Polyvyanyy, Dmitriy Igorevich. Towards «new light» or «canceling» medieval Slavs? Notes to Eduard Mühle’ book - Studia Slavica Et Balcanica Petropolitana

For citation: Polyvyanyy, Dmitriy Igorevich. Towards «new light» or «canceling» medieval Slavs? Notes to Eduard Mühle’ book, in Studia Slavica et Balcanica Petropolitana. 2023. № 2. Pp. 200-205. DOI https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu19.2023.211

Title of the article	Towards «new light» or «canceling» medieval Slavs? Notes to Eduard Mühle’ book
Authors	Polyvyanyy, Dmitriy Igorevich — Dr. Sc. in History, Professor, Ivanovo State University, Ivanovo, Russia, Orc ID 0000-0003-3680-5508, Researcher ID HDO-6576-2022, Scopus ID 57063444800, SPIN-code 1018-8802, Author ID 251445; e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
In the section	Recensiones / Reviews
Year	2023	Issue	2	Pages	200-205
Type of article	RAR	Index UDK; BBK	UDK 94(4), BBK 63.3(4)	Index DOI	https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu19.2023.211
Abstract	The review of the monograph by renowned German scholar Professor Eduard Mühle, currently — President of Viadrina University at Frankfurt (Oder), published in 2020-2023 in German, Polish, English and Czech, is based upon its edition as No 89 of Brill’s collection «Central-Eastern and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages». As the author states, «The books is aimed, to show, on the one hand, how the "Slavs" — ever since they first appeared in 6th-century Byzantine sources — were treated as a cultural construct and as such politically instrumentalized in various contexts». Up to Prof. Mühle, the book «describes the real historical structures hidden behind the phenomenon of the "Slavs" in the Middle Ages». Beginning with a sketch of modern and contemporary ideological practices, where the concept of Slavdom was widely used for political ends, he follows with mentions of the «Slavs» in medieval Byzantine, Latin and Oriental texts against the background of the medieval Slavic «realities», challenging the relevancy of the very term «Slavs» and naming them «Slav-speaking» through the whole book. The reviewer critically analyzes the author’s approach and his monograph’s structure, which from his viewpoint in fact are turning «the new light» in which the medieval Slav history is represented, into «canceling» the Slavs as part of the European history.
Keywords	Eduard Mühle, Slavs, Middle Ages, idea, reality, «canceling», historiography
	Full text version of the article			Article language	Russian
Bibliography	Mühle, Eduard. Die Slaven im Mittelalter [The Slavs in the Middle Ages]. Berlin: De Gruyter Publ., 2016. 52 р. (in German). Mühle, Еduard. Die Slawen [The Slavs]. Münster: C. H.Beck Publ., 2017. 128 р. (in German). Mühle, Еduard. Die Slawen im Mittelalter zwischen Idee und Wirklichkeit [The Slavs in the Middle Ages between idea and reality]. Köln: Böhlau Publ., 2020. 504 р. (in German). Mühle, Eduard. Slavs in the Middle Ages between idea and reality. Leiden; Boston: Brill Publ., 2023. XVIII, 610 p. Mühle, Еduard. Slované ve středověku mezi ideou a skutečností [Slavs in the Middle Ages between idea and reality]. Praha: Argo, Publ., 2023. 568 р. (in Czech). Mühle, Еduard. Słowianie. Rzeczywistość i fikcja wspólnoty. VI–XV wiek [Slavic. Reality and fiction of the community. 6^th–15^th centuries]. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN Publ., 2020. 474 р. (in Polish).

Tags: historiography, Source studies, medieval studies, historical source, RECENSIONES / REVIEWS, POLYVIANNIY D. I.