Slavs

The Slavs or Slavic people are an ethnolinguistic grouping of related ethnic groups which speak the various Slavic languages, belonging to the larger Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family. Slavs are geographically distributed throughout the northern parts of Eurasia; they predominantly inhabit Central Europe, Eastern Europe, and Southeastern Europe, though there is a large Slavic minority scattered across the Baltic states, Northern Asia, and Central Asia. Continued immigration has resulted in the development of a substantial Slavic diaspora in the Americas, Western Europe, and Northern Europe including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Ireland, Norway, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Chile.

Present-day Slavs are classified into three groups:

• the West Slavs (chiefly Czechs, Kashubians, Poles, Slovaks, and Sorbs);
• the East Slavs (chiefly Belarusians, Russians, Rusyns, and Ukrainians);
• the South Slavs (chiefly Bosniaks, Bulgarians, Croats, Macedonians, Montenegrins, Serbs, and Slovenes).

Though the majority of Slavs are Christians, some groups, such as the Bosniaks, mostly identify as Muslims. Modern Slavic nations and ethnic groups are considerably diverse, both genetically and culturally, and relations between them may range from "ethnic solidarity to mutual feelings of hostility" — even within the individual groups.