Сад кад смо дошли до професионалног мишљења о Флорину Курти - објавићу критику - написао је сам С. Иванов - онај који је главни аутор 2 књиге са словенским изворима и тренутно водећи ауторитет у Русији о римској историји. Надам се да разумете. Прилажем само резиме рецензија, оригинал je на руском и садржи 10 страница. Овде је анализирана Куртова прва књига (The Making of the Slavs), а не последња из 2020.Постоје и критичке анализе професионалних археолога (П. Шувалов / М. Щукин).
"In the shadow of Justinian's fortresses" ? F. Kurta and the paradoxes of early Slavic ethnicity. (Summary)
Curta should be sincerely thanked for his effort to put early Slavic studies on the cutting edge of today's humanities. Yet, I must disagree with his main idea. I decided not to delve into the archeological side of the book, but instead I chose to comment on how the historical evidence compared with the import of this book . «The making of the Slavs was less a matter of ethnogenesis and more one of invention, imagining and labeling by Byzantine authors» - Curta writes. «This was therefore an identity formed in the shadow of Justinian's forts, not in the Pripet marshes». This sensational conclusion which is a logical consequence, or rather reductio ad absurdum of «instrumentalist» approach contradicts all whatever exiguous data we have. For Procopius, Slavs were not an abstract notion of a distant people: he conversed with them a lot in 537 in Italy where they served as mercenaries in the Byzantine army: the famous «Slavic excursus» was a result of long interviews with these barbarians during which they with no doubt named themselves Slavs and Antai and claimed that in the past both tribes were called Sporoi. All three names were their own words and therefore Curta's idea that «the name "Sclavene" was a purely Byzantine construct, designed to make sense of a complicated configuration of ethnicity on the other side of the frontier» looks absolutely unsustainable. But even if we assume the name was a personal invention of Procopius, how then would we explain the fact that it immediately became known to a monophysite monk known as Pseudo-Caesarius, Antiochene chronicler Malalas, Syriac churchman John of Ephesus, Gothic historian Jordanes who knew no Greek and, finally, Martin of Braga. So, this must have been a wide conspiracy stretching from the Atlantic to Syria to label with an unpronounceable name the people who did not know how to call themselves. If Sclavenes and Antai with their own lips told Procopius that they were one and the same people and speak the same language («utterly barbaric» — wrote Procopius, hinting that he listened to it himself) — what grounds do we have to deny it as Curta does? And if we trust them, then we should call Antes part of Slavs — exactly on the basic principles of current historical anthropology: we should take into consideration their own identity and not our presumptions. And Antes began raiding the Balkans even earlier than Sclavenes: we know for sure about the raid in 518 (Got. VII. 40. 5), in which Antes were defeated by Germanus, the successful Byzantine general. It's interesting to observe that this event was very well known to the Sclavenes who crossed the Danube in 550, because when they learnt that the same Germanus was sent against them, they turned back in panic. A whole generation changed between 518 and 550, but there existed social institutions of memory in the Slavic society, and these institutions were common to Antes and Sclavenes.
It is likely that the name of the Slavs arose for the first time among the Slavophones, but in relation to some other, non-Slavophonic, population. Perhaps the first "Slavs" were some Iranian or German-speaking groups. But somehow very many barbarians in Eastern Europe also wanted to be called that, otherwise we would not have recorded this ethnonym in heterogeneous sources from the Northern to the Black Sea, from the Franks, Langobards, and Baiuvarii. F. Kurta writes: “The Slavs became Slavs, not because they spoke Slavic, but because they were called Slavs by others "
... Language is of course important, but not primary, and therefore in its first statement the author is right, but wrong in the second. The Slavs became Slavs because they called themselves Slavs. People came out under the walls of Justinian's fortresses, already realizing for sure that they had one common name. But what was in this name, what was its sudden prestige back then - we still have no answer to this question.
Иванов, Сергей Аркадьевич — доктор исторических наук, ведущий научный сотрудник Института славяноведения РАН,
профессор Отделения византийской и новогреческой филологии кафедры общего языкознания
Факультет филологии и искусств Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета, 2008
