1. Problems of the origin of Slavic states In accordance with classical bourgeois theory, the concept of "state" includes three elements: the population living in a certain territory under common rule .2 This definition characterizes the static aspect of the external political organization of society, which at all stages of development is a group settled in a certain territory and organized; organization is unthinkable without the power factor. Marxism allows us to introduce a historical criterion into this definition, distinguishing a political group in which power belongs to the people from a group with power separate from the people, belonging to the ruling elite. 3 As long as the people appoint their own leaders and exercise effective control over them, it is difficult to talk about the separation of power; the state arises at the moment when the body exercising power gets its own right to it and frees itself from the control of the masses or makes it illusory. The Slavs at the time of the creation of their states were an ethnic group, rather cohesive in terms of language and culture, but divided into a number of regional groups. Therefore, the problem of the emergence of their statehood requires consideration in two aspects: 1) the genesis of their state system as a whole, taking into account the general conditions and features of this critical stage; 2) the emergence of specific states and specific regional circumstances of this process. Among the Slavs, the transition to state forms came relatively late in comparison with other Indo-European peoples, which is explained in the historical destinies of the Slavs and, above all, in their geographical location, in considerable remoteness from the ancient centers of civilization that developed in the countries of the "fertile crescent" (Egypt-Syria-Mesopotamia), as well as from the regions of other a circle of civilization located on the northern coast of the Mediterranean Sea; in the physical features of their anc ... Read more