The Slavs

Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Russians, Ukrainians, Croats, Bosnians, Serbs—these and several other peoples are referred to as “Slavs.” But what do these nearly 250 million people have in common besides the similarities of their languages, what connects them? Eduard Mühle presents a brief and well-informed description of the history of the Slavic ethno-linguistic group from the 6th to the 20th century and points out both the real historical associations as well as the imagined commonalities that are still utilized for political purposes today. Eduard Mühle is a professor of East Central European and Eastern European history at the Westfälischen Wilhelms University of Münster. He is the author of Die Piasten: Polen im Mittelalter (The Piasts: Poland in the Middle Ages, 2011), which has also been published in the C.H.Beck Wissen series.