thumb|300px|Countries inhabited by Slavs (East Slavs in mid-green)The
East Slavs are a
Slavic ethnic group, the speakers of
East Slavic languages. Formerly the main population of the medieval state of
Kievan Rus, by the seventeenth century they evolved into the
Russian,
Ukrainian, and
Belarusian peoples.
History
Sources
Relatively little is known about the Eastern Slavs prior to approximately 859 AD, the date from which the account in the
Primary Chronicle starts. The reasons are the apparent absence of a written language (
Cyrillic script, created about 863 was specifically for Slavic adoption) and the remoteness of East Slavic lands. What little is known comes from archaeological digs, foreign traveller accounts of the Rus land, and linguistic comparative analyses of
Slavic languages.
thumb|340px|left|Early East Slavic tribes c. 8th century A.D.Very few native Russian documents dating before the 11th century (none ante-dating the 10th century) have been discovered. The earliest major manuscript with information on Rus' history is the
Primary Chronicle, written in the late 11th and early 12th centuries. It lists the twelve Slavic tribal unions who, by the 9th century settled between the
Baltic Sea and the
Black Sea. These
tribal unions were
Polans,
Drevlyans,
Dregovichs,
Radimichs,
Vyatichs,
Krivichs,
Slovens,
Dulebes (later known as
Volhynians and
Buzhans),
White Croats,
Severians,
Ulichs,
Tivertsi.
Migration
thumb|300px|"Slavic settlement" by I. PchelkoThere 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,
Goths,
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 flooded Eastern Europe in two streams. One group of tribes settled along the
Dnieper river in what is now
Ukraine; 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
Moldova and southern Ukraine.
Another group of East Slavs moved from
Pomerania to the northeast, where they encountered the
Varangians of the
Rus' Khaganate and established an important regional centre of
Novgorod. 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
thumb|300px|Boyan (1910)./" class="wiki">Viktor Vasnetsov.
Boyan (1910).
In the eighth and ninth centuries, the south branches of East Slavic tribes had to pay tribute to the
Khazars, a
Turkic-speaking people who adopted
Judaism in the late eighth or ninth century and lived in the southern Volga and
Caucasus regions. Roughly in the same period, the
Ilmen Slavs and
Krivichs were dominated by the Varangians of the Rus' Khaganate, who controlled the trade route between the
Baltic Sea and the
Byzantine Empire.
The earliest tribal centres of the East Slavs included
Novgorod,
Izborsk,
Polotsk,
Gnezdovo,
Sarskoe Gorodishche, and
Kiev. Archaeology indicates that they appeared at the turn of the tenth century, soon after the Slavs and Finns of Novgorod had rebelled against the Norsemen and forced them to withdraw to Scandinavia. The reign of
Oleg of Novgorod in the early tenth century witnessed the return of the Varangians to Novgorod and relocation of their capital to Kiev on the
Dnieper. From this base, the mixed Varangian-Slavic population (known as
the Rus) launched several
expeditions against Constantinople.
At first the ruling elite was primarily Norse, but it was rapidly Slavicized by the mid-century.
Sviatoslav I of Kiev (who reigned in the 960s) was the first Rus ruler with a Slavonic name.
Modern East Slavs
Modern East Slavic peoples and ethnic groups include:
Gallery
See also
