The South Slavs are a southern branch of the Slavic peoples that live in the Balkans, the southern Pannonian Plain and the eastern Alps. They speak the South Slavic languages.

History
The slavs were a mysterious people, little known before the fall of Rome. From obscurity, they conquered and populated half of Europe within one century.
The earliest descriptions of Slavs comes from comes from Procopius' work De Bellis. He portrays them as unusually tall and strong, with a tanned complexion and reddish-blonde hair, living a rugged and primitive life. They lived in huts, often distant from one another, often changing their place of abode.
They were not ruled by a single leader, but for a long time lived in a democracy. They beleived in one God, the creator of lightening, to whom they made animal sacrifices.
They went into battle on foot, straight at their enemy, armed with spears and small shields, but they did not wear armour.
This information is supplanted by Pseudo-Marice's work Strategion, describing the Slavs a numerous but disorganised and leaderless people, resistant to hardship and not allowing themselves to be enslaved or conquered. They made their homes in forests, by rivers and wetlands

Who were the Slavs?
From the postulated Slavic homeland in what is now Ukraine, the southern Slavs settled almost the entire Balkans region, a process which occurred over several decades and via two major routes.
The earliest migrations moved southward directly from Ukraine along the eastern arc of the Carpathian Mountains to the lower Danube. According to Procopius, the first raid on Byzantium took place in 523 AD.
The slavs encountered a Balkans which was ethnically and culturally varied. Apart from Greeks and Macedonians there were Dacians, Thracians, Illyrians and Celts, all who had occupied the area for centuries. Many areas were bastions of Roman culture, despite the devastation caused by earlier Hun and Germanic raids, especially along the Adriatic coastline.
The settlement of the Danube and interaction with autochthonous populations is confirmed archeologically. Remains dating back to the 6th century are similar to the Prague and Penkoa cultures (see Slavs), and represent a specific mixture of Slavic, Dato-Getic, Daco-Roman and Byzantine elements. Historical accounts are in agreement with archeological evidence. Jordannes wrote: 'the Sclavinoi and Antes .. have their homelands on the Danube not far from the northern bank".
From their new base in the middle and lower Danube river, the slavs subsequently expanded farther south. They raided the Byzantine Empire annually, according to Procopious, which peaked in the 520s during the reign of Justinian. They spread about destruction, taking loot and herds of cattle, seizing prisoners and taking fortresses, often with the help of the Bulgars from Scythia Minor. Despite attempts to fortify the northern borders of Byzantine empire, the Slavic tides could not be held back, and eventually came to also settle the provinces of Moesia and Thrace.
By 581, many Slavic tribes had settled the land around Thessaloniki, though never taking the city itself, creating a Macedonian Sclavinia. As John of Ephesus tells us in 581: "the accursed .. Slavs wandered across the whole of Greece, the lands of the Thessalonians and the whole of Thrace, taking many towns and forts, .. and making themselves rulers of the whole country". By 586, they took the western Peloponnese, Attica, Epirus, leaving only the east part of Peloponnese, which was mountainous and inaccessible.
The final attempt to restore the northern border was in 602, when the end of conflicts with Persia allowed Emperor Maurice to transfer units to the north. However he was deposed after a military revolt, and the Danubian frontier cased to be defensible.
The arrival of the Avars, an Asiatic people, in 558 additionally hastened development. From their core territory in the Carpathian basin, the Avars enlisted masses of Slavs to take part in numerous expeditions into Illyria. Avar raids into the Balkans continued unendingly, despite being paid high tribute by the Byzantines. During this period of Avar rule, the bulk of Slavic settlement of Austria, Pannonia, Dalmatia and Illyria occurred, c. 580s, representing a second route of migration from Pannonia. By the 620s, the Avar confederacy's dominance of Eastern Europe collapsed due to revolts by Slavic people, and defeats at the hands of the Franks. Their power was reduced to only over the Pannonian slavs, until it collapsed all together with the establishment of Samo's Slavic Union (which extended from the Baltic to the Adriatic.
What is described as the second phase of Balkan colonization, or 'internal colonisation', refers to the arrival of the proto-Serbs and Croats from White Serbia and White Croatia, related tribes from adjacent areas in what is now southern Poland and Eastern Germany, just north of the Carpathian mountains. This occurred between 610 and 640 AD, during the reign of Byzantine Emporer Heraclius. According to Constantine Porphyrogenitus' accounts, it was the Serbs and Croats that freed Dalmatia from the Avars, taking the land for themselves. Here they settled, mixing with Illyrians and earlier Slavs. Despite the destruction, many towns along the Dalmatian coast survived, and there began a long-term process of Roman-Slav symbiosis. The colonization of the western Balkans would continue for one century, and Dalmatia, the eastern part of the Alps, the entire region of Illyria, and even Transylvania were permanently settled by Slavs.

Origins and Migrations
The settlement of the Balkans by southern Slavs should not be thought of as one massive wave of people that flooded into deserted areas of the Balkans. Analysis of anthropological evidence and material culture demonstrates the significant biological and cultural contribution of previous populations of these territories in the formation of what would become the southern Slavs. Remains dating back to the 6th century represent a specific mixture of Slavic, Dato-Getic, Daco-Roman and Byzantine elements. This notion is now substantiated by emerging population genetics analysis.
Pseudo-Maurice in his Strategion notes that it was commonplace for Slavs to accept newly acquired prisoners into their ranks. The Slavs did not want to form "client states", dependent on Roman political and economic structures, such as the Germans in the west, nor did they exploit the inhabitants in the same way as the Asian nomads . The sixth century was a time of relative stability and peace in the Balkans, hastening the process of willful Slavicisation of foreign populations.
These interactions with different autochthonous tribes, the varying influences of Rome and Greece upon different areas, and the often divergent subsequent histories of the various southern Slav peoples is why they now have independent cultures and identities.

Relationship with autochthonous peoples
Apart from obvious distaste of the 'barbarous' Slavs, and the ever posing threat of raiding expeditions, the Byzantines did not actively try to prevent Slavic settlement in the Balkans for two main reasons. Colonisation by these new agricultural people would be beneficial, so long they would recognize Byzantine rule and pay taxes. Secondly, the waxing and waning Byzantine Empire often was too busy defending its eastern borders against marauding Persians and Turks. Initially the Slavic tribes retained independent rule with their own political structure. These units were referred to as Sclavenes. Byzantium tried to incorporate the Slavs immediately adjacent to the imperial border into the socio-economic system of the Byzantine state, with varied success. The Thracian theme was returned to imperial rule in 680-681. However the Slavs of Greece and Macedonia proved more stubborn, and resisted Hellenization. Emperors Constans (656) and Justinian II (686) had to resort to military expeditions and forced re-settlement of large numbers of Slavs to Anatolia, forcing them to pay tribute and supply military aid to the empire. The Slavs more distant from the Empire were only nominally under Byzantine authority.
The imperial border was very fluctuant, although characterised by a general decline. The rise of the First Bulgarian Empire, challenged the Byzantine empire for hegemony over political and cultural rule of the Balkans. The defeat of the Bulgarian empire only temporarily provided relief to the Byzantines, until the medieval Serbian Kingdom carved up an extensive, albeit shorlived Balkan empire in the 14th century. By this time the borders of the Greek and Slavic linguistic, and therefore ethnic worlds were sketched. Greece could only reclaim linguistic jurisdiction over what is now central and southern Greece; as Macedonia, Thrace, Rumelia, Moesia remained overwhelmingly Slavic, save coastal strips of land along the Aegean sea.
The Slavic inroads into the Balkans, whilst causing much territorial loss, never destroyed the classical Hellenic culture. The political, economic and military strength of the Eastern Roman Empire ensured its survival for one thousand years longer. This contrasts the situation in the Latin West, where the Germanic tribes created states of their own retaining a 'bastardised' form of latin Hellenism, loosely modelled after the Western Empire which they destroyed. Although the Byzantines could only manage to linguistically Hellenize the slavs deep inside Greece, a Hellenic tradition was nonetheless implaced upon the slavs who remained outside the empire. This was manifest in two major forms: Christianity (subsequently Orthodox Christianity) and Cyrillicism - a unique Slavic written language inspired by Greek literary forms. The coming of the slavs thus facilitated the transformation of the East Roman Empire into a truly "Byzantine" one

Relationship with Byzantium
The tribal organizations gradually transformed into larger duchies or principalities, often transient institutions, typical of Slavic distaste for central authority. Nonetheless these became a core for future unifications. The Croats formed the duchies of Panonnia and Dalmatia, which later unified to form the Kingdom of Croatia. The Zhupanates of Raska and Doclea were to become the cultural centres of Serbian identity. In Pagania, Travunia and Zahumlje lived fiercely independent slavs, who were at various times unified with, or at least influenced by, Croatia or Raska (Serbia). They were subsequently incorporated into the growing state of Medieval Bosnia, which emerged as an independent local power in the 13th century after shaking off Serbian and Croatian fielty. Much heated debating continues in regard to whether these southern Dalmatian principalities were Serbian or Croatian, but like similar debates -such as the Macednian question- it is nigh impossible to reflect retrospectively and emplace modern constructs of ethnicity to a time and people who's loyalty extended little beyond the family unit, local chieftan and priest.
In the eastern Balkans, the Proto-Bulgars arrived in Scythia Minor, on the mouths of the Danube, after the collapse of Old Great Bulgaria. Realising the danger of this new people, Byzantium sent a military expedition against them, which ended in victory for the Bulgars led by Khagan Asparuch, the moved south to occupy lower Moesia in 678. There they subdued the 7 clans and severs of Slavs, but allowed them to retain their ethnic identity and own tribal leaders, and in fact themselves became Slavicised within two generations. The First Bulgarian Empire emerged in 681.
To the far northwest, the alpine Slavs of Slovenia underwent a process of internal consolidation after the fall of Avar power, leading to the creation of Carantania. However, with the eastward extension of Charlemagne's Frankish empire, Carantania was incorporated into the Frankish empire as a miltary march. Although the majority remained ethnically independent, the Slavs in Austria were virtually all Germanised. Similarly, the Magyars arrival to the Carpathian basin ended the independence of the Slavic Balaton Principality. These Slavs were Margyarised, and in fact form a dominant substrate for today's Hungarian population. In this way, the geographic communication of the southern Slavs with their northern counterparts was cut.

Formations of early Slavic states
South Slavs are divided into two groups — eastern and western. Please note that some of the subdivisions of the South Slavic ethnicities remain debatable, particularly for smaller groups and national minorities in former Yugoslavia.
List of the South Slavic peoples and ethnic groups, including population figures:
Eastern group:
Western group:
In the legendary description of the three major ethnicities amongst Slavic peoples, the designation "Ethnic Southern Slavic peoples", or more commonly "Czechs", is used to refer to not only to what are today generally considered South Slavs, but also to Czechs, Slovaks and Southern Sorbs.

Bulgarians = 10,000,000

• Pomaks (Muslim Bulgarians) = 150,000
  Bessarabian Bulgarians = 270,000
  Palćene (Banat Bulgarians) = 40,000
  Macedonians = 1,700,000
  Serbs = 9,500,000
  Croats = 6,200,000
  
  
  
  • Burgenland Croats = 50,000
    Janjevci = 10,000
    Molise Croats = 5,000
    Bosnians = 250,000
    Bosniaks = 2,600,000
    Slovenians = 2,200,000
    Montenegrins = 600,000
    Yugoslavs = 400,000
    Muslims by nationality = 100,000
    Bunjevci = 80,000
    Gorani = 35,000
    Krashovans = 5,000
    Šokci = 1,900 South Slavic peoples
    Besides ethnic groups, South Slavs often identify themselves with the geographical region in which they live. Some of the major regional South Slavic groups include: Zagorci, Istrani, Dalmatinci, Slavonci, Bosanci, Hercegovci, Krajišnici, Semberci, Srbijanci, Šumadinci, Vojvođani, Sremci, Bačvani, Banaćani, Sandžaklije, Kosovci, Crnogorci, Bokelji, Torlaks, Shopi, Pelagonci, Tikvešjani, Trakiytsi, Dobrudzhantsi, Balkandzhii, Miziytsi, Pirintsi, Rodoptsi, Bessarabian Bulgarians, etc.
    
    Regional groups
    There are seven countries in which South Slavs form the majority of population: [1]
    In addition, there are traditional sizable South Slavic minorities in non-Slavic neighbouring countries such as Italy (Slovenians, Molise Croats), Austria (Slovenians, Burgenland Croats), Hungary (Serbs, Croats, Bunjevci, Šokci, Slovenians), Romania (Krashovani, Banat Bulgarians, Serbs), Moldova (Bessarabian Bulgarians), Greece (Bulgarians,), Turkey (Pomaks, Bosniaks) and Albania (, Bulgarians, Serbs, Montenegrins, Gorani), as well as emigrant communities in various countries around the world.
    
    Slovenia (83% Slovenians, 1% Bosnians)
    Croatia (90% Croats)
    Bosnia and Herzegovina (45% Bosniaks, 37% Serbs, 14% Croats, 3% Bosnians)
    Serbia (66% Serbs)
    Montenegro (43% Montenegrins, 32% Serbs)
    Republic of Macedonia (64% ethnic Macedonians)
    Bulgaria (84% Bulgarians) Countries
    Largest cities with South Slavic majority:
    
    Belgrade (Serbia) = 1,281,801
    Sofia (Bulgaria) = 1,270,450
    Zagreb (Croatia) = 779,145
    Skopje (Macedonia) = 506,926
    Varna (Bulgaria) = 357,752
    Plovdiv (Bulgaria) = 341,873
    Sarajevo (Bosnia and Herzegovina) = 304,136
    Ljubljana (Slovenia) = 265,881
    Banja Luka (Bosnia and Herzegovina) = 227,000
    Split (Croatia) = 221,456
    Burgas (Bulgaria) = 205,821
    Novi Sad (Serbia) = 196,902
    Ruse (Bulgaria) = 176,115
    Niš (Serbia) = 173,861
    Tuzla (Bosnia and Herzegovina) = 165,000
    Stara Zagora (Bulgaria) = 162,768
    Rijeka (Croatia) = 152,279
    Kragujevac (Serbia) = 147,473
    Zenica (Bosnia and Herzegovina) = 146,000
    Pleven (Bulgaria) = 137,001
    Podgorica (Montenegro) = 136,473
    Mostar (Bosnia and Herzegovina) = 125,448
    Maribor (Slovenia) = 115,693
    Dobrich (Bulgaria) = 114,990
    Osijek (Croatia) = 114,616
    Pernik (Bulgaria) = 108.366
    Sliven (Bulgaria) = 106,434
    Kumanovo (Macedonia) = 105 484
    Shumen (Bulgaria) = 103,016 Religion
    South Slavic standard languages are:
    In addition, there are also two more South Slavic languages, Montenegrin and Bunjevac, that do not have official status, but that are widely used by their speakers. Formerly, the Šokac language was also listed in the censuses conducted during Austro-Hungarian administration.
    However, this language division is rather political than linguistic, thus linguistic non-political classification of the South Slavic dialects is as follows:
    Note that Kajkavian Croatian, Chakavian Croatian, Shtokavian, and Torlakian were sometimes classified as four dialects of Serbo-Croatian language, but this classification was also politically motivated since, for example, differences between Shtokavian and Kajkavian are large as much as differences between Shtokavian and Slavic-Macedonian.
    
    Bosnian
    Bulgarian
    Croatian
    Serbian
    Slovenian
    Slovenian
    Kajkavian Croatian
    Chakavian Croatian
    Shtokavian (base for standard Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian, as well as non-standard Montenegrin and Bunjevac)
    
    
    
    • Ekavian (standard Serbian)
      Ijekavian (standard Croatian, Bosnian and Serbian, as well as non-standard Montenegrin)
      Ikavian (non-standard Bunjevac)
      Torlakian
      Macedonian language
      Bulgarian Notes
      Serb bagpiper in traditional attire wearing opanci and šajkača.
      A Montenegrin Bokelj in traditional garb.
      tsar Stefan Uroš IV Dušan of Serbia.
      Petar II Petrović-Njegoš, the Prince-Bishop of Montenegro.
      Josip Jelačić, the ban of Croatia.
      tsar Jovan Nenad, the ruler of Vojvodina.
      Pomak village in Xanthi, Western Thrace.
      Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
      Bulgarians in national dress dancing choro