Increasingly, historians, social scientists, and other humanists who study Slavic cultures and societies have been included in this rubric.
At this time the majority of Slavic languages received their first modern dictionaries, grammars, and compendia.
The second period, ending with World War I, featured the rapid development of Slavic philology and linguistics, most notably outside of Slavic countries themselves, in the circles formed around August Schleicher (1821–1868) and around August Leskien (1840–1916) at the University of Leipzig.
This development was partly due to political concerns in Western Europe and the North America arising from the Cold War.
Following the traditional division of Slavs into three subgroups (eastern, southern, western), Slavic studies are divided into three distinct subfields: