AH Challenge: Slavic Domination of the Eurasian Steppe

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
What would it take for the Slavs to dominate either the Pontic Steppe or Central Asia? Moreover, is there a possible way for the Slavs to migrate further east than west due to say, a strong Germanic or Roman presence in Central Europe? Could the Slavs also fulfill the role of the Turks IOTL, though in a different way?
 
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kasumigenx

kasumigenx

MarshalBraginsky said:
What would it take for the Slavs to dominate either the Pontic Steppe or Central Asia? Moreover, is there a possible way for the Slavs to migrate further east than west due to say, a strong Germanic or Roman presence in Central Europe? Could the Slavs also fulfill the role of the Turks IOTL, though in a different way?
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That is possible if the Balts absorb the Vistula Veneti.
 

Marko

It is possible since there were slavic horsmen groups but they would need an incentive to move east. Slavs were looking for land for agriculture so the pontic and central asian steppe is not a place they would go.
 

pa_dutch

Such early Slavs would be small in number and wouldn't significantly change the genetic makeup of the region - You'd have people who look the same as modern Kazakhs and Uzbeks speaking Slavic languages natively instead of Turkic ones. The actual progenitors of the language family would simply be absorbed into the Central Asian pool just as the Tocharians and the Indo-Greeks were.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
So in this case the Slavs might be assimilated into whichever people is dominating Central Asia. I actually don't mind having native Central Asians speaking in Slavic tongues though, just as long as the Slavs make a presence in the Eurasian steppes.
 

RGB

According to some models, the Slavic explosion sort of owes its origins to a reverse situation: the Avars (who included no doubt besides a Turcic elite also Slavs, East Germans and potentially whatever Caucasus/Balkan populations) probably used Slavic as a lingua franca. That helped transmission. The only real massive migration by Slavs alone could have been west towards the Elbe.

So I think that could be your model going east (instead of going south).

There were certainly people using a Slavic material culture on the steppes (Donets/Don basin at the easternmost) in the pre-Rus era. Whether they were migrant Slavs or assimilated steppe Iranians or Turcs, hard to say. There's lots of nationalist speculation on the subject from all side.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
RGB said:
According to some models, the Slavic explosion sort of owes its origins to a reverse situation: the Avars (who included no doubt besides a Turcic elite also Slavs, East Germans and potentially whatever Caucasus/Balkan populations) probably used Slavic as a lingua franca. That helped transmission. The only real massive migration by Slavs alone could have been west towards the Elbe.

So I think that could be your model going east (instead of going south).

There were certainly people using a Slavic material culture on the steppes (Donets/Don basin at the easternmost) in the pre-Rus era. Whether they were migrant Slavs or assimilated steppe Iranians or Turcs, hard to say. There's lots of nationalist speculation on the subject from all side.
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An explosion of say a non-Slavic group that uses Old Church Slavonic as the lingua franca could help transmit Slavic influence eastwards, right? I don't see the Khazars as a potential candidate for Slavicization unless they adopt another faith other than Judaism. I could imagine three Turkic tribes and maybe two Iranic tribes that are potential candidates for Slavicization: from the Turkics would be the Khazars, Volga Bulgars (though we may have to butterfly the formation of Danube Bulgaria and have a gigantic Bulgar state on the Volga), and the Kipchaks. From the Iranics would be the Alans and Avars.
 

Chairwoman Roxelana

Russian is a major language of Central Asia, plus Kazakhstan at a points had more Russians then Kazakhs, and there are/were significant Russian Populations in the other countries also.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
True, but the Russian colonization of Central Asia occured during Tsarist times. Actually, it would be an interesting twist if there was a Turco-Slavic based empire. Oh wait, the Russian Empire may or may not count as the OTL Turco-Slavic Empire since they have a lot of Turkic populations within its borders.
 

Marko

RGB said:
According to some models, the Slavic explosion sort of owes its origins to a reverse situation: the Avars (who included no doubt besides a Turcic elite also Slavs, East Germans and potentially whatever Caucasus/Balkan populations) probably used Slavic as a lingua franca. That helped transmission. The only real massive migration by Slavs alone could have been west towards the Elbe.
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The problem with that model is that by the time of the arival of the Avars the first phase of the Slavic explosion already happened and they could be found from river Sale in the west to the Donjeck basin in the east and all along the danube (in variying density) from Bavaria to the Black Sea. The arival of the Avars allowed the Slavs to break south all the way to Crete at an amazing speed , but there is nothing showing they would not have done it on their own even without the Avars. Langobards and Gepids in Pannonia would have been an obstacle but not an impassable one.
 

Marko

The first exansion began on the turn from 5th to 6th century and lasted roughly to the middle of the 6th when they joined forces with the Avars.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
One other thing, the modern state of Bulgaria was a Slavicized nation of Turkic origin. Could a similar Slavicization of another Turkic tribe in the steppes occur a la Bulgaria? I'm aiming for either Khazaria or the Kipchak-Cuman confederation to at least become influenced by Slavic culture.
 

RGB

MarshalBraginsky said:
One other thing, the modern state of Bulgaria was a Slavicized nation of Turkic origin. Could a similar Slavicization of another Turkic tribe in the steppes occur a la Bulgaria? I'm aiming for either Khazaria or the Kipchak-Cuman confederation to at least become influenced by Slavic culture.
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The Cumans seemed like they were (slowly) on the way to getting Christianised. Lots of late Khans also have Russian names as given by the chronicles, although they may have had pagan names too. But complete linguistic assimilation is not a given even so.

The Kangly Kypchaks were however already partly Muslim since the 11th c.
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
There is another question that I wish to ask: could there also be a good change for a Slavic tribal presence in the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia? I looked up on a thread about Slavs in Anatolia but it's a year old.
 

Ledalek

after byzantines reconquered greek peninsulia after slavic migration, they resettled as much as 100 000 slavs from greece to anatolia
 

MarshalBraginsky

Banned
A majority of the Slavs resettled in Anatolia were surprisingly of Serb origin, so I was wondering if Anatolia can become the new homeland of the Serbs instead of Moesia. This could have interesting butterflies, as an "Anatolian Serbia" will have Armenia as neighbors, and if the East Slavs still gets Rurik to rule over them and form Kievan Rus', it will also have other effects as well. If Justinian II and his predecessors were not cruel in their treatment of the Slavs living in Anatolia, can we truly have a Slavic Anatolia?
 
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