Well, Elfwine, not so categorically, and not exactly in this sense:
- West Slavs and part of the Southern have been under and used by mainly Germanic powers and serving Rome being Catholics / thus their man and other resources utilized by "foreigners".
And (for instance) East Slavs ruling West Slavs is less "foreign" how again?
So that Russia is a power is proof of . . .- East Slavs ... they made it in Empire-building and they are kinda proof-of-concept of what I'm stating -- with approx. 1/4er to 1/3rd of the total Slavdom content they are factor even in noawadays OTL.
what.
- South slavs - gravitating around and under different orientalist empires.
Orientalist? What?
IF all these peoples were under one "master", a single cultural and political code ... not necessary to be their own, authochtonous... they comprise the most significant human resource in Europe.
And "all of these peoples" are diverse enough - and not because of foreigners meddling in the lot of the unfortunate Slavs - that it makes no sense to speak of Slavdom as one entity.
And I can say that you're still overlooking the problems involved.Not so completely. First the Slavdom territory is more or less compact - roughly the triangle: Holstein - Peloponnese - Mid.Volga and more or less homogenous panethnically. There are OTL precedents in which a Slavic or non-Slavic power have controlled significant part of this space, and I can say in these periods holding this realty and asset was crucial for the Power to be strong.
Well it is. More land = more people. More land+people = more power.
It's not nearly that simple, however, or we'd be having a conversation in Russian about "What if England amounted to anything?"
Heck, more land = more people itself requires "all things being equal" in terms of agricultural production.