Sources

Researchers know relatively little about the Eastern Slavs prior to approximately 859 AD when the first events recorded in the Primary Chronicle occurred. The Eastern Slavs of these early times apparently lacked a written language. The few known facts come from archaeological digs, foreign travellers' accounts of the Rus' land, and linguistic comparative analyses of Slavic languages.^[2]

Very few native Rus' documents dating before the 11th century (none before the 10th century) have survived. The earliest major manuscript with information on Rus' history, the Primary Chronicle, dates from the late 11th and early 12th centuries. It lists twelve Slavic tribal unions which, by the 10th century, had settled in the later territory of the Kievan Rus between the Western Bug, the Dniepr and the Black Sea: the Polans, Drevlyans, Dregovichs, Radimichs, Vyatichs, Krivichs, Slovens, Dulebes (later known as Volhynians and Buzhans), White Croats, Severians, Ulichs, and Tivertsi.^[1]

Migration

Area of Balto-Slavic dialect continuum (purple) with proposed material cultures correlating to speakers Balto-Slavic in Bronze Age (white). Red dots= archaic Slavic hydronyms.

There is no consensus among scholars as to the urheimat of the Slavs. In the first millennium AD, Slavic settlers are likely to have been in contact with other ethnic groups who moved across the East European Plain during the Migration Period. Between the first and ninth centuries, the Sarmatians, Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars, and Magyars passed through the Pontic steppe in their westward migrations. Although some of them could have subjugated the region's Slavs, these foreign tribes left little trace in the Slavic lands. The Early Middle Ages also saw Slavic expansion as an agriculturist and beekeeper, hunter, fisher, herder, and trapper people. By the 8th century, the Slavs were the dominant ethnic group on the East European Plain.

By 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. The East Slavs practiced "slash-and-burn" agricultural methods which took advantage of the extensive forests in which they settled. This method of agriculture involved clearing tracts of forest with fire, cultivating it and then moving on after a few years. Slash and burn agriculture requires frequent movement because soil cultivated in this manner only yields good harvests for a few years before exhausting itself, and the reliance on slash and burn agriculture by the East Slavs explains their rapid spread through eastern Europe.^[6] The East Slavs flooded Eastern Europe in two streams. One group of tribes settled along the Dnieper river in what is now Ukraine and Belarus to the North; they then spread northward to the northern Volga valley, east of modern-day Moscow and westward to the basins of the northern Dniester and the Southern Buh rivers in present-day Ukraine and southern Ukraine.

Another group of East Slavs moved to the northeast, where they encountered the Varangians of the Rus' Khaganate and established an important regional centre of Novgorod for protection. The same Slavic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. Having reached the lands of the Merya near Rostov, they linked up with the Dnieper group of Slavic migrants.

Pre-Kievan period

Maximum extent of European territory inhabited by the East Slavic tribes—predecessors of Kievan Rus', the first East Slavic state^[7]—in the 8th and 9th centuries.

According to archeology, the Prague, Korchak, Penkova, Kolochin and Kyiv cultures are classified as early Slavic, the earliest of which, Kyiv, from the 2nd–3rd centuries AD. e. was the northern neighbor of the more developed and multi-ethnic Chernyakhov culture, associated with West Slavs (Great Moravia). Rare, few and short-lived settlements of the Slavs were located "in unusual topographic conditions: in low places, often now flooded during floods".^[8]

Eastern Slavs, who found themselves as a result of migrations of the 4th–5th centuries. in the basins of lakes Chudskoye and Ilmen, formed the culture of Pskov long barrows. This culture was strongly influenced by the autochthonous Finno-Ugric and Baltic peoples, from whom it adopted a specific burial rite and some features of ceramics, but in general, the way of life of the Eastern Slavs changed little. By the 5th century on the site of the Kyiv culture and in other regions to the north, east, west and south of it, a number of related cultures arise, such as Korchak, Kolochin, etc.^[9]

Among the East Slavs, fortified cities, apparently, first appeared among the Ilmen Slovenes in the 5th century (based on archaeological data in the town on Mayat river). The first settlements near the Polans and Severians arose in the region of Kyiv and Chernigov already by the 7th–8th centuries,^[10] which indicates at least a partial rejection of the previous strategy of scattered and secretive living among the forests. This is also evidenced by the fact that in the VIII-IX centuries. in all other East Slavic lands there were no more than two dozen cities, while only on the Left Bank of the Dnieper there were about a hundred of them. The foundation of the main Slavic city of this region, Novgorod, is attributed by the letopis to 862.^[11] In the same era, settlements appeared on the territories of other East Slavic tribes (see Old Russian cities). So, the northerners who lived on the territory of modern Voronezh, Belgorod and Kursk regions, along with settlements in the 9th–10th centuries. built fortified settlements, mainly at the confluence of large rivers (see Romensko-Borshchiv culture).^[12] In the 10th century, a fortress appeared not far from the city of Smolensk that arose later (the Gnezdovsky archaeological complex).

Somewhat apart are the early East Slavic settlements, the creation of which is attributed to the tribal unions of Dulebs and Antes. Archaeologically, they are represented by the Prague-Korchak and Penkov cultures, respectively. A number of such settlements of the Prague-Korchak (Zimino, Lezhnitsa, Khotomel, Babka, Khilchitsy, Tusheml) and Penkovo (Selishte, Pastyrskoe) cultures existed in the 6th–7th centuries. on a vast territory from the borders of modern Poland and Romania to the Dnieper. The Prague-Korchak settlements were a site surrounded by a wooden wall with one building, which was part of the common wall of the settlement. They did not have agricultural tools, and the settlements, apparently, were built to collect and accommodate a military detachment. Penkovsky settlements could have up to two dozen buildings inside the walls and were large trade, craft and administrative centers for their time. The center of the territory controlled by the dulebs (Zimino, Lezhnitsa) was in the basin of the Western Bug; the geographical center of the Penkovo culture falls on the Dnieper region, but the main fortress of the Antes (Selishte) was located in the western part of this area, near the borders of Byzantine Empire (in modern Moldova), on which they made military campaigns.^[9] The early Slavic settlements were destroyed by the Avars in the 7th century, after which they were not built until the 10th century.^[13]

Kievan period

Kievan Rus' at its height

It is uncertain how the state of Kievan Rus' came to be, but the Varangian nobleman Oleh the Wise is generally credited with having established a principality at the city of Kyiv somewhere around the year 880.^{[lower-alpha 1]} Kyiv had already been established, but its origins are nebulous as well. According to archaeologists and historians such as Petro Tolochko (2007), Slavic settlement existed from the end of the 5th century in the area that later developed into the city.^[15] Kyiv may have paid tribute to the Khazars before Oleh conquered it.^[16][17] Tolochko and other scholars also theorise that 'Kyiv was not the center of any particular tribe but the intertribal center of a vast realm'; critical analysis of the Primary Chronicle, De Administrando Imperio and other sources suggests it may have been a cosmopolitan urban home to Slavic and non-Slavic groups, such as Scandinavian Varangians and Finno-Ugric peoples.^[18] Slavic peoples that were reportedly native to Ukraine included Polans (or Polianians), Drevlyans, Severians, Ulichs, Tiverians, White Croats and Dulebes, but their precise identity and interrelationships are difficult to establish and verify, as the sources are vague, contradictory and at times inaccurate.^[19]

In the 10th and 11th century, Kyiv became one of the richest commercial centres of Europe, and the Kievan Rus' empire around it steadily expanded.^[20] Initially a benefactor of the worship of Slavic deities such as Perun, Volodimer I converted to Orthodox Christianity in the 980s, tying the realm into a political and ecclesiastical alliance with the Byzantine Empire.^[20] The reign of Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019–1054) is generally regarded its zenith; Kievan Rus' was the most prosperous and powerful empire within Christendom.^[20] Kievan Rus' was never a fully centralized state, but rather a loose aggregation of principalities ruled by members of the Rurik dynasty.^[21]

Post-Kievan period

Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Rus' and Samogitia in 1386–1434 under rule of Lithuanian Grand Duke Jogaila

The disintegration, or parcelling of the polity of Kievan Rus' in the 11th century resulted in considerable population shifts and a political, social, and economic regrouping. The resultant effect of these forces coalescing was the marked emergence of new peoples.^[22] While these processes began long before the fall of Kiev, its fall expedited these gradual developments into a significant linguistic and ethnic differentiation among the Rus' people into Belarusians, Russians, and Ukrainians.^[22] All of this was emphasized by the subsequent polities these groups changed to: northwestern and southwestern Rus', where the Ruthenian and later Belarusian and Ukrainian identities developed, was subject to Lithuanian and later Polish influence;^[23] whereas the Russian ethnic identity developed around Muscovy under occupation by Golden Horde in the east and the Novgorod Republic in the north.

Citations

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