From the 19th century, up to the end of the 20th century, most of Central Asia has been part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, both being Slavic majority countries.

Subsequently, Germanic languages became dominant among many European countries but in Southern and Eastern Europe the Germanic elite eventually adopted the native Slavic or Latin dialects.

In some Slavic countries, rice is the main ingredient.

Blue, white, and red is a common combination in Slavic countries such as the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, and Croatia as well as among Western nations including Australia, France, Iceland, Norway, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and the United States of America.

Polish ( język polski, polszczyzna ) is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland ( being that country's official language ) and by Polish minorities in other countries.

Varying relations between the Slavic countries exist nowadays ; they range from mutual respect on equal footing and sympathy towards one another through traditional dislike and enmity, to indifference.

None, other than culture and heritage oriented organizations, are currently considered as a form of rapprochement among the countries with Slavic origins.

Sociologists agree that there are signs that Pan-Slavism is experiencing a growing trend among younger people in some Slavic countries.

Multiple factors, such as the entry of Slavic countries such as Slovakia and Bulgaria into the European Union has contributed to the fact that many young Slavs feel alienated and are finding a sense of belonging and identity in " being a Slav ".

* Russians ( russkiye ), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries ( where they are also known as Ruthenians or by other names )

Cyrillic eventually spread throughout most of the Slavic world to become the standard alphabet in the Orthodox Slavic countries.

The orthodox tradition of separating meat and vegetables and as well between specific meals for Fasting and other holidays contributed to a rich variety of vegetarian dishes in Russia and Slavic countries, such as soups ( vegetable borscht, shchi, okroshka ), pirogi, blini, vareniki, kasha, buckwheat, fermented and pickled vegetables, etc.

This name is however not recorded in other medieval Slavic countries.

Apart from the Slavic countries, Slavonic has been used as a liturgical language by the Romanian Orthodox Church, as well as a literary and official language of the prince courts of Wallachia and Moldavia ( see Old Church Slavonic in Romania ), before gradually being replaced by Romanian starting with the 18th century.

) However, in the early years, specific locations behind the Iron Curtain are named ( such as Lubyanka prison in the episode " Memory ") and many of the targets appear to be leaders of fictional Slavic countries.

They have expressed an aversion to people from Slavic countries ( especially Poland ) and people of other national backgrounds who moved from the former West Germany into the former East Germany after Germany was reunited.

In Slavic countries, it is called " Fifth Day " ( Polish, Russian – pyatnitsa ).

In Eastern Slavic countries, pork and beef tongues are commonly consumed, boiled and garnished with horseradish or jelled ; beef tongues fetch a significantly higher price and are considered more of a delicacy.

* Paskha ( meal ), an Easter dish served in several Slavic countries

The Russian people (, russkiye ) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Russia, speaking the Russian language and primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries.

This is analogous to the Romance system naming pitches after the solfège syllables, and is used in Romance and Slavic countries, among others.

In some Slavic countries a bonfire is referred to as a " bond fire " because of the bond developed between friends around the fire.

They contain precise statements of the prices of goods and accurate information concerning commercial usages in the Rhineland and in distant Slavic countries ; e. g., concerning the golden trade routes in Strasburg and Speyer ( fol.

Archaeologists and historians of today believe that these Scandinavian settlements in the Slavic lands formed the names of the countries Russia and Belarus.

After the Migration Period of the Early Middle Ages, Holstein was a borderland between Nordalbingia ( part of Old Saxony ) at the coast of North Sea, the land of the Slavic Wagrians belonging to the Obotrites at the coast of the Baltic Sea and the land of the Danes in Jutland.

They spoke the Pomeranian language belonging to the Lechitic branch of the West Slavic language family.

It represents Russian Калашников, a sandhi alteration of earlier Калачников, which literally means " belonging to ( usually " son of " or " place of ") a man who made a type of traditional Slavic bread called kalach ", i. e., " kalach-maker's son ".

The Balto-Slavic language group traditionally comprises Baltic and Slavic languages, belonging to the Indo-European family of languages.

The land of the Polans was at the crossroads of territories, belonging to different Eastern Slavic tribes, such as Drevlyans, Radimichs, Drehovians and Severians and connected them all with water arteries.

The name Kanizsa is of Slavic origin ( Knysa ), and means " belonging to a prince ".

However, many Silesians regard it as a separate language belonging to the West Slavic branch of Slavic languages, together with Polish and other Lechitic languages, as well as Upper and Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak.

In his book about the geography of Macedonia ( Материали по изучаванието на Македония, София 1896 ) Gyorche Petrov describes the Slavic people in Macedonia as Bulgarian and considers the term " Macedonians " as regional belonging, explaining that the Macedonian population consists of Bulgarians, Turks, Arnauts, Vlachs, Jews and Gypsies.

Kievan Rus ' is important for its introduction of a Slavic variant of the Eastern Orthodox religion, dramatically deepening a synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next thousand years.

This is also true in the Slavic languages following the Eastern Orthodox tradition ( e. g. "" ( Iisús Navín ) in Russian ).

In the Slavic tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church, these two are commemorated on 19 November ( corresponding to 2 December on the Gregorian calendar ).

They brought with them the Old Church Slavonic liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Christian religion, written Slavic language, the version of which known as Chancery Slavonic was to serve the Lithuanian court's document-producing needs for a few centuries, and developed laws, turning Vilnius into a major center of their civilization.

In his dealings with Constantinople in the matter of Photius, as also in his relations with the young Slavic Orthodox church, he pursued the policy of Pope Nicholas I.

In 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium.

The reigns of Vladimir the Great ( 980 – 1015 ) and his son Yaroslav the Wise ( 1019 – 1054 ) constitute the Golden Age of Kiev, which saw the acceptance of Orthodox Christianity from Byzantium and the creation of the first East Slavic written legal code, the Russkaya Pravda.

The capital Preslav was said to rival Constantinople, the new independent Bulgarian Orthodox Church became the first new patriarchate besides the Pentarchy and Bulgarian translations of Christian texts spread all over the Slavic world of the time.

The common cultural bond of Eastern Orthodox Christianity and written Church Slavonic ( a literary and liturgical Slavic language developed by 8th century missionaries Saints Cyril and Methodius ) fostered the emergence of a new geopolitical entity, Kievan Rus ' — a loose-knit network of principalities, established along preexisting trade routes, with major centers in Novgorod ( currently Russia ), Polatsk ( in Belarus ) and Kiev ( currently in Ukraine ) — which claimed a sometimes precarious preeminence among them.

It played an important role in the history of the Slavic languages and served as a basis and model for later Church Slavonic traditions, and some Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches use Church Slavonic as a liturgical language to this day.

The Oriental Orthodox generally follow the pattern of the Slavic tradition with respect to the archbishop / metropolitan distinction.

The Eastern Orthodox Church calls dioceses metropoleis in the Greek tradition or eparchies in the Slavic tradition.

Rus ' had accepted the Orthodox Christianity from the East Roman Empire in 988, and this largely defined the Russian culture of next millennium as the synthesis of Slavic and Byzantine cultures.

The Bosniaks, whose ethnonym initially referred to Slavic Christians ( Orthodox, Catholic and Bogomils ) which co-existed in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the Middle Ages, are today majority Muslim, since the Ottoman occupation.

Although the Serbs and Bulgarians share Slavic kinship, Orthodox Christianity and cultural traits, the two peoples have been relatively hostile against each other in history and were early on understood as distinct ethnic groups.

The Serbs are predominantly Orthodox Christian, and before Christianity, they adhered to Slavic paganism.

In Eastern Orthodox and Greek-Catholic Churches of Slavic tradition, the Gospel account of Zacchaeus is read on the last Sunday preceding the liturgical preparation for Great Lent, for which reason that Sunday is known as " Zacchaeus Sunday.

Although Europe had already experience the East-West Schism by this time, such a split was far less concrete than it is today, and Catholic Slavs in Bosnia and the Dalmatian coast practiced Christianity in a similar way to Orthodox Slavs – priests married, wore beards and gave liturgy in Slavic rather than Latin.

* Slavic Orthodox

Bulgaria functioned as the hub of Slavic Europe during much of the Middle Ages, exerting considerable literary and cultural influence over the Eastern Orthodox Slavic world by means of the Preslav and Ohrid Literary Schools.