But all these Turanian invaders
appeared in Western Europe simply as passing invaders; in Eastern Europe
their part has been widely different. Besides the temporary dominion of
Avars, Patzinaks, Chazars, Cumans, and a crowd of others, three bodies
of more abiding settlers, the Bulgarians, the Magyars, and the Mongol
conquerors of Russia, have come in by one path; a fourth, the Ottoman
Turks, have come in by another path. Among all these invasions we have
one case of thorough assimilation, and only one. The original Finnish
Bulgarians have, like Western conquerors, been lost among Slavonic
subjects and neighbors. The geographical function of the Magyar has been
to keep the two great groups of Slavonic nations apart. To his coming,
more than to any other cause, we may attribute the great historical gap
which separates the Slav of the Baltic from his southern kinsfolk. The
work of the Ottoman Turk we all know. These latter settlers remain
alongside of the Slav, just as the Slav remains alongside of the earlier
settlers. The Slavonized Bulgarians are the only instance of
assimilation such as we are used to in the West.
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