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"Slavic Studies"—the very expression implies their comparative aspect and raises the question: what enables us to refer to Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Lusatian Sorbs, Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bulgarians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and Russians by the single all-encompassing term, the "Slavic" peoples? What is their common denominator?It is indisputable that the Slavic peoples are to be defined basically as Slavic-speaking peoples. If speech is the point of departure, the problem becomes primarily a linguistic one. Since the pioneering work of the Czech Abbé Dobrovský (1753–1829), comparative linguistics has proved the existence of a common ancestral language for all the living Slavic languages and has largely reconstructed the sound pattern, grammatical framework and lexical stock of this Common (or Primitive) Slavic language. The problem of where and by whom this Common Slavic language was spoken is being gradually solved by persistent efforts to synchronize the findings of comparative linguistics, toponymy, and archeology. The archeologists' data are like a motion picture without its sound track; whereas the linguists have the sound track without the film. Thus, interdepartmental teamwork becomes indispensable.

The Origins and the development of the national idea in Europe have been in recent years, particularly since the first World War, a favorite topic of culturo-historical studies. These studies have traced the gradual movement of European peoples toward national self-determination, and have described as normal the development from a vague feeling of warring tribal solidarity to a more conscious patriotism which customarily crystallizes around the prince, the king, in brief, the sovereign. According to these studies, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries national culture was more and more emphasized; the claims of national language increased and finally reached a culmination in the Reformation.