The paper examines the 9^th century ethno-political situation in the territory of the former Avar qaganate, that is, within the Carpathian Basin, in terms of the early medieval "ethnogenesis" interpreted as the making of ethno-political units (gentes). As a result, the so-called post-Avar "ethnogenesis" is conceptualized as a process whose main feature is the absence of fully fledged ethnic groups that could correspond to the polities that emerged on the ruins of the Avar qaganate and would be comparable to what was usually meant by the term gens in early medieval Latin sources. According to the author, this feature could be interpreted as the indication that on the territory of the former qaganate the formation of new political structures caused by the rise of post-Avar elites (polito-genesis) outran the emergence of new group identities (ethnogenesis). Another conclusion states that the polities of Menumorout, Glad, and Gelou, as described in Anonymus' Gesta Hungarorum, are very similar in their principal characteristics to those attested for the 9th century post-Avar area by contemporary sources.