Voting for your own executioner!

Fabricated terror charades

promise death to everyone 

and mark the end of the USA

By John Kaminski

pseudoskylax@gmail.com

http://therebel.is/en/kaminski

At this point in time, the myth of the United States of America as a good and decent country has been pretty much vaporized by the constant betrayal of its own citizens and its neverending attacks on the rest of the world. I mean, with a leadership that supervised the demolition of its two tallest buildings as a pretext for making war on the world, abandoned its own people by deliberately sending most of its jobs overseas, and lastly, is about to round up and dispose of all its dissenters in the name of falsified terror threats, how could anyone with a functioning brain lend any degree of support to this political monster in Washington that is clearly and deliberately eating its own tail?

And to make it perfectly clear — deliberately destroying its own country at the behest of a demonic foreign power! 

A description that has come down to us from the annals of ancient history perfectly pertains to all these by now familiar atrocities, these egregious invasions and massacres that have been trumpeted as noble victories by the fatuous psychopaths who have commandeered the leadership of the USA.

The words belong to the Roman historian Tacitus. They describe the results of the deeds of his father-in-law Agricola, the Roman governor of Britain two thousand years ago. These are chilling words — words that have become the tragic legacy of America.

Step by step they were led to things which dispose to vice, the lounge, the bath, the elegant banquet. All this in their ignorance they called civilization, when it was part of their slavery.

What follows is the more famous part of the quote, which has been applied many times to tragic military "victories" throughout history, but never more appropriately than to America's uninhibited rapacious behavior throughout the world over most of the past century.

To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, all this they call empire. They make a desert, and they call it peace.

The archetypal signature of this image is, of course, Gaza, the enduring symbol of what the Jews have done and are doing to the world. But that vomitous tableau is inexorably being replaced by images of ravaged American cities — Detroit in particular — a ruined metropolis abandoned by the foreign moneymakers and left as a gut-wrenching monument to the legacy of America's cynical hypocrisy, America's willingness to betray its own citizens and let them molder in their own excrement.

Throughout all of this deterioration, the majority of American citizens continues to proceed as if nothing is really wrong, reasoning that "there's no use worrying about things you can't control". The level of American education has never been lower. Oblivious to their own imminent fate, they still believe what they read in the newspapers.

This mass abdication of responsibility is a symbol not only of the studied indifference that has been imbued into the minds of Americans by their deliberately dysfunctional educational system, but also by their reliance on a media apparatus that is owned by the same people who have undermined and sabotaged the USA throughout its entire history, but most especially throughout the 20th century, after the Jews managed to institute the Federal Reserve and the income tax, which enabled them to start World War 1 and begin a century of secret plunder that has now proved fatal to the republic.

In fact it has been the public's reliance on mass media that not only has allowed them to lose contact with the reins of power, but also allowed their health to be seriously compromised by accepting and using products that have been advertised but have years later been proven to be harmful if not fatal. Public media in the United States have given Americans a totally false view of reality and caused the unnecessary deaths of millions of people, both at home and abroad.

Most of all, reliance on public media has allowed candidates for president to be chosen by the traitors who run the media who then push these well-controlled criminals down the throats of the voters to guarantee that government will never operate for the benefit of the general population, but only to the moneymen who keep the majority powerless and impoverished.

Pick a candidate, any candidate, all the candidates. They're all primed to kill you, to kill anyone the bankers tell them to kill.

How long is it going to take before we figure out that our so-called leaders are really our jailers? And not just that. They're psychopathic killers, ready and willing to kill us just as they are eager to obliterate thousands if not millions all over the world. What a trip! We get to vote for our own executioners.

How long is it going to be before we figure out that we have absolutely no control over who gets elected? We don't pick the candidates, they do! It's the same with the laws they pass. We have no input, no vote. And no control over the laws they break, either.

Just think for a minute about the last law they passed that we really wanted to have passed. It's a lot easier to remember some abomination of a law that we never in our lives wanted to see passed. The Trans Pacific Partnership is merely the latest in a long line of repressive measures — the NDAA, the Patriot Act, the death of the Freedom of Information Act — that ordinary people never wanted, or thought were necessary. 

How stupid do you have to be not to know that a law they won't let you read before passage is a law that should never be passed?

The TPP is the end of all public participation in the workings of government.

They shackle us with inexcusable wars, restrictive laws, financial penalties for everything, but what do they give us? Certainly not even security from their own terror plots.

America is now and has always been on the wrong side of all the wars, killing innocent people to make them conform to the wishes of the international bankers. Don't deceive yourself — the international bankers are Jewish. Jewish religious leaders authorize the robbing and killing of all of the non Jews in the world. Don't try to say anything different. You'd be lying.

We've taught our cops to kill children and pets for no valid reason.

We teach children sexual perversions in the first grade. We teach them how to use a condom years before they have any thought about sex. Perhaps this is to prepare them for being raped by those freaks creating this insane situation. 

There is no internal security threat in the United States. There are no terrorists lurking behind every shrub, only desperate flunkies hired by the FBI to act out their own rage at their failed lives, to be paraded before the public in show trials to reinforce the idea that putting up a defense is useless. The main internal security threat is the government, whose law enforcement employees create the threats that they then claim to solve, and then claim great effort is needed to thwart these contrived, fake threats, necessitating ever new and more repressive restrictions on freedom.

Sandy Hook was a fraudulent event, using crisis actors, corrupt cops and photos of children from previous generations. Adam Lanza did not even exist. No children were killed. The cops lied about everything. And the media — the prostituted totally unreliable Jewish media — played along, maintaining the fiction that America is a free country, and not a giant prison of deceived dupes totally controlled by creature comforts, gross hypocrisy and designer drugs.

Sandy Hook was about as real an event as Osama bin Laden being buried at sea, or two young dupes being blamed for the Boston Marathon bombing when uniformed members of "The Craft" were seen by millions setting up this "drill gone live".

All these events have proved that this out-of-control government can arrest whomever it wants, try them in a kangaroo court and execute them, all without a shred of evidence, and often times without a trial.

The next vote you cast for president is likely to be for your own executioner, for the person who is likely to be responsible for your own death. All these major candidates who are so disgustingly promoted by disgusting mainstream media are in the pocket of Israeli billionaires, and the Jewish holy books COMMAND their believers to kill or enslave all those who are not Jews.

So do you think Hillary or Jeb are going to care one whit about your life, when saving it might jeopardize the millions coming to them from their scandalously wealthy Israeli puppeteers?

There are many different ways to kill you. Medical atrocities and genetically modified food have already guaranteed the defacement of future generations, which is just what the planners want to happen. 

Cops bursting through your front door for no particular reason and killing your dog and perhaps yourself seem to be a new American tradition, no doubt based on U.S. cops now being trained in Israel. 

Andrew Breitbart, a conservative, was murdered with some kind of heart attack dart, and plane crashes are popular treatments for those who effectively oppose the Jewish New World Order.

The fact that you have not exploded in a violent rage against all of these atrocities is evidence of your drugged paralysis that prevents you from even acting in your own best interests. When they come to kill you, you won't even defend yourself, will you?

The dirtiest villains in all this betrayal are the writers who pretend to be eloquent spokespeople for the opposition but who do not possess the courage to tell the whole story, and leave all mention of the Jews out of their equations. This kind of faux criticism actually benefits the Jews because it further undermines America while it leaves the Jews hidden behind the scenes, which is where they like to be as they sabotage and deface everything that they don't already own.

They made a desert and they called it peace.

This is what the Jews trumpet as their world plan, to unite the whole world in a viciously perverted ponzi scheme where no one trusts anyone else so genuine community can never exist, only devotion to sick rabbis who rape little boys and murder the elderly and the innocent so they can steal their organs.

Some Jews would try to tell you not all Jews behave this way, but Jews lie about everything all the time. Did you know?

Whatever happened to all those oaths to uphold the Constitution, or what George W. Bush once infamously called "that goddamned piece of paper"?

It didn't mean anything to them when they took those oaths, and it doesn't mean anything to them now. These people are all enthusiastically supported by Jews.

And when you cast your next vote (if you're still stupid enough to be voting), think hard if your choice is going to be the same person who is going to cause your death, or the death of someone you know and love, sometime soon in the very near future.

The U.S. government was totally complicit in the deaths of some 3,000 people in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001 in a caper that was primarily organized and executed by Jews. Do you really think that killing you because you were offended by their criminal behavior is going to bother them one bit?

This is what America has become — thanks to the influence of the Jews, who own the politicians, the newspapers and your bank account. Ignore all writers who pretend to be writing about our mutual problems, but don't mention Jews, because, willingly or not, they're working for these monsters who intend on killing us all.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, constantly trying to figure out why we are destroying ourselves, and pinpointing a corrupt belief system as the engine of our demise. Solely dependent on contributions from readers, please support his work by mail: 6871 Willow Creek Circle #103, North Port FL 34287 USA.

http://therebel.is/en/kaminski

http://johnkaminski.info/

http://www.rudemacedon.ca/kaminski/kam-index.html

http://web.archive.org/web/20040323232319/http://johnkaminski.com/

Bernie Sanders: How Dual Israeli-American Citizens are Made

Everything's Coming Up Jew

By Mel Goyson

Despite Bernie Sanders acting all offended with Diane Rehm on a Jew controlled show, and the hundreds of Jew-controlled media outlets jumping to Bernie Sander's defense after the supposedly vicious, evil, crazy, antisemitic smear made by the award-winning Diane Rehm because she fell victim to Facebook (whoopsie!), I still am wondering if Bernie Sanders is a dual Israeli-American citizen.
I have yet to determine this conclusively because I don't know how long he was in Israel and what the laws were at the time. But I did find a few things posted below.

Is Bernie Sanders Really Loyal to Israel?

By Mel Goyson

If you're waiting for definitive proof whether or not Bernie Sanders is a dual Israeli-American citizen, don't hold your breath, even in a gas chamber. 

A better question might be: isn't every Jew more loyal to Israel?

Stephen Steinlight, an American Jew and 5 year Director of National Affairs for the American Jewish Congress, wrote: " The Jewish Stake in America's Changing Demography: Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration Policy". In it, he says:

I'll confess it, at least: like thousands of other typical Jewish kids of my generation, I was reared as a Jewish nationalist, even a quasi-separatist. Every summer for two months for 10 formative years during my childhood and adolescence I attended Jewish summer camp. There, each morning, I saluted a foreign flag, dressed in a uniform reflecting its colors, sang a foreign national anthem, learned a foreign language, learned foreign folk songs and dances, and was taught that Israel was the true homeland. Emigration to Israel was considered the highest virtue, and, like many other Jewish teens of my generation, I spent two summers working in Israel on a collective farm while I contemplated that possibility. More tacitly and subconsciously, I was taught the superiority of my people to the gentiles who had oppressed us. We were taught to view non-Jews as untrustworthy outsiders, people from whom sudden gusts of hatred might be anticipated, people less sensitive, intelligent, and moral than ourselves. We were also taught that the lesson of our dark history is that we could rely on no one.

As we already know that Bernie Sanders went to kibbutz in Israel in 1963, it is quite reasonable to assume that, as a "typical Jewish kid", he is most likely a Jewish nationalist himself. 

It is also worth noting that socialism is another word for communism, a Jewish invention. Karl Marx was a Jew, and the Bolsheviks who invaded Russia and carried out the worst massacres in history against white gentiles were mostly Jewish, and Jews certainly dominated.

Jewish rabbis continue to brag about communism, leaving out the little detail of 60 million plus massacred innocents. And this bragging is nothing new. Rabbi S. Wise said, "Some call it Marxism — I call it Judaism." in the American Bulletin in 1935. 

Are we seriously considering running a Jewish communist for President in the United States?

Or any Jew for that matter?

Bernie Sanders Denies His Israeli Citizenship

Bernie Sanders: The Kike Who Would Be King of Conquered America

By Mel Goyson

Just when you thought you had a country, it turns out a citizen of Israel wants to be President.

Bernie Sanders was innocently minding his business of taking over the goyim of the USA, when he found himself on NPR. Diane Rehm, who has won multiple journalism awards, apparently saw a meme floating around and decided to ask Sanders if it were true he was an Israeli citizen, which caused his hair to go Einstein and for the entire media network of world Jewry to convulse in horror.

It was totally not staged at all, let me assure you.

NPR, a commie Jew propaganda operation, has already run the story insisting that the commie kike isn't a dual citizen. Then about 800 other Jewish run operations ran the same story, laying the claim that Bernie Sanders is a citizen of Israel to rest once and for all, finally.

However, the ADL demanded Rehm's head on a platter and for Mary Phagan to be dug up and her corpse tested for "negro DNA traces."

"Lampshades and soap, and now this," said Abe Foxman. "Will it never end? And, watch out, we make the money!"

Apparently, Diane Rehm, the NPR host, found a list on the internet of dual citizen Israeli-Americans in congress and decided it was good and "accused" Bernie Sanders of the lowest thing imaginable: Israeli Citizenship.

Even Israeli newspapers were outraged that an American citizen, like Bernie Sanders, who had volunteered for kibbutz in Israel, would be accused of such a lowly thing like Israeli citizenship. And by their own controlled host, Diane Rehm! Here was a Jew who had spent time in Israel back in 1963, before the 1967, when such a thing was quite uncommon, too.

Also, according to the law of return, well, Sanders is a dual Israeli-American citizen, but never mind that, because Diane Rehm is antisemitic!

Diane Rehm was not asked to step down from her position, and received a Swiss chalet.

Bernie Sanders went on to say, "Yeah, fuck Israel. Did the corporations make you say that, Diane? Or perhaps it was white privilege? Hmm? Yeah, I thought so. This just proves that even the best of the goyim must be killed."

Zionist-controlled Wikipedia immediately threw this together:

Bernie Sanders interview

On June 10, 2015, Rehm interviewed 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate and United States Senator Bernie Sanders and said to Sanders, "Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel."^{[11][12][13][14]} Sanders stated that her statement was simply not true.^{[11][12][13][14]} Rehm responded to Sanders denial by saying, "I understand from a list we have gotten that you were on that list."^{[11][12][13][14]} Once again, Sanders stated that he is an American and only an American.^{[11][12][13][14]} Sanders indicated that he was offended by the assumption.^[12][13] Rehm's statements were criticized by David Harsanyi in The Federalist for being an anti-Semitic smear, when someone assumes that a Jewish person is a dual citizen with Israel, to chill speech and question the Jewish person's allegiance to America.^[11] Sophia Tesfaye of Salon pointed out that Rehm apparently fell for an Antisemitic canard and did not successfully fact-check her information before she conducted her interview with Sanders.^[13] In The Times of Israel, Gedalyah Reback stated that the interview was controversial because Rehm seemed to have accused a Jewish presidential candidate of maintaining secret Israeli citizenship.^[14]

Rehm apologized for her exchange with Sanders in a statement released later that day. “On today’s show I made a mistake. Rather than asking if Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders whether he had dual U.S./Israeli citizenship, as I had read in a comment on Facebook, I stated it as fact. I want to apologize as well to all our listeners for having made an erroneous statement. I am sorry for the mistake. However, I am glad to play a role in putting this rumor to rest.”^[15]

SLAVS ARE ARYANS! by wolf88

source

We are producing this article which is gleaned from a number of websites (and with grateful acknowledgements to Oskar Haleki and his history of Central Europe). We want to lay the ghost that the Slavic people are not Aryan, to rest, once and  for all. The Slavs ARE Aryan as the article below shows.
At this time when the whole White World is in mortal peril, for Aryan (Nordics), Aryan (Celts) and Aryan (Teutons) to bicker on who is the truer Aryan type is ridiculous.
We have comrades who support Aryan Unity throughout the Slavic World. Russia, Serbia and the Ukraine being leading of examples of areas where a fierce White Resistance is growing. Poland and Serbia are not far behind.
Aryan Unity considers the following nations mostly or totally Aryan:- (We are referring here to the White populations of these countries and not modern non-Aryan immigrants!)
Great Britain - Eire - United States - Canada - Spain - France - Portugal - Italy -Greece - Scandinavia - Germanic lands - Hungary - Romania - Poland - Russia (West of the Ural mountains) - the Baltic States - Byelorussia - Czech Republic - Slovakia - Croatia - Serbia - Slovenia - Australia and New Zealand - South African (Whites) - Belgium - Holland - Iceland - Ukraine - Slovenia - Bulgaria
South America contains many countries with minority Aryan populations - Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay being three good examples.
The Aryans once existed in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, India, Japan and China. They may also have penetrated deep into Africa as the ruins in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) show.
The Aryan People are on a long slow retreat back to the ancestral homelands in Europe and Western Russia. The thing for Aryans in all lands is now to UNITE or face extinction - in the way that the Aryans of Northern India for example are just a legend, though some of their traces remain.

• Note: Wherever below you find the term "Iranian" it is written as that because at THAT time, the words Iranian and Aryan were interchangeable.

THE SLAVS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURS
THE SLAVS AND EURASIA
Eastern Europe is sometimes called Western Eurasia. This is correct, however, only with regard to the frontier region of geographical Europe which was outside the historical European community. And so far as prehistory is concerned, we may consider as Eurasian that eastern part of the great European Plain which was inhabited by non-European peoples whose closest kin were living in Asia. These peoples were the eastern neighbours of the Slavs, whose own original home, situated in the heart of Europe, could hardly be included in any Eurasia.
It is possible, however, that the Balto-Slavic homeland in East Central Europe was at a very early date partly occupied by some of the Finnish tribes which, having been gradually pushed back, remained the north eastern neighbours of both Balts and Slavs until the present. These tribes of Mongol race were in general on a lower level of culture and without any political organization. Such of them as lived nearest to the Baltic Coast became closely associated with the Indo-European Balts and developed more successfully than the others. In that region tribes of Baltic and Finnish origin are sometimes not easy to distinguish. The name Aestii, used by Tacitus, seems to include both of them, and while the Ests of later centuries—the ancestors of the present Estonians—definitely belong to the Finnish group, as do the Livs who gave their name to Livonia where they lived among the Baltic Letts, the question whether the Curs, after whom Curland was named, were of Finnish or Baltic origin is difficult to decide.
Larger and more numerous Finnish tribes were living not only in Finland itself, which does not appear in history before the Swedish conquest in the twelfth century when it first became and for a long time remained associated with Scandinavia, but also in the Volga Basin and north of it as far as the geographical limits of Europe, the Arctic Ocean and the Ural Mountains. The colonization of the Volga region by tribes belonging to the eastern branch of the Slavs, which was to become so important from the eleventh century on, certainly did not start before the seventh or eighth century, and then on a very modest scale. But from the beginning it was a process of absorption and
gradual Slavization of the poorly developed Finnish tribes whose names appear, however, in those of some of the earliest Slavic settlements.
Different were the relations between the Slavs and the Eurasian peoples who were living south of the Finns. Those peoples either belonged to the Mongol race but to its Turkish group, or to the Iranians, that is, to the Asiatic branch of the Indo-European race. In contrast to the rather passive Finns, these peoples of an aggressive character frequently invaded and at least temporarily dominated their Slavic neighbours, even in the prehistoric period. When such invasions were repeated in the later course of history, the Slavs and the Asiatic conquerors, exclusively Turco-Tartars, are easy to distinguish from one another. On the contrary, there is a great deal of confusion with regard to the names which appear in the steppes north of the Black Sea from the Cimmerian period (1000—700B.C.) to the establishment of the Bulgar and Khazar states in the seventh century A.D. The ethnic origin of each of these peoples is highly controversial, and since they all exercised a strong influence upon the eastern Slavs, after controlling them politically, the question has been raised whether even undoubtedly Slavic tribes were not originally under a foreign leadership which would explain some of their rather enigmatic names. On the other hand, it seemed equally justifiable to look for Slavic elements which might have been included among the leading Eurasian peoples. It is indeed quite possible that when the Cimmerians, of Circassian (Caucasian) or Thracian origin were replaced (700-200 B.C.) as a ruling “superstructure” by the Scythians, that name covered various tribes of different ethnic stock, including Slavs in addition to the leading “Royal Scythians” who were well known to Herodotus and probably of Iranian origin. The same might be said about the Sarmatians who took the place of the Scythians from about 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. Again, most of their tribes, including the Alans, who were the last to come from Asia but who seem to have played a particularly important role in the first centuries of the Christian era, were certainly of Iranian origin. But the loose federation of these Sarmatian tribes probably included Slavic populations also, although later traditions, which saw in the Sarmatians the early ancestors of the Slavs, particularly of the Poles, are of course purely legendary.
The following invasions of the Germanic Goths and of the Mongol Huns, both of whom only temporarily occupied the Slavic territories before crossing the frontiers of the Empire, were of a different character. Better known than their predecessors, neither of these peoples had anything in common with the Slavs and they left no traces in Central or Eastern European history. But some Iranian (Aryan) elements seem to have survived through the Gothic (200—370 A.D.) and Hunnic period (370—454 A.D.). According to recently expressed opinions, some tribes of the Alans continued to control the Azov region where they mixed with the eastern tribes of the Slavic Antes. Even the Croats and Serbs, that is, the leading tribes of the southern branch of the Slavs, as well as their names, would have been of Iranian origin.
Turning from these highly controversial hypotheses to the historical facts of the sixth and seventh centuries, the Avar domination of the eastern and southern Slavs must be stressed as one of the most dangerous of the Asiatic invasions. Coming from Mongolia under the pressure of their Turkish
neighbours, the Avars appeared at the gates of Europe, north of the Caucasian region, in 558. They soon became a serious threat to the Eastern Empire, and at the end of the eighth century they were finally defeated by Charlemagne, restorer of the Western Empire. The Slavs, however, who suffered cruelly from these conquerors, had to face another two-fold pressure coming from the Eurasian East at the same time.
In the northeast a branch of the Bulgars, a Turco-Ugrian people who at the beginning of the seventh century had created a “Great Bulgarian” Empire in the Don region, established a state in the middle Volga area after the fall of that empire. These Volga Bulgars, who must be distinguished from the main body which moved in the direction of the Balkans, chiefly conquered Finnish territory but for several centuries also remained an obstacle to further Slavic expansion.
Much more important for the Slavs was the foundation of the Khazar “Kaganate” in the southeast. The Khazars were another Asiatic tribe, probably mixed ethnically, which first appeared north of the Caucasus around 570, when they were apparently under Turkish control. After breaking up
Great Bulgaria, the Khazars succeeded in creating a large state for themselves. This reached from the Caucasus to the lower Volga and the lower Don and from the very beginning included some Slavic populations. Uniting peoples of various races and religions under their “Khagan,” as their
supreme ruler was called, they were eventually converted to the Jewish faith. The Khazars had to fight the Arabs in the Caucasian region and to face the rivalry of Byzantium in the Azov region. But almost simultaneously they also started to advance in the opposite, northwestern, direction. Here they reached the height of their expansion in the first half of the ninth century when they conquered the Slavic tribes which had crossed the Dnieper River. They even reached Kiev and demanded tribute from that area.
The Khazar domination was, however, much milder than any other which these Slavs had known, and it did not remain unchallenged by other invaders of the same territory. When the Khazars first met the opposition of Norman vikings is a moot question which must be studied in connection with the controversial antecedents of the creation of the Kievan state later in the ninth century. But even before that, the Khazars clashed in the Kiev region with the Magyars, an Ugrian (Mongolian) people who stopped there for about three hundred years on their way from the Urals to the Danubian Plain. This was another tribe, though probably less numerous, which ruled over some eastern Slavs before penetrating between the western and southern branch of the Slavic peoples, not without experiencing some Slavic influence.
That Slavic influence proved much stronger in the case of those Bulgars who, instead of moving up the Volga River to the north, proceeded southward toward the lower Danube. Long before the Bulgars crossed that river and penetrated into imperial territory, their clans absorbed so many East Slavic elements that when they settled in the Balkans—not much later than the southern Slavs, the Serbs and Croats—they were already Slavized to a large extent. The role which they played in the history of the eastern Slavs was, however, only temporary and rather limited.
In general, however, it was the eastern branch of the Slavs, first called Antes in the earliest sources and later known under the enigmatic name of Rus, which as a natural consequence of their geographical situation had already had the closest relations with the various Asiatic invaders of
eastern Europe in the prehistoric period. These non-European influences, of whatever kind, hardly affected the two other branches of the Slavic people, except through the Avars and Magyars. The western Slavs, especially the descendants of the Venedi, were practically not touched at all.
This basic fact contributed, of course, to the growing differentiation among the three main Slavic groups. But it also created differences within the eastern group itself; between those Antes who remained in the original Slavic homeland in East Central Europe, where they constituted a numerous, native population and easily absorbed any foreign element which passed through their territory, and on the other hand, those Slavic pioneers who penetrated beyond the Dnieper Basin into the vast intermediary region which might be called Eastern Europe or Western Eurasia.
In that region the outposts of the Slavic world were colonists who were scattered among and mixed with Finno-Ugrian, Turkish, or Iranian populations whose number increased through continuous migrations and invasions from Asia. With only the exception of most of the Finnish tribes, all these
Eurasian peoples were conquerors, stronger and better organized than the Slavs and therefore in a position to exercise a permanent pressure and influence upon them. The question remained open, therefore, whether that whole area, with its mixed population subject to so many different cultural
trends, would ever become historically a part of Europe.
THE EARLIEST RELATIONS BETWEEN SLAVS AND TEUTONS
The Germanic or Teutonic peoples were originally divided into three groups or branches, just as were the Slavs, with the difference that, in addition to a western and an eastern, there was a northern group although no southern. More than any other European peoples, all of them had close relations with the native inhabitants of East Central Europe, the Slavs and the Balts. It was the quasi permanent Germanic pressure exercised upon the Balto-Slavs from the West which corresponded to the Eurasian pressure from the East. A theory was even developed, according to which the Slavs would have been from time immemorial under a twofold foreign domination, either German or Turco-Tartar, with lasting consequences of that situation in the whole course of history. And even more general among German scholars is the opinion that a large part of the historical Slavic homeland in East Central Europe had been originally inhabited in prehistoric times by Germanic tribes which left that area only during the great migrations, while the Slavs followed them and took their place. Without returning to that controversy, it must be admitted that during the earlier phase of these migrations, before they definitely became a movement from East to West, some Germanic tribes spread all over East Central Europe but only as temporary conquerors. For obvious geographical reasons these tribes were those of the East Germanic group, the group which proved particularly active in the migration period and which—eventually penetrated farther than any other Teutons in a southwestern direction, only to disappear completely. In Central Eastern Europe their invasion left nothing but a tradition of ruthless domination by the Goths, who were the leading tribe among those East Germanic ones.
This tradition was particularly strong among the Baltic peoples, but for a short time, under king Ermanaric (about 350-370 A.D.), an Ostrogothic empire seems to have also included most of the Slavic peoples. Defeated in the following years by Huns and Alans, however, the Ostrogoths crossed the Danube and in the well-known battle of Adrianople (378) started their invasion of the Roman Empire which led them far away from Slavic Europe. At the Baltic shores the Gothic occupation was soon followed by a long series of raids and invasions, equally dangerous for Balts and Slavs, which came from another branch of the Germanic peoples, the northern. Long before the Normans played their famous role in the history of Western Europe, bold expeditions of Scandinavian vikings not only crossed the Baltic but laid out the first trade routes through Eastern Europe, as far as the Caspian and Black Sea regions, where they established contacts with the Asiatic world.
Arabic sources seem to indicate that the earliest of these connections were established along the Volga without touching the original Balto-Slavic territory. The opinion has also been expressed that Norsemen appeared and even created some kind of state organization in the Azov region, perhaps under the name of Rus, long before the Rus of the later ninth century followed the shortest route from Scandinavia to Greece, and formed the historical Russian state with its centers at Novgorod and Kiev. But again, these are merely hypotheses, and the historian is on much more solid ground if before studying that momentous intervention of Scandinavian elements in the destinies of the Eastern Slavs, he turns, in the chronological order, to the first recorded contacts between the western group of the Teutonic peoples the Germans proper and their Slavic neighbours.
These were, of course, the Western Slavs and also the western tribes of the Southern Slavs, the ancestors of the Slovenes of today. And this is precisely the most important problem of all in the relations between Slavs and Teutons, a problem which in uninterrupted continuity and increasing significance was to last until our times.
The whole issue started when the westward movement of the Germanic tribes, after reaching the extreme limit of the Atlantic Ocean, was replaced by a return drive in the opposite direction, later known as the Drang nach Osten. Even if at the beginning it was a re-conquest of territories which Slavic tribes had occupied during the preceding migrations, it soon turned into a systematic aggression on a long front from the mouth of the Elbe to the Alpine valleys, soon threatening the Slavs in what undoubtedly was their original territory. As long as the German tribes which first clashed with the Slavs and tried to push them back were pagans like their opponents and hardly better organized politically, the chances were almost even in spite of the more warlike character of the Germans. But the situation changed completely when, after the conquest and conversion of the Saxons by Charlemagne and the inclusion of the Duchy of Bavaria in his empire, that very Christian Empire created by the Franks became the powerful neighbour of all Slavic tribes on the whole western front.
For the entire further course of Slavic history, that new situation had far-reaching consequences. Those Slavs who lived near the western limits of their homeland now came into permanent contact with Western culture, with both Roman tradition and the Catholic church. But as the first
representatives of that world, they met those Germans who themselves had only recently accepted that culture and now wanted to use its values, particularly the propagation of the Christian faith, as tools of political domination. That danger had already appeared under Charlemagne, but it became even greater when, after the division of his supranational empire in 843 and the following partitions, the Slavs had the East Frankish kingdom as an immediate neighbour. This purely German state, the Germany of the future, had its likeliest possibilities of expansion precisely in the eastern direction through the conquest of Slavic territory and its organization into German marches.
In that relentless struggle which started at the end of the eighth century, three sectors of the long German-Slavic frontier must be distinguished. There was first, in the North, the plain between the sea and the Sudeten Mountains. Here the Germans had to do with the numerous Polabian and Lusatian tribes which in the past had even crossed the Elbe-Saale line. As soon as Saxony was organized as one of the largest German duchies, the Slavs were pushed back from the mouth of the Elbe and the southeastern corner of the North Sea to the southwestern corner of the Baltic Sea. The series of marches which were supposed to protect the German territory and serve as stepping stones of further expansion, started with the Northern march which was created toward the end of the ninth century at the expense of the Obotrites, the Slavic population of what was later called Mecklenberg. The same method was tried in the whole belt east of the middle Elbe as far as Lusatia. Already under the Carolingians, in the course of that same ninth century, that area was something like a German sphere of influence, but in view of the fierce resistance of the Veletian group of the Slavs and of the Lusatian Serbs (Sorbs), the final creation of German marches had to wait until the following century, when the pressure increased under the kings of the new Saxon dynasty.
Of special importance was the next sector of the front, the central bastion of Bohemia, surrounded by mountains which stopped the German advance or made it change its usual methods. Fights with Bohemian tribes had already started in the time of Charlemagne, but on the one hand their land proved difficult to conquer, and on the other there appeared among their princes a disposition to accept the Christian faith voluntarily in order to avoid a forcible conquest. As early as 845 some of these princes came to Regensburg where they were baptized, probably recognizing a certain degree of German suzerainty. Others, however, turned at about the same time toward a first centre of Slavic power which was being created by their kin, the princes of Moravia, in an area which still was beyond the reach of German invasions and in direct contact with the south-Slavic Slovenes in the Danubian Plain, where the memory of Samo’s state had perhaps not entirely disappeared.
The Slovenes themselves were, however, threatened at least from the eighth century in their Alpine settlements where Bavarian colonization was in progress. Acting as overlord of the dukes of Bavaria, Charlemagne there created a first march on what was later to be the territory of Austria, chiefly as a defence against the Avars, but also in order to control the Slavic population after the fall of the Avar power. The missionary activities of the German church, especially of the bishops of Salzburg and Passau, also contributed to strengthening Bavarian influence as far as the former Roman province of Pannonia, and under Charlemagne’s son Louis the authority of the empire was temporarily recognized even by the Croats, particularly after the suppression of a revolt by the Croat prince Ludevit in 822.
That German advance far into the territory of the Southern Slavs was only temporary and exceptional, but even so it resulted in a conflict with faraway Bulgaria and in a contact between Frankish and Byzantine influence. It is, therefore, against the whole background of these international relations in the Danubian region and of contemporary developments in the Balkans, that the rise and fall of the so-called Moravian Empire must be studied. But before approaching that important turning point in the history of East Central Europe, a more general consequence of the earliest relations between Slavs and Teutons ought to be emphasized.
Just because the German power was so much stronger, the growing danger forced the Slavs at last to develop their own political organization and to cooperate in larger units under native leadership. In many cases they proved quite capable of doing so in spite of many unfavourable circumstances. In opposition to foreign aggressors whose language they were unable to understand, they became conscious of their own particularity. But in contradistinction to the Eastern Slavs who had to face semibarbarian Asiatic invaders, mostly pagans like themselves, the Western Slavs had to realize that they could not resist their opponents without themselves entering the realm of that Roman culture which was the main factor of German superiority, and most important, without becoming Christians like their neighbours. Those among the Slavs who failed to do so were doomed in advance. The others had to find ways and means of doing it without an exclusively German intermediary by safeguarding their independence and by organizing on their own account the East Central European region. In the critical ninth century, one of these possible ways seemed to be co-operation with the eastern centre of Christian and Greco-Roman culture, with Byzantium.
THE SLAVS AND THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE
Long before the Croats were touched by the Frankish conquest, that same South-Slavic people, together with their closest kin, the Serbs, had entered into much more stable relations with the Eastern Roman Empire and with the Eastern church which was not yet separated from Rome. These relations were, however, of an entirely different character. In this case it was the Slavs who were the invaders. After participating, from the end of the fifth century, in various raids of other “barbarian” tribes into imperial territory, they threatened Byzantium then the only Christian Empire even during the brilliant reign of Justinian I, who by some earlier scholars was wrongly considered to have been of Slavic origin. Through the sixth century the Slavic danger, combined with that from their Avar overlords, constantly increased. More and more frequently they penetrated far into the Balkans, until in the first half of the seventh century the Emperor Heraclius permitted some of their tribes, freed from the Avars, to settle in the devastated lands south of the Danube.
These Slavs, soon converted to the Christian faith, were under the leadership of Chrovatos whose name, probably Iranian, was taken by his people, later known as Croats, while other tribes of the same group received the name of Serbs (in the West). The 'Serbs' call themselves "Srbi", and they call their country "Srbija" but since the Western European peoples do not have "r" as vowel they were forced to put "e" before "r". The only two peoples on the Euro-asian continent that have "r" as vowel are Serbs and people of India. The name of Serbs (Srb, Srbi) has a clearly Sanskritic root. The Serbo-Croats made the region practically independent from Byzantium, defending themselves at the same time against the Avars. Culturally, however, they came under the influence of Byzantium, which never ceased to consider their territory the old Illyricum part of the Eastern Empire. Greek influence was, of course, particularly strong among the Serbs, who moved deeper into the Balkans and remained the immediate neighbours of the Greeks.
The Croats, on the other hand, who established themselves farther to the northwest, were soon exposed to Western influences. This explains the growing differentiation between the two peoples, which were of common origin and continued to speak the same language. With the ever stronger opposition between Eastern and Western Christendom, the separation between Serbs and Croats was to become much also deeper, a distinctive feature of the history of the Southern Slavs. But already in the early days of their settlements in regions well to the south of their original homeland, another problem proved to be of lasting importance. The problem of their relations with an entirely different people who simultaneously invaded the Byzantine Empire and after crossing the lower Danube settled permanently on imperial territory in the Balkans, but east of the Serbo-Croats, not at the Adriatic but at the Black Sea coast. These were the Bulgars or Bulgarians. The southern branch of that Turkish people, who as a whole had played such an important but rather transitory role in Eurasia and the steppes north of the Black Sea, had already mixed with the Slavic tribes of the Antes in that region. When, after participating in earlier invasions of the Eastern Empire by the Avars, as had the Slavs, they definitely crossed the Danube under their Khan or Khagan, Asparukh, in 679, a Bulgar state was established in northern Thrace in the region of present-day Bulgaria. That state, however, which soon extended its boundaries in all directions, had a predominantly Slavic population. For in addition to the foundation of new states in the northern part of formerly imperial territory, numerous Slavic tribes had throughout the sixth and seventh century continued to raid the whole Balkan Peninsula and even Greece proper. Most of them remained there in larger or smaller groups, creating the so-called Sclaviniae, that is, permanent settlements which without being organized as political units changed the ethnic character of the whole empire. Some scholars have even expressed the opinion that the Greek population was completely Slavized, an obvious exaggeration, since the Slavs rarely succeeded in taking the more important cities which they besieged, but which remained Greek as did most of the Mediterranean coast. But while scattered Slavic settlers came under the influence of Greek culture even more than in Serbia, they in turn so strongly influenced the Bulgar conquerors that even their language was adopted by the latter, and already in its pagan period the new state must be considered Bulgaro-Slavic. And gradually the Turkish element was so completely submerged that Bulgaria simply became one of the South-Slavic nations.
The Byzantine Empire, which continued to have occasional troubles with its Slavic subjects and even had to move some of them as far away as Bithynia in Asia Minor, was seriously concerned with the rise of Bulgar power so near to Constantinople itself. Emperor Justinian II, after defeating Bulgars and Slavs in 690, had to ask for their assistance in order to recover his throne from a rival, and in reward he granted to Asparukh’s successor, Tervel, the title of Caesar when he received him in the capital in 705. In spite of a treaty which Byzantium concluded with Bulgaria eleven years later, and which established a new boundary line north of Adrianople, there was a whole series of Greek-Bulgar wars in the course of the eighth century. In 805 Khan Krum, after contributing in co-operation with the Franks to the fall of the Avars, created a strong Bulgarian Empire on both sides of the Danube. The role of the Slavic element was increased, and until Krum’s death in 814 Byzantium, which suffered a terrible defeat in 811, was seriously threatened by its northern neighbour. Constantinople itself was besieged by the Bulgars. The relations improved under the new Khan Omortag, who even assisted Emperor Michael III against a Slavic uprising and turned against the Franks, with whom he clashed in Croatia. But it was not before the reign of Boris, from 852, that the conversion of Bulgaria to the Christian faith was seriously considered. This raised entirely new issues in her relations with Byzantium.In contradistinction to the restored Western Empire, the Eastern Roman Empire had no desire for territorial expansion. It wanted, however, to control the foreign elements which had penetrated within its boundaries and had even created their own states on imperial territory. Moreover, it was afraid of new invasions by other barbarian tribes, the first attack of Norman “Russians” against Constantinople in 860 being a serious warning. In both respects the missionary activity of the Greek church, under the authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople, closely co-operating with the Emperor, seemed to be particularly helpful in bringing under Byzantine influence the Slavic populations of the Balkans, as well as dangerous neighbours, Slavic or non-Slavic. That missionary activity, which in general was less developed in Eastern than in Western Christendom, was greatly intensified under the famous Patriarch Photius. Through an arbitrary decision by the imperial power, in 858 he replaced the legitimate Patriarch Ignatius, and this was the origin of a protracted crisis in the religious life of Byzantium. But he proved to be one of the most prominent leaders of the Greek church, one who was particularly anxious to promote the spread of Christianity even among the faraway Khazars, the neighbours of the last Greek colonies on the northern shores of the Black Sea. It was there that Constantine and Methodius, the Greek brothers from Salonika, who were equally distinguished as theologians and as linguists, started their missions in 860 or 861. They failed to convert the Khagan, who decided in favour of Judaism, but they were soon to be sent to the Slavs of the Danubian region. And at the same time it became known that Boris of Bulgaria wanted to become a Christian.
In both cases, however, the question had to be decided as to whether the converts would be placed under the ecclesiastical authority of the Patriarchate of Constantinople or directly under Rome, a question which had both a religious and a political aspect that was to be decisive for the whole future of the Slavs. As yet there was no definite schism between the Roman and the Greek church, but already there was a growing tension which was intensified by the fact that Pope Nicholas I did not recognize the appointment of Photius and excommunicated him in 863. Today we know that even Photius break with Rome in 867 was by no means final, but the whole ecclesiastical conflict which lasted until 880 prepared the schism of the future. And even Ignatius, who again occupied the See of Constantinople from 867 to 877, opposed Rome in the matter of the new Bulgarian church which he wanted to place under his own authority. The Emperor, too, though eager to remain in good relations with the Papacy, was adamant in the Bulgarian problem, and finally Boris, who was baptized in 864, after trying to find out which side would grant the greater autonomy to the new Bulgarian church, decided in favour of Byzantium, a solution which obviously was also dictated by geographic conditions and by the whole past history of the territory occupied by the Bulgars. The situation was entirely different in old Pannonia, that is in the Danubian Basin north of the Serbo-Croat settlements, where during these same years Constantine and Methodius undertook their most important mission, entrusted to them by Photius on the invitation of a new Slavic power, the so-called Moravian Empire. The outcome of their activity was to be of lasting significance, not only for the relations of the various Slavic peoples with Byzantium but also for the whole future of East Central Europe.
Slavs
Pronounced As: slävz, slavz , the largest ethnic and linguistic group of peoples in Europe belonging to the Indo-European linguistic family. It is estimated that the Slavs number over 300 million in the world. They are usually classified in three main divisions. The West Slavs include the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, and the Wends (also known as Lusatians) and other small groups in E Germany. The South Slavs include the Serbs, the Croats, the Slovenes, the Macedonians, the Montenegrins, the Bosnians, and the Bulgars. The East Slavs, the largest group, include the Great Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians (or White Russians). Religiously and culturally, the Slavs fall into two main groups-those traditionally associated with the Orthodox Eastern Church (the Great
Russians, most of the Ukrainians, some of the Belorussians, the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and the Macedonians) and those historically affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church (the West Slavs, most of the Belorussians, some of the Ukrainians, and the Croats and Slovenes). The cleavage into Eastern Church and Western Church is symbolized by the use of the Cyrillic alphabet by the first group and of the Roman alphabet by the latter.
The Slovak language holds a central position among Slavic languages. It is a west Slavic language, but in the east it borders on Ukrainian and Ruthenian and, before the arrival of Magyars (Hungarians) in the Danube basin, it had direct ties with the south Slavic languages (especially Slovene), some of whose features it has retained to this day. Slovakia's central geographic location and other factors have made it very easy for other Slavs to understand Slovak. For anyone interested in central European, eastern European, and Slavic studies, as well as for the casual tourist, Slovak provides an excellent starting point from which to branch off to any additional Slavic language. It is a language that can function as lingua franca for travellers throughout the Slavic world.
Slavic Languages
Czech, Slovak, Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, Bulgarian