs and Alans acting as the part of the Huns' army and forced out off Eastern Europe was undoubtedly the turning-point in the ancient Slavic history.

It is naturally to propose the Slavic inhabitants of the Dniester-Carpathian region to be strongly influenced just the same as the Slavs of the Ants group by the Alans and be governed by the chiefs of the Alans who apparently represented the Huns' authority. Just as the Ants — the union of the Alans and the Slavs — had formed on the ground of the prolonged ethnic synthesis of the Slavs and the Iranians so did the Croatian group form on the ground of the previous centuries-long interaction of the Slavs and the Sarmathians in the Dniester region.

The Alanian Croats must have ruled the Dniester Slavic lands for some time. They could have married some of the local Slavic chiefs to make their authority legal. The name Croats gained among the Slavs the sacral importance since it was connected with the victory over the Goths and their yoke shaken off.

The Upper Dniester region together with the nearby territories between the Dniester and the Pruth are considered to be the primary territory the ancient Slavic tribal formation appeared at. Afterwards it gradually extended and covered both sides of the Carpathians. For example the Croats inhabited the upper current of the Tyssa river behind the Carpathians.

In the last quarter of the 4th — middle of the 5th cc. the Croats probably reached the Upper Vistula and settled in Smaller Poland (however, it could have happened later) . Still the region of the Upper Vistula (unlike the territories to the East of the Carpathians) cannot be the initial territory of the Croatian ethnogenesis — the premotherland of the Croats, afterwards called "Great Croatia". The Slavonic population of Smaller Poland identified themselves as White, i. e. West Croats. Only that very part of the Croatian ethnos that had appeared as a result of occupying new territories could bear such a name.

The appearance of the tribal union of the ancient Slavs in the Carpathian region who took afterwards the name of Croats, could be dated back to the last quarter of the 4th — middle of the 5th cc.