"The Slavs is a book of original conception and wide scope: it covers over a thousand years of history, from the eighth century to the present day. The Slav peoples, inhabiting the eastern fringes of Europe, were latecomers to civilization. They developed as separate nations, and although they have now been brought together under a single ideology, this relative uniformity makes a strong contrast with the diversity and tumult of the past. The Eastern Slavs (Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians), the Poles, the Czechs and Slovaks, the Croats and Slovenes, the Bulgars and Macedonians--each of these groups followed a path of its own. Eventful and often tragic, Slav history in all periods is fascinatingly strange. In most Slavic countries, the Middle Ages have dovetailed directly with the modern world. Serfdom did not disappear from Russia until the mid-nineteenth century. Economic development was late. But change, when it came, was stupendously rapid: the switch to capitalism took place far more quickly than in the West, and the new social forms it brought with it turned out to be mushroom growths. After two world wars and the revolution of 1917, the social and economic structure of the twentieth-century Slav world is still in process of radical transformation. The author has successfully disentangled the confusion of nationalities, languages and religions in Slavic history. He presents at vivid, evocative picture--both of remote periods, in all their charm and naiveté, and of the present day, which he treats in an unusually objective spirit."--Dust jacket.