Misplaced Pages

#59940

139-591: The Caucasus ( / ˈ k ɔː k ə s ə s / ) or Caucasia ( / k ɔː ˈ k eɪ ʒ ə / ), is a region spanning Eastern Europe and Western Asia . It is situated between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea , mainly comprising Armenia , Azerbaijan , Georgia , and parts of Southern Russia . The Caucasus Mountains , including the Greater Caucasus range, have conventionally been considered as

278-827: A natural barrier between Europe and Asia , bisecting the Eurasian landmass. Mount Elbrus , Europe 's highest mountain, is situated in the Western Caucasus area of Russia . On the southern side, the Lesser Caucasus includes the Javakheti Plateau and the Armenian highlands , part of which is in Turkey. The Caucasus is divided into the North Caucasus and South Caucasus , although

417-731: A sermo Theotiscus ('Germanic language'), the language of the Gothic translation of the Bible, and that they used such a liturgy. Many writers of the medieval texts that mention the Goths used the word Goths to mean any Germanic people in eastern Europe (such as the Varangians ), many of whom certainly did not use the Gothic language as known from the Gothic Bible. Some writers even referred to Slavic -speaking people as "Goths". However, it

556-441: A stress accent rather than the pitch accent of Proto-Indo-European . This is indicated by the shortening of long vowels [eː] and [oː] and the loss of short vowels [a] and [i] in unstressed final syllables. Just as in other Germanic languages, the free moving Proto-Indo-European accent was replaced with one fixed on the first syllable of simple words. Accents do not shift when words are inflected. In most compound words,

695-574: A Germanic language, Gothic is a part of the Indo-European language family. It is the earliest Germanic language that is attested in any sizable texts, but it lacks any modern descendants. The oldest documents in Gothic date back to the fourth century. The language was in decline by the mid-sixth century, partly because of the military defeat of the Goths at the hands of the Franks , the elimination of

834-477: A blacksmith god, and Batradz , a mighty hero. The folklore of the Caucasus shows ancient Iranian Zoroastrian influence, involve battles with ancient Goths , Huns and Khazars , and contain many connections with ancient Indian , Norse Scandinavian , and Greek cultures. Caucasian folklore contains many links with the myths of the ancient Greeks. There are resemblances between the mother goddess Satanaya and

973-428: A former perfect); three grammatical moods : indicative , subjunctive (from an old optative form) and imperative as well as three kinds of nominal forms: a present infinitive , a present participle , and a past passive . Not all tenses and persons are represented in all moods and voices, as some conjugations use auxiliary forms . Finally, there are forms called 'preterite-present': the old Indo-European perfect

1112-952: A geopolitical concept that became known as the Eastern Bloc . This consisted of: With the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the political landscape of the Eastern Bloc , and indeed the world, changed. In the German reunification , the Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic in 1990. In 1991, COMECON , the Warsaw Pact , and the Soviet Union were dissolved. Many European nations that had been part of

1251-517: A gradualist manner, backed by the Soviets in many, but not all, cases. For a while, cooperative non-Communist parties were tolerated. The Communist governments nationalized private businesses, placing them under state ownership, and monitored the media and churches. When dividing up government offices with coalition partners, the Communists took control of the interior ministries, which controlled

1390-582: A language of considerable interest in comparative linguistics . Only a few documents in Gothic have survived – not enough for a complete reconstruction of the language. Most Gothic-language sources are translations or glosses of other languages (namely, Greek ), so foreign linguistic elements most certainly influenced the texts. These are the primary sources: Reports of the discovery of other parts of Ulfilas's Bible have not been substantiated. Heinrich May in 1968 claimed to have found in England twelve leaves of

1529-434: A monopoly on managing and implementing a state's or federation's monetary policy. Besides monetary policy, some of them even perform the supervision of the financial intermediary system. In the case of a price stability function, the inflation rate, in the examined area, relatively quickly dropped to below 5% by 2000. In monetary policy the differences are based on the euro-zone: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia use

SECTION 10

#1732750729060

1668-737: A palimpsest containing parts of the Gospel of Matthew . Only fragments of the Gothic translation of the Bible have been preserved. The translation was apparently done in the Balkans region by people in close contact with Greek Christian culture. The Gothic Bible apparently was used by the Visigoths in Occitania until the loss of Visigothic Occitania at the start of the 6th century, in Visigothic Iberia until about 700, and perhaps for

1807-511: A prominent role in the history and culture of Eastern and Southeastern Europe . To a lesser degree, forms of Eastern Protestantism and Eastern Catholicism have also been influential in Eastern Europe. Countries where Eastern Protestantism or Eastern Catholicism hold historical significance include Belarus, Croatia , Greece, Hungary , Lithuania , Poland , Romania, Russia, Slovakia , Slovenia and Ukraine. The schism refers to

1946-455: A relatively high standard of living . This period is also called the east-central European golden age of around 1600. At the beginning of the 17th century, numeracy levels in eastern Europe were relatively low, although regional differences existed. During the 18th century, the regions began to catch up with western Europe, but did not develop as rapidly. Areas with stronger female autonomy developed more quickly in terms of numeracy. Serfdom

2085-489: A separate chapter deals with public finances. Generally, they soon encountered the following problems: high inflation, high unemployment, low economic growth, and high government debt. By 2000 these economies were stabilized, and between 2004 and 2013 all of them joined the European Union. Most of the constitutions define directly or indirectly the economic system of the countries parallel to the democratic transition of

2224-651: A significant part of European culture ; the main socio-cultural characteristics of Eastern Europe have historically been defined by the traditions of the East Slavs and Greeks , as well as by the influence of Eastern Christianity as it developed through the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire . Another definition was created by the Cold War , as Europe was ideologically divided by

2363-506: A spit, heat it up, stab it into the giant's eye, and escape. There are also links with the ancient Greek myth of Prometheus . Many legends, widespread in the Caucasus, contain motifs shared with the Prometheus story. These motifs include a giant hero, his conflict with God or gods, the stealing of fire and giving it to men, being chained, and being tormented by a bird who pecks at his liver (or heart). The Adyge / Circassian Nart Nasran,

2502-456: A time in Italy, the Balkans, and Ukraine until at least the mid-9th century. During the extermination of Arianism , Trinitarian Christians probably overwrote many texts in Gothic as palimpsests, or alternatively collected and burned Gothic documents. Apart from biblical texts, the only substantial Gothic document that still exists – and the only lengthy text known to have been composed originally in

2641-519: Is the verb "to be" , which is athematic in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, and many other Indo-European languages. Gothic verbs are, like nouns and adjectives, divided into strong verbs and weak verbs. Weak verbs are characterised by preterites formed by appending the suffixes -da or -ta , parallel to past participles formed with -þ / -t . Strong verbs form preterites by ablaut (the alternating of vowels in their root forms) or by reduplication (prefixing

2780-420: Is an allophone of the others, all found only in complementary distribution with them. Nasals in Gothic, like most other languages, are pronounced at the same point of articulation as the consonant that follows them ( assimilation ). Therefore, clusters like [md] and [nb] are not possible. Accentuation in Gothic can be reconstructed through phonetic comparison, Grimm's law , and Verner's law . Gothic used

2919-473: Is clear from Ulfilas's translation that – despite some puzzles – the Gothic language belongs with the Germanic language-group, not with Slavic. Generally, the term "Gothic language" refers to the language of Ulfilas , but the attestations themselves date largely from the 6th century, long after Ulfilas had died. A few Gothic runic inscriptions were found across Europe, but due to early Christianization of

SECTION 20

#1732750729060

3058-591: Is clearly identifiable evidence from other branches that the Gothic form is a secondary development. Gothic fails to display a number of innovations shared by all Germanic languages attested later: The language also preserved many features that were mostly lost in other early Germanic languages: Most conspicuously, Gothic shows no sign of morphological umlaut. Gothic fotus , pl. fotjus , can be contrasted with English foot  : feet , German Fuß  : Füße , Old Norse fótr  : fœtr , Danish fod  : fødder . These forms contain

3197-492: Is fairly free as is typical of other inflected languages. The natural word order of Gothic is assumed to have been like that of the other old Germanic languages; however, nearly all extant Gothic texts are translations of Greek originals and have been heavily influenced by Greek syntax. Sometimes what can be expressed in one word in the original Greek will require a verb and a complement in the Gothic translation; for example, διωχθήσονται ( diōchthēsontai , "they will be persecuted")

3336-802: Is generally between Kavkaz and Kaukaz . The North Caucasus region is also known as the Ciscaucasus , whereas the South Caucasus region is alternatively known as the Transcaucasus . The North Caucasus contains most of the Greater Caucasus mountain range. It consists of Southern Russia , mainly the North Caucasian Federal District 's autonomous republics and the Krais in Southern Russia, and

3475-634: Is hard to separate the two) derived by the processes described in Grimm's law and Verner's law and characteristic of Germanic languages . Gothic is unusual among Germanic languages in having a /z/ phoneme, which has not become /r/ through rhotacization. Furthermore, the doubling of written consonants between vowels suggests that Gothic made distinctions between long and short, or geminated consonants: atta [atːa] "dad", kunnan [kunːan] "to know" (Dutch kennen , German kennen "to know", Icelandic kunna ). Gothic has three nasal consonants, one of which

3614-533: Is known for its linguistic diversity : aside from Indo-European and Turkic languages, the Kartvelian , Northwest Caucasian , and Northeast Caucasian language families are indigenous to the area. Pliny the Elder 's Natural History (77–79 AD) derives the name of the Caucasus from a Scythian name, Croucasis , which supposedly means 'shimmering with snow'. German linguist Paul Kretschmer notes that

3753-469: Is less significant in Gothic because of its conservative nature: the so-called "weak" declensions (those ending in n ) are, in fact, no weaker in Gothic (in terms of having fewer endings) than the "strong" declensions (those ending in a vowel), and the "strong" declensions do not form a coherent class that can be clearly distinguished from the "weak" declensions. Although descriptive adjectives in Gothic (as well as superlatives ending in -ist and -ost ) and

3892-536: Is nearly 44%, but the deviation is great because the lowest figure is close to 10% but the highest is 97%. The trend shows that the sovereign debt ratio to GDP in most countries has been rising. Only three countries are affected by high government debt: Croatia, Hungary and Slovenia (over 70% of the GDP), while Slovakia and Poland fulfill the Maastricht requirement but only 10% below the threshold. The contribution to cover

4031-572: Is not a strict determinant for Eastern Europe, where from Croatia to Poland and everywhere in between, the Latin alphabet is used. Greece's status as the cradle of Western civilization and an integral part of the Western world in the political, cultural and economic spheres has led to it being nearly always classified as belonging not to Eastern, but Southern or Western Europe. During the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries, Eastern Europe enjoyed

4170-598: Is not geographical but historical, religious and cultural, and is harder to designate. The Ural Mountains , Ural River , and the Caucasus Mountains are the geographical land border of the eastern edge of Europe. E.g. Kazakhstan , which is mainly located in Central Asia with the most western parts of it located west of the Ural River , also shares a part of Eastern Europe. In the west, however,

4309-573: Is overwhelmingly Orthodox, but is very rarely included in "Eastern Europe", for a variety of reasons, the most prominent being that Greece's history, for the most part, was more influenced by Mediterranean cultures and dynamics. The fall of the Iron Curtain brought the end of the Cold War east–west division in Europe, but this geopolitical concept is sometimes still used for quick reference by

Caucasus - Misplaced Pages Continue

4448-507: Is part of the Russian Federation ) and Transcaucasia . According to Alexander Mikaberidze , Transcaucasia is a "Russo-centric" term. The Transcaucasus region and Dagestan were the furthest points of Parthian and later Sasanian expansions, with areas to the north of the Greater Caucasus range practically impregnable. The mythological Mount Qaf , the world's highest mountain that ancient Iranian lore shrouded in mystery,

4587-576: Is quite distinct and differs from that of the other Western Eurasian refugia. The natural landscape is one of mixed forest , with substantial areas of rocky ground above the treeline. The Caucasus Mountains are also noted for a dog breed , the Caucasian Shepherd Dog (Rus. Kavkazskaya Ovcharka, Geo. Nagazi). Vincent Evans noted that minke whales have been recorded from the Black Sea. Eastern Europe The region represents

4726-411: Is rendered: Likewise Gothic translations of Greek noun phrases may feature a verb and a complement. In both cases, the verb follows the complement, giving weight to the theory that basic word order in Gothic is object–verb. This aligns with what is known of other early Germanic languages. However, this pattern is reversed in imperatives and negations: And in a wh -question the verb directly follows

4865-647: Is the preservation of the dual number , referring to two people or things; the plural was used only for quantities greater than two. Thus, "the two of us" and "we" for numbers greater than two were expressed as wit and weis respectively. While proto-Indo-European used the dual for all grammatical categories that took a number (as did Classical Greek and Sanskrit ), most Old Germanic languages are unusual in that they preserved it only for pronouns. Gothic preserves an older system with dual marking on both pronouns and verbs (but not nouns or adjectives). The simple demonstrative pronoun sa (neuter: þata , feminine: so , from

5004-529: Is used for transliterating Gothic words into the Latin script . The system mirrors the conventions of the native alphabet, such as writing long /iː/ as ei . The Goths used their equivalents of e and o alone only for long higher vowels, using the digraphs ai and au (much as in French ) for the corresponding short or lower vowels. There are two variant spelling systems: a "raw" one that directly transliterates

5143-501: Is variously a one-eyed rock-throwing cannibal, who lives in a cave (the exit of which is often blocked by a stone), kills the hero's companions, is blinded by a hot stake, and whose flock of animals is stolen by the hero and his men, all motifs which (along with still others) are also found in the Polyphemus story. In one example from Georgia , two brothers, who are being held prisoner by a giant one-eyed shepherd called "One-eye", take

5282-694: The Achaemenid Empire , Parthia , and the Sassanid Empire , who would altogether rule the Caucasus for many hundreds of years. In 95–55 BC, under the reign of the Armenian king Tigranes the Great , the Kingdom of Armenia included Kingdom of Armenia, vassals Iberia, Albania, Parthia, Atropatene , Mesopotamia , Cappadocia , Cilicia , Syria , Nabataean kingdom , and Judea . By the time of

5421-743: The Achaemenid Persian , Parthian , and Sassanid Persian Empires. Parts of the Balkans and some more northern areas were ruled by the Achaemenid Persians as well, including Thrace , Paeonia , Macedon , and most of the Black Sea coastal regions of Romania , Ukraine , and Russia . Owing to the rivalry between the Parthian Empire and Rome , and later between Byzantium and the Sassanid Persians ,

5560-663: The Central and Eastern European member states, including the Baltic states , that accessed in 2004 and after: in 2004 the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, and the Slovak Republic; in 2007 Bulgaria, Romania; and in 2013 Croatia. The economic changes were in harmony with the constitutional reforms: constitutional provisions on public finances can be identified and, in some countries,

5699-727: The European Parliament noted that Armenia and Georgia may enter the EU in the future. Georgia and Armenia are seeking EU membership, with Georgia also seeking NATO membership alongside. There are two de facto republics with limited recognition in the South Caucasus region that exist under the presence of Russian military. Both states participate in the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations : Former republics with limited recognition: Some European republics of

Caucasus - Misplaced Pages Continue

5838-735: The Georgian Amirani , the Chechen Pkharmat , and the Abkhazian Abrskil , are examples of such Prometheus-like figures. The Caucasus is an area of great ecological importance. The region is included in the list of 34 world biodiversity hotspots . It harbors some 6400 species of higher plants, 1600 of which are endemic to the region. Its wildlife includes Persian leopards , brown bears , wolves , bison , marals , golden eagles and hooded crows . Among invertebrates , some 1000 spider species are recorded in

5977-519: The Iron Curtain , with "Eastern Europe" being synonymous with communist states constituting the Eastern Bloc under the influence of the Soviet Union . The term is sometimes considered to be pejorative, through stereotypes about Eastern Europe being inferior (poorer, less developed) to Western Europe ; the term Central and Eastern Europe is sometimes used for a more neutral grouping. Several definitions of Eastern Europe exist in

6116-464: The Latvian word kruvesis also means 'frozen mud'. Isidore of Seville 's Etymologies ( c.  625 AD) also says the name means shining white like snow: "Thus, toward the east, where it rises to a greater height, it is called the Caucasus, due to the whiteness of its snow, for in an eastern language, caucasus means “white,” that is, shining white with a very thick snow cover. For the same reason

6255-743: The Muslim conquest of Persia , large parts of the region came under the rule of the Arabs , and Islam penetrated the region. In the 10th century, the Alans (proto- Ossetians ) founded the Kingdom of Alania , that flourished in the Northern Caucasus , roughly in the location of latter-day Circassia and modern North Ossetia–Alania , until its destruction by the Mongol invasion in 1238–39. During

6394-747: The Nordic-Baltic Eight regional cooperation forum whereas Central European countries formed their own alliance called the Visegrád Group . The Northern Future Forum , the Nordic Investment Bank , the Nordic Battlegroup , the Nordic-Baltic Eight and the New Hanseatic League are other examples of Northern European cooperation that includes the three countries collectively referred to as

6533-441: The Ottoman Empire . In the second half of the 19th century, the Russian Empire also conquered the North Caucasus. In the aftermath of the Caucasian Wars , the Russian military perpetrated an ethnic cleansing of Circassians , expelling this indigenous population from its homeland. Between the 1850s and World War I, about a million North Caucasian Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire as refugees. Having killed and deported most of

6672-434: The Simurgh . The Roman poet Ovid placed the Caucasus in Scythia and depicted it as a cold and stony mountain which was the abode of personified hunger. The Greek hero Jason sailed to the west coast of the Caucasus in pursuit of the Golden Fleece , and there met Medea , a daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis . The Caucasus has a rich folklore tradition. This tradition has been preserved orally—necessitated by

6811-443: The past participle may take both definite and indefinite forms, some adjectival words are restricted to one variant. Some pronouns take only definite forms: for example, sama (English "same"), adjectives like unƕeila ("constantly", from the root ƕeila , "time"; compare to the English "while"), comparative adjective and present participles . Others, such as áins ("some"), take only the indefinite forms. The table below displays

6950-426: The wh- at the beginning of many English interrogative, which, as in Gothic, are pronounced with [ʍ] in some dialects. The same etymology is present in the interrogatives of many other Indo-European languages: w- [v] in German, hv- in Danish , the Latin qu- (which persists in modern Romance languages ), the Greek τ- or π-, the Slavic and Indic k- as well as many others. The bulk of Gothic verbs follow

7089-462: The 'mountain of the seagull(s)' (καύ-: καύαξ, καύηξ, -ηκος, κήξ, κηϋξ 'a kind of seagull' + the reconstructed *κάσος 'mountain' or 'rock' richly attested both in place and personal names). In Georgian tradition, the term Caucasus is derived from Caucas ( Georgian : კავკასოსი Ḳavḳasosi ), the son of the Biblical Togarmah and legendary forefather of the Nakh peoples . According to German philologists Otto Schrader and Alfons A. Nehring,

SECTION 50

#1732750729060

7228-406: The 1920s, but all of them (except Czechoslovakia and Finland) gave up democracy during the depression years of the 1930s, in favor of autocratic, strong-man or single-party states. The new states were unable to form stable military alliances, and one by one were too weak to stand up against Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, which took them over between 1938 and 1945. Russia ended its participation in

7367-408: The 1990s: free-market economy (sometimes complemented with the socially [and ecologically] oriented sector), economic development, or only economic rights are included as a ground for the economy. In the case of fiscal policy, the legislative, the executive and other state organs (Budget Council, Economic and Social Council) define and manage the budgeting. The average government debt in the countries

7506-459: The 5th century, marking the start of the Early Middle Ages . By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire—the Byzantine Empire —had a survival strategy that kept it alive for another 1,000 years. The rise of the Frankish Empire in the west, and in particular the Great Schism that formally divided Eastern and Western Christianity in 1054, heightened the cultural and religious distinctiveness between Eastern and Western Europe. Much of Eastern Europe

7645-441: The Ancient Greek word Καύκασος ( Kaukasos ) is connected to Gothic hauhs 'high' as well as Lithuanian kaũkas 'hillock' and kaukarà 'hill, top', Russian куча 'heap'. British linguist Adrian Room claims that * kau- also means 'mountain' in Pelasgian , though this is speculative given that Pelasgian is so poorly known. The term Caucasus is not only used for the mountains themselves but also includes Ciscaucasia (which

7784-519: The Armenians of Western Armenia during the Armenian genocide , the Turks intended to eliminate the Armenian population of Eastern Armenia . During the 1920 Turkish–Armenian War , 60,000 to 98,000 Armenian civilians were estimated to have been killed by the Turkish army. In the 1940s, around 480,000 Chechens and Ingush , 120,000 Karachay – Balkars and Meskhetian Turks , thousands of Kalmyks , and 200,000 Kurds in Nakchivan and Caucasus Germans were deported en masse to Central Asia and Siberia by

7923-486: The Baltic states. The South Caucasus nations of Armenia , Azerbaijan , and Georgia are included in definitions or histories of Eastern Europe. They are located in the transition zone of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. They participate in the European Union 's Eastern Partnership program, the Euronest Parliamentary Assembly , and are members of the Council of Europe , which specifies that all three have political and cultural connections to Europe. In January 2002,

8062-432: The Caspian Sea to its east, and Iran to its south. It contains the Lesser Caucasus mountain range and surrounding lowlands. All of Armenia , Azerbaijan (excluding the northernmost parts), and Georgia (excluding the northernmost parts) are in the South Caucasus. The watershed along the Greater Caucasus range is considered by some sources to be the dividing line between Europe and Southwest Asia . According to that,

8201-456: The Caucasus region. As a result of her military campaigns and the temporary fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1204, Georgia became the strongest Christian state in the whole Near East area, encompassing most of the Caucasus stretching from Northern Iran and Northeastern Turkey to the North Caucasus. The Caucasus region was conquered by the Ottomans , Turco-Mongols , local kingdoms and khanates, as well as, once again, Iran . Up to and including

8340-420: The Caucasus was usually incorporated into the Iranian world . At the beginning of the 19th century, the Russian Empire conquered the territory from Qajar Iran . The territory of the Caucasus region was inhabited by Homo erectus since the Paleolithic Era . In 1991, early Hominini fossils dating back 1.8 million years were found at the Dmanisi archaeological site in Georgia . Scientists now classify

8479-469: The Caucasus. Most of arthropod biodiversity is concentrated on Great and Lesser Caucasus ranges. The region has a high level of endemism and several relict animals and plants, the fact reflecting the presence of refugial forests, which survived the Ice Age in the Caucasus Mountains. The Caucasus forest refugium is the largest throughout the Western Asian (near Eastern) region. The area has multiple representatives of disjunct relict groups of plants with

SECTION 60

#1732750729060

8618-448: The Cold War Era. The following countries are labelled Southeast European by some commentators, though others still consider them to be Eastern European. Partially recognized states : Despite being frequently classified as a Central Asian country, about 4% of Kazakhstan 's territory, situated west of the Ural River , geographically lies in Eastern Europe, thus technically making it a transcontinental country . Ancient kingdoms of

8757-453: The First World War in March 1918 and lost territory, as the Baltic countries and Poland became independent. The region was the main battlefield in the Second World War (1939–45), with German and Soviet armies sweeping back and forth, with millions of Jews and others killed by the Nazis in the Generalplan Ost , and millions of others killed by disease, starvation, and military action, or executed after being deemed as politically dangerous. During

8896-455: The First World War was the breakup of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Ottoman empires, as well as partial losses to the German Empire. A surge of ethnic nationalism created a series of new states in Eastern Europe, validated by the Versailles Treaty of 1919 . Poland was reconstituted after the partitions of the 1790s had divided it between Germany, Austria, and Russia. New countries included Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine (which

9035-427: The Gothic language – is the Skeireins , a few pages of commentary on the Gospel of John . Very few medieval secondary sources make reference to the Gothic language after about 800. In De incrementis ecclesiae Christianae (840–842), Walafrid Strabo , a Frankish monk who lived in Swabia , writes of a group of monks who reported that even then certain peoples in Scythia ( Dobruja ), especially around Tomis , spoke

9174-474: The Goths in Italy, and geographic isolation (in Spain, the Gothic language lost its last and probably already declining function as a church language when the Visigoths converted from Arianism to Nicene Christianity in 589). The language survived as a domestic language in the Iberian Peninsula (modern-day Spain and Portugal) as late as the eighth century. Gothic-seeming terms are found in manuscripts subsequent to this date, but these may or may not belong to

9313-474: The Goths, the Runic writing was quickly replaced by the newly invented Gothic alphabet. Ulfilas's Gothic, as well as that of the Skeireins and various other manuscripts, was written using an alphabet that was most likely invented by Ulfilas himself for his translation. Some scholars (such as Braune) claim that it was derived from the Greek alphabet only while others maintain that there are some Gothic letters of Runic or Latin origin. A standardized system

9452-403: The Greek goddess of love Aphrodite . The story of how the trickster Nart Sosruquo, became invulnerable parallels that of the Greek hero Achilles . The ancient Greek Amazons may be connected to a Caucasian "warrior Forest-Mother, Amaz-an". Caucasian legends include stories involving giants similar to Homer 's Polyphemus story. In these stories, the giant is almost always a shepherd , and he

9591-415: The Greek of that period is well documented, it is possible to reconstruct much of Gothic pronunciation from translated texts. In addition, the way in which non-Greek names are transcribed in the Greek Bible and in Ulfilas's Bible is very informative. In general, Gothic consonants are devoiced at the ends of words. Gothic is rich in fricative consonants (although many of them may have been approximants ; it

9730-417: The Indo-European root *so , *seh 2 , *tod ; cognate to the Greek article ὁ, ἡ, τό and the Latin is tud ) can be used as an article, allowing constructions of the type definite article + weak adjective + noun . The interrogative pronouns begin with ƕ- , which derives from the proto-Indo-European consonant *kʷ that was present at the beginning of all interrogatives in proto-Indo-European, cognate with

9869-452: The Middle Ages, Bagratid Armenia , Kingdom of Tashir-Dzoraget , Kingdom of Syunik and Principality of Khachen organized local Armenian population facing multiple threats after the fall of antique Kingdom of Armenia . Caucasian Albania maintained close ties with Armenia and the Church of Caucasian Albania shared the same Christian dogmas with the Armenian Apostolic Church and had a tradition of their Catholicos being ordained through

10008-715: The Parthians would invade the region several times, although it was never able to hold the area, unlike the Sassanids who controlled most of the Caucasus during their entire rule. The earliest known distinctions between east and west in Europe originate in the history of the Roman Republic . As the Roman domain expanded, a cultural and linguistic division appeared. The mainly Greek-speaking eastern provinces had formed

10147-661: The Patriarch of Armenia. In the 12th century, the Georgian king David the Builder drove the Muslims out of the Caucasus and made the Kingdom of Georgia a strong regional power. In 1194–1204 Georgian Queen Tamar 's armies crushed new Seljuk Turkish invasions from the southeast and south and launched several successful campaigns into Seljuk Turkish-controlled Southern Armenia. The Georgian Kingdom continued military campaigns in

10286-539: The Scythians, who live next to this mountain range, call it Croacasim, for among them whiteness or snow is called casim. 3. The Taurus range is likewise called the Caucasus by many." In the Tale of Past Years (1113 AD), it is stated that Old East Slavic Кавкасийскыѣ горы ( Kavkasijskyě gory ) came from Ancient Greek Καύκασος ( Kaúkasos ), which, according to M. A. Yuyukin, is a compound word that can be interpreted as

10425-646: The Southern Caucasus (except western Georgia), northwestern Iran, the northeastern Caucasus, eastern Turkey, and as far as Syria. Under Ashurbanipal (669–627 BC), the boundaries of the Assyrian Empire reached as far as the Caucasus Mountains. Later ancient kingdoms of the region included Armenia , Albania , Colchis and Iberia , among others. These kingdoms were later incorporated into various Iranian empires, including Media ,

10564-674: The Soviet Union declared or regained their independence ( Belarus , Moldova , Ukraine , as well as the Baltic States of Latvia , Lithuania , and Estonia ). Czechoslovakia peacefully separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. Many countries of this region joined the European Union , namely Bulgaria , the Czech Republic , Croatia , Estonia, Hungary , Latvia, Lithuania, Poland , Romania , Slovakia and Slovenia . The term "EU11 countries" refer to

10703-586: The Soviet army. It included the German Democratic Republic (also known as East Germany), formed by the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. All the countries in Eastern Europe adopted communist modes of control by 1948. These countries were officially independent of the Soviet Union, but the practical extent of this independence was quite limited. Yugoslavia and Albania had Communist control that

10842-609: The Soviet security apparatus. About a quarter of them died. The Southern Caucasus region was unified as a single political entity twice – during the Russian Civil War ( Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic ) from 9 April 1918 to 26 May 1918, and under the Soviet rule ( Transcaucasian SFSR ) from 12 March 1922 to 5 December 1936. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Georgia , Azerbaijan and Armenia became independent nations. The region has been subject to various territorial disputes since

10981-410: The U.S. dollar shows that drastic interventions were not necessary. National wealth or assets are the property of the state or local governments and, as an exclusive property, the management and protection of them aim at serving the public interest. 50°N 30°E  /  50°N 30°E  / 50; 30 Gothic language Gothic is an extinct East Germanic language that

11120-585: The Western Caucasus also exists as a distinct geographic space within the North Caucasus. The Greater Caucasus mountain range in the north is mostly shared by Russia and Georgia as well as the northernmost parts of Azerbaijan . The Lesser Caucasus mountain range in the south is occupied by several independent states, mostly by Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, but also extends to parts of northeastern Turkey , and northern Iran . The region

11259-559: The abolition of serfdom in Russia in 1861. Emancipation meant that the ex-serfs paid for their freedom with annual cash payments to their former masters for decades. The system varied widely country by country, and was not as standardized as in Western Europe. Historians, until the 20th century, focused on master-serf economic and labor relations, portraying the serfs as slave-like, passive, and isolated. 20th century scholars downplayed

11398-446: The area. Russian is used as a lingua franca most notably in the North Caucasus. The peoples of the northern and southern Caucasus mostly are Shia Muslims , Sunni Muslims , Eastern Orthodox Christians or Armenian Christians . Located on the peripheries of Turkey , Iran , and Russia , the region has been an arena for political, military, religious, and cultural rivalries and expansionism for centuries. Throughout its history,

11537-572: The assemblage of fossil skeletons as the subspecies Homo erectus georgicus . The site yields the earliest unequivocal evidence for the presence of early humans outside the African continent; and the Dmanisi skulls are the five oldest hominins ever found outside Africa . Kura–Araxes culture from about 4000 BC until about 2000 BC enveloped a vast area of approximately 1,000 km by 500 km, and mostly encompassed, on modern-day territories,

11676-822: The candidate countries Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia as Central and Eastern European . UNESCO , EuroVoc , National Geographic Society , Committee for International Cooperation in National Research in Demography , and the STW Thesaurus for Economics place the Baltic states in Northern Europe , whereas the CIA World Factbook places the region in Eastern Europe with a strong assimilation to Northern Europe . They are members of

11815-484: The closest relatives in Eastern Asia, southern Europe, and even North America. Over 70 species of forest snails of the region are endemic. Some relict species of vertebrates are Caucasian parsley frog , Caucasian salamander , Robert's snow vole , and Caucasian grouse , and there are almost entirely endemic groups of animals such as lizards of genus Darevskia . In general, the species composition of this refugium

11954-899: The collapse of the Soviet Union, leading to the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988–1994), the East Prigorodny Conflict (1989–1991), the War in Abkhazia (1992–93) , the First Chechen War (1994–1996), the Second Chechen War (1999–2009), Russo-Georgian War (2008), and the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020). In Greek mythology , the Caucasus was one of the pillars supporting the world. After presenting man with

12093-487: The common currency. The economies of this decade – similar to the previous one – show a moderate inflation. As a new phenomenon, a slight negative inflation (deflation) appeared in this decade in several countries (Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia), which demonstrates sensitivity regarding international developments. The majority of the constitutions determine the national currency, legal tender or monetary unit. The local currency exchange rate to

12232-410: The correspondence between spelling and sound for consonants: It is possible to determine more or less exactly how the Gothic of Ulfilas was pronounced, primarily through comparative phonetic reconstruction. Furthermore, because Ulfilas tried to follow the original Greek text as much as possible in his translation, it is known that he used the same writing conventions as those of contemporary Greek. Since

12371-466: The declension of the Gothic adjective blind (English: "blind"), compared with the an -stem noun guma "man, human" and the a -stem noun dags "day": This table is, of course, not exhaustive. (There are secondary inflexions of various sorts not described here.) An exhaustive table of only the types of endings that Gothic took is presented below. Gothic adjectives follow noun declensions closely; they take same types of inflection. Gothic inherited

12510-416: The definite determiners (such as the definite article sa / þata / sō ) while indefinite adjectives are used in other circumstances., Indefinite adjectives generally use a combination of a -stem and ō -stem endings, and definite adjectives use a combination of an -stem and ōn -stem endings. The concept of "strong" and "weak" declensions that is prevalent in the grammar of many other Germanic languages

12649-765: The early 19th century, most of the Southern Caucasus and southern Dagestan all formed part of the Persian Empire . In 1813 and 1828 by the Treaty of Gulistan and the Treaty of Turkmenchay respectively, the Persians were forced to irrevocably cede the Southern Caucasus and Dagestan to Imperial Russia . In the ensuing years after these gains, the Russians took the remaining part of the Southern Caucasus , comprising western Georgia, through several wars from

12788-415: The early 21st century, but they often lack precision and may be anachronistic. These definitions are debated across cultures and among experts, even political scientists , as the term has a wide range of geopolitical , geographical, cultural, and socioeconomic connotations. It has also been described as a "fuzzy" term, as the idea itself of Eastern Europe is in constant redefinition. The solidification of

12927-480: The end of a word, to their voiced form; another such example is wileid-u "do you ( pl. ) want" from wileiþ "you ( pl. ) want". If the first word has a preverb attached, the clitic actually splits the preverb from the verb: ga-u-láubjats "do you both believe...?" from galáubjats "you both believe". Another such clitic is -uh "and", appearing as -h after a vowel: ga-h-mēlida "and he wrote" from gamēlida "he wrote", urreis nim-uh "arise and take!" from

13066-835: The establishment of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in 1596. However, the concept of Eastern Catholicism itself predates this. Since the Great Schism of 1054, Europe has been divided between Catholic (and later additionally Protestant ) churches in the West, and the Eastern Orthodox Christian (often incorrectly labelled "Greek Orthodox") churches in the east. Due to this religious cleavage, Eastern Orthodox countries are often associated with Eastern Europe. A cleavage of this sort is, however, often problematic; for example, Greece

13205-557: The evils and emphasize the complexities. Before 1870, the industrialization that had started to develop in Northwestern and Central Europe and the United States did not extend in any significant way to the rest of the world. Even in Eastern Europe, industrialization lagged far behind. Russia , for example, remained largely rural and agricultural, and its autocratic rulers kept the peasants in serfdom. A major result of

13344-520: The fact that for most of the languages involved, there was no alphabet until the early twentieth century—and only began to be written down in the late nineteenth century. One important tradition is that of the Nart sagas , which tell stories of a race of ancient heroes called the Narts. These sagas include such figures as Satanaya , the mother of the Narts, Sosruquo a shape changer and trickster, Tlepsh

13483-580: The fall of the Berlin Wall, continued to feel a moral duty to support states that have not been "liberated from the tyranny of capitalism". This shared duty collapsed when most of the former Soviet satellites abandoned socialism and adopted capitalism. EuroVoc , a multilingual thesaurus maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union , classifies Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, plus

13622-599: The final stages of World War II the future of Eastern Europe was decided by the overwhelming power of the Soviet Red Army, as it swept the Germans aside. It did not reach Yugoslavia and Albania, however. Finland was free but forced to be neutral in the upcoming Cold War. Throughout Eastern Europe, German-speaking populations were expelled to the reduced borders of Germany in one of the largest ethnic cleansing operations in history. Regions where Germans had formed

13761-522: The finances for common needs is declared, the principle of just tax burden-sharing is supplemented sometimes with special aspects. Tax revenues expose typically 15–19 % of the GDP, and rates above 20% only rarely can be found. The state audit of the government budget and expenditures is an essential control element in public finances and an important part of the concept of checks and balances. The central banks are independent state institutions, which possess

13900-420: The first century BC, Zoroastrianism had become the dominant religion of the region; however, the region would go through two other religious transformations. Owing to the strong rivalry between Persia and Rome , and later Byzantium . The Romans first arrived in the region in the 1st century BC with the annexation of the kingdom of Colchis, which was later turned into the province of Lazicum . The next 600 years

14039-1228: The former Soviet Union are considered a part of Eastern Europe: Unrecognized states : The term "Central Europe" is often used by historians to designate states formerly belonging to the Holy Roman Empire , the Habsburg Empire , and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . In some media, "Central Europe" can thus partially overlap with "Eastern Europe" of the Cold War Era. The following countries are labelled Central European by some commentators, though others still consider them to be Eastern European. Some countries in Southeast Europe can be considered part of Eastern Europe. Some of them can sometimes, albeit rarely, be characterized as belonging to Southern Europe , and some may also be included in Central Europe . In some media, "Southeast Europe" can thus partially overlap with "Eastern Europe" of

14178-624: The framework of the Eastern Orthodox Church , Church Slavonic language and the Cyrillic alphabet . The earliest concept of Europe as a cultural sphere (instead of simply a geographic term) was formed by Alcuin of York during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century, limited to the territories that practised Western Christianity at the time. "European" as a cultural term did not include much of

14317-443: The full set of Indo-European pronouns: personal pronouns (including reflexive pronouns for each of the three grammatical persons ), possessive pronouns , both simple and compound demonstratives , relative pronouns , interrogatives and indefinite pronouns . Each follows a particular pattern of inflection (partially mirroring the noun declension), much like other Indo-European languages. One particularly noteworthy characteristic

14456-632: The geopolitical impact of the "iron curtain": From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe: Warsaw , Berlin , Prague , Vienna , Budapest , Belgrade , Bucharest , and Sofia . Eastern Europe after 1945 usually meant all the European countries liberated from Nazi Germany and then occupied by

14595-464: The gift of fire, Prometheus (or Amirani in the Georgian version ) was chained there by Zeus , to have his liver eaten daily by an eagle as punishment for defying Zeus's wish to keep the "secret of fire" from humans. In Persian mythology , the Caucasus might be associated with the mythic Mount Qaf which is believed to surround the known world. It is the battlefield of Saoshyant and the nest of

14734-463: The highest peak in the Caucasus, Mount Elbrus (5,642 meters) located in western Ciscaucasus, is considered the highest point in Europe. The Kuma-Manych Depression , the geologic depression that divides the Russian Plain from the North Caucasus foreland is often regarded by classical and non-British sources as the natural and historical boundary between Europe and Asia. Another opinion is that

14873-532: The highly urbanized Hellenistic civilization . In contrast, the western territories largely adopted the Latin language . This cultural and linguistic division was eventually reinforced by the later political east–west division of the Roman Empire . The division between these two spheres deepened during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages due to a number of events. The Western Roman Empire collapsed in

15012-521: The historical and cultural boundaries of "Eastern Europe" are subject to some overlap and, most importantly, have undergone historical fluctuations, which makes a precise definition of the western geographic boundaries of Eastern Europe and the geographical midpoint of Europe somewhat difficult. After the East–West Schism of 1054, significant parts of Eastern Europe developed cultural unity and resistance to Catholic Western and Central Europe within

15151-481: The historical break of communion and theology between the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches. Later developments meant that the divide was no longer solely between Catholic and Orthodox churches. From the 16th century, both Western and Eastern forms of Protestantism began to emerge in Europe. Additionally, Eastern Catholic Churches began to spread in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries, following

15290-437: The idea of an "Eastern Europe" dates back chiefly to the (French) Enlightenment . There are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region". A related United Nations paper adds that "every assessment of spatial identities is essentially a social and cultural construct ". While the eastern geographical boundaries of Europe are well defined, the boundary between Eastern and Western Europe

15429-561: The imperative form nim "take". After iþ or any indefinite besides sums "some" and anþar "another", - uh cannot be placed; in the latter category, this is only because indefinite determiner phrases cannot move to the front of a clause. Unlike, for example, Latin - que , - uh can only join two or more main clauses. In all other cases, the word jah "and" is used, which can also join main clauses. More than one such clitics can occur in one word: diz-uh-þan-sat ijōs "and then he seized them ( fem. )" from dissat "he seized" (notice again

15568-565: The increased role played by the rulers of Bohemia and Poland . The conquest of the Byzantine Empire , center of the Eastern Orthodox Church , by the Ottoman Empire in the 15th century, and the gradual fragmentation of the Holy Roman Empire (which had replaced the Frankish empire) led to a change of the importance of Catholic / Protestant vs. Eastern Orthodox concept in Europe. Armour points out that Cyrillic -alphabet use

15707-407: The local majority, creating upheaval regarding demands of self-determination. Romania, Bulgaria, and Albania likewise were independent. Many of the countries were still largely rural, with little industry and only a few urban centres. Nationalism was the dominant force but most of the countries had ethnic or religious minorities who felt threatened by majority elements. Nearly all became democratic in

15846-570: The local police. They also took control of the mass media, especially radio, as well as the education system. They confiscated and redistributed farmland, and seized control of or replaced the organizations of civil society, such as church groups, sports, youth groups, trade unions, farmers' organizations, and civic organizations. In some countries, they engaged in large-scale ethnic cleansing, moving ethnic groups such as Germans, Poles, Ukrainians and Hungarians far away from where they previously lived, often with high loss of life, to relocate them within

15985-652: The local population majority were re-settled with Polish- or Czech-speakers. The region fell to Soviet control and Communist governments were imposed. Yugoslavia, Albania (and later Romania) had their own Communist regimes independent of Moscow. The Eastern Bloc at the onset of the Cold War in 1947 was far behind the Western European countries in economic rebuilding and economic progress. Winston Churchill, in his well-known "Sinews of Peace" address of 5 March 1946, at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri , stressed

16124-415: The location of the stress depends on the type of compound: For example, with comparable words from modern Germanic languages: Gothic preserves many archaic Indo-European features that are not always present in modern Germanic languages, in particular the rich Indo-European declension system. Gothic had nominative , accusative , genitive and dative cases , as well as vestiges of a vocative case that

16263-489: The media. Another definition was used during the 40 years of Cold War between 1947 and 1989, and was more or less synonymous with the terms Eastern Bloc and Warsaw Pact . A similar definition names the formerly communist European states outside the Soviet Union as Eastern Europe. Historians and social scientists generally view such definitions as outdated or relegated. Many former Communist states in this region, although their formal alliances were severed by

16402-681: The modern names of the Caucasus originate from the Greek Kaukasos (Lat., Caucasus ) and the Middle Persian Kaf Kof ". "The earliest etymon" of the name Caucasus comes from Kaz-kaz , the Hittite designation of the "inhabitants of the southern coast of the Black Sea ". It was also noted that in Nakh Ков гас ( Kov gas ) means "gateway to steppe". The modern endonym for the region is usually similar in many languages, and

16541-590: The new post-war borders of their respective countries. Under Stalin's direct instructions, these nations rejected grants from the American Marshall Plan . Instead, they joined the Molotov Plan , which later evolved into the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) . When NATO was created in 1949, most countries of Eastern Europe became members of the opposing Warsaw Pact , forming

16680-559: The northernmost parts of Georgia and Azerbaijan . The North Caucasus lies between the Black Sea to its west, the Caspian Sea to its east, and borders the Southern Federal District to its north. The two Federal Districts are collectively referred to as "Southern Russia". The South Caucasus borders the Greater Caucasus range and Southern Russia to its north, the Black Sea and Turkey to its west,

16819-487: The original Gothic script and a "normalized" one that adds diacritics ( macrons and acute accents ) to certain vowels to clarify the pronunciation or, in certain cases, to indicate the Proto-Germanic origin of the vowel in question. The latter system is usually used in the academic literature. The following table shows the correspondence between spelling and sound for vowels: Notes: The following table shows

16958-404: The question word: Gothic has two clitic particles placed in the second position in a sentence, in accordance with Wackernagel's Law . One such clitic particle is - u , indicating a yes–no question or an indirect question, like Latin - ne : The prepositional phrase without the clitic - u appears as af þus silbin : the clitic causes the reversion of originally voiced fricatives, unvoiced at

17097-590: The region claim independence but are recognized as such by only a handful of entities: Abkhazia , and South Ossetia . Abkhazia and South Ossetia are largely recognized by the world community as part of Georgia. The region has many different languages and language families. There are more than 50 ethnic groups living in the region. No fewer than three language families are unique to the area. In addition, Indo-European languages, such as East Slavic , Armenian and Ossetian , and Turkic languages , such as Azerbaijani , Kumyk language and Karachay–Balkar , are spoken in

17236-573: The region included Orontid Armenia , Caucasian Albania , Colchis and Iberia (not to be confused with the Iberian Peninsula in Western Europe ), of which the former two were the predecessor states of Armenia and Azerbaijan respectively, while the latter two were the predecessor states of modern-day Georgia . These peripheral kingdoms were, either from the start or later on, incorporated into various Iranian empires, including

17375-670: The rivers Kura and Rioni mark this border, or even that of the river Aras . The Caucasus is a linguistically , culturally and geographically diverse region. The nation states that compose the Caucasus today are the post-Soviet states Georgia (including Adjara and Abkhazia ), Azerbaijan (including Nakhchivan ), Armenia , and the Russian Federation. The Russian divisions include Dagestan , Chechnya , Ingushetia , North Ossetia–Alania , Kabardino–Balkaria , Karachay–Cherkessia , Adygea , Krasnodar Krai , and Stavropol Krai , in clockwise order. Two territories in

17514-419: The root with the first consonant in the root plus aí ) but without adding a suffix in either case. This parallels the Greek and Sanskrit perfects . The dichotomy is still present in modern Germanic languages: Verbal conjugation in Gothic have two grammatical voices : the active and the medial; three numbers: singular, dual (except in the third person) and plural; two tenses: present and preterite (derived from

17653-522: The same language. A language known as Crimean Gothic survived in the lower Danube area and in isolated mountain regions in Crimea as late as the second half of the 18th century. Lacking certain sound changes characteristic of Gothic, however, Crimean Gothic cannot be a lineal descendant of the language attested in the Codex Argenteus. The existence of such early attested texts makes Gothic

17792-532: The territories where the Orthodox Church represented the dominant religion until the 19th century. A large section of Eastern Europe is formed by countries with dominant Orthodox churches, like Belarus , Bulgaria , Cyprus , Georgia , Greece , Moldova , Montenegro , North Macedonia , Romania , Russia , Serbia , and Ukraine , for instance, as well as Armenia , which is predominantly Armenian Apostolic . The Eastern Orthodox Church has played

17931-458: The type of Indo-European conjugation called ' thematic ' because they insert a vowel derived from the reconstructed proto-Indo-European phonemes *e or *o between roots and inflexional suffixes. The pattern is also present in Greek and Latin: The other conjugation, called ' athematic ', in which suffixes are added directly to roots, exists only in unproductive vestigial forms in Gothic, just like in Greek and Latin. The most important such instance

18070-520: The voicing of diz- ), ga-u-ƕa-sēƕi "whether he saw anything" from gasēƕi "he saw". For the most part, Gothic is known to be significantly closer to Proto-Germanic than any other Germanic language except for that of the (scantily attested) Ancient Nordic runic inscriptions, which has made it invaluable in the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic . In fact, Gothic tends to serve as the primary foundation for reconstructing Proto-Germanic . The reconstructed Proto-Germanic conflicts with Gothic only when there

18209-654: Was soon absorbed by the Soviet Union), Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia. Austria and Hungary had much-reduced boundaries. The new states included sizeable ethnic minorities, which were to be protected according to the League of Nations minority protection regime. Throughout Eastern Europe, ethnic Germans constituted by far the largest single ethnic minority. In some areas, as in the Sudetenland , regions of Poland , and in parts of Slovenia , German speakers constituted

18348-480: Was a prevalent status of agricultural workers until the 19th century. It resembled slavery in terms of lack of freedom, with the distinction that the landowners could not buy and sell serfs separately from the specific plots of land that they were permanently attached to. The system emerged in the 14th and 15th century, the same time it was declining in Western Europe. The climax came in the 17th and 18th century. The early 19th century saw its decline, marked especially by

18487-480: Was independent of the Kremlin. The communists had a natural reservoir of popularity in that they had destroyed the Nazi invaders. Their goal was to guarantee long-term working-class solidarity. The Soviet secret police, the NKVD , working in collaboration with local communists, created secret police forces using leadership trained in Moscow. This new secret police arrived to arrest political enemies according to prepared lists. The national Communists then took power in

18626-438: Was invaded and occupied by the Mongols . During the Ostsiedlung , towns founded under Magdeburg rights became centers of economic development and scattered German settlements were founded in parts of Eastern Europe. Introduction of German town law is often seen as a second great step after introduction of Christianity at the turn of the first and second millennia. The ensuing modernization of society and economy allowed

18765-479: Was marked by a conflict between Rome and Sassanid Empire for the control of the region. In western Georgia the eastern Roman rule lasted until the Middle Ages. As the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia (an eponymous branch of the Arsacid dynasty of Parthia ) was the first nation to adopt Christianity as state religion (in 301 AD), and Caucasian Albania and Georgia had become Christian entities, Christianity began to overtake Zoroastrianism and pagan beliefs. With

18904-526: Was reinterpreted as present tense. The Gothic word wáit , from the proto-Indo-European *woid-h 2 e ("to see" in the perfect), corresponds exactly to its Sanskrit cognate véda and in Greek to ϝοἶδα. Both etymologically should mean "I have seen" (in the perfect sense) but mean "I know" (in the preterite-present meaning). Latin follows the same rule with nōuī ("I have learned" and "I know"). The preterite-present verbs include áigan ("to possess") and kunnan ("to know") among others. The word order of Gothic

19043-438: Was said to be situated in this region. The region is also one of the candidates for the location of Airyanem Vaejah , the apparent homeland of the Iranians of Zoroaster . In Middle Persian sources of the Sasanian era, the Caucasus range was referred to as Kaf Kof . The term resurfaced in Iranian tradition later on in a variant form when Ferdowsi , in his Shahnameh , referred to the Caucasus mountains as Kōh-i Kāf . "Most of

19182-538: Was sometimes identical to the nominative and sometimes to the accusative. The three genders of Indo-European were all present. Nouns and adjectives were inflected according to one of two grammatical numbers : the singular and the plural. Nouns can be divided into numerous declensions according to the form of the stem: a , ō , i , u , an , ōn , ein , r , etc. Adjectives have two variants, indefinite and definite (sometimes indeterminate and determinate ), with definite adjectives normally used in combination with

19321-404: Was spoken by the Goths . It is known primarily from the Codex Argenteus , a 6th-century copy of a 4th-century Bible translation, and is the only East Germanic language with a sizeable text corpus . All others, including Burgundian and Vandalic , are known, if at all, only from proper names that survived in historical accounts, and from loanwords in other, mainly Romance , languages. As

#59940