The Question of Ethnic Interpretation of Tsarubincy and Černyakhov Culture in Recent Soviet Literature

Abstract

The research of the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs and their earliest history has a long tradition in the Soviet Union. In solving this question with the help of archaeological results, the Zarubincy and the Černjachov cultures play a major role today. The archaeological phenomena of both cultures are briefly outlined. The works of those Soviet archaeologists who consider the Zarubincy culture to be Slavic and in which arguments for a continuity from the Zarubincy to the Černjachov culture are presented are highlighted. The Černjakhov culture, according to the general view of Soviet research, was not supported only by Slavic elements. In the German-speaking Slavic research the results, which the Soviet archaeology achieved in the research of the ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs, were so far too little considered, in the FRG even distortedly reproduced.