The idea of Slavic identity in Early Slavs in the Monuments of Their Prehistoric Life by V.M. Florinsky

V.M. Florinsky is one of the first Russian scientists who began to study the Slavic civilisation not only through the prism of the Slavs' common spiritual life, but also by substantiating the Slavic identity through a common historical past expressed in archeological monuments and linguistic features of the language. Drawing on the results of his forty-year research, he published a two-volume Early Slavs in the Monuments of Their Prehistoric Life, which became one of the fundamental Russian works focused on the Slavic identity. This paper analyses the book to identify and study those structural elements of the Slavic civilisation, which, according to Florinsky, distinguished the Slavic world from Western and Eastern civilisations at the dawn of their existence. The authors have analysed the diverse Slavic cultures on a vast territory from Bulgaria to Siberia that were described by V.M. Florinsky and identified and studied certain markers of the Slavic world used by Florinsky to demonstrate its unity. The selected markers were verified for their validity. The main sources for this research were Florinsky's Early Slavs in the Monuments of Their Prehistoric Life as well as a number of modern studies devoted to the analysis of the Slavic civilisation identity. The authors have come to the conclusion that V.M. Florinsky based his concept of a united Slavic world on three fundamental aspects: common linguistic roots, similar material culture and united mentality of the Slavic peoples.

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