Великая Хорватия. Этногенез и ранняя история славян Прикарпатского региона - [76]

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.

Zusammenfassung

Als wichtige Besonderheit des Ethnogenesis und Frühgeschichte von Slaven des Ostvorkarpatenlandes treten die ständige Kontakte mit iranosprachigen, vor allem sarmatischen Bevölkerung, die unter Bedingungen des Zusammenlebens während einigen Jahrhunderten verliefen, auf.

Einer der Resultaten des slawisch-iraner ethnokulturellen Syntheses wurde die Entstehung der alten Stammesvereinigung von Kroaten, deren Name wahrscheinlich die iranische Ursprung hat. Die slawische Bevölkerung des oberen Dnjestr, die in Stammesgruppierung von Kroaten hineinging, besiedelte eine Reihe der neuen Territorien in Zentraleuropa und auf dem Balkan während der Großen slawischen Aussiedlung.

Der älteste schriftliche Denkmal, der die Angaben über die Entstehung und Aussiedlung von Kroaten, über Groß- und Weißkroatien enthalt, ist das Traktat von byzantischen Imperator Konstantin Porphyrogennetos De administrando imperio. Die Namen Groß- und Weißkroatien entsprechen den Traditionen der geographischen Nominierung, die moderne Wissenschaft kennt. Entschlüsselung der Farbensymbolik der ethnogeographischen Bezeichnungen beruht sich im großen Maße auf Analogen in tibeto-chinesischen, iranischen, türkischen und mongolischen Sprachen. Die Namen, die das Predikat