вхвххhe Eastern Slavs are a large group of kindred nations. Today this ethnic group includes more than 300 million people. The history of the Eastern Slavs, like most other nationalities, is rooted in antiquity. The Eastern Slavs are one of the branches of the Proto-Slavic community (Proto-Slavs), they lived on the territory of Central and Eastern Europe. According to their language, they belong to the Indo-European group which inhabit Europe, part of Asia and up to India itself.
The origin of the Eastern Slavs is attributed to the 5th-6th centuries of our era with the beginning of the collapse of the Proto-Slavic community, during which three Slavic branches appeared: East Slavic (future Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples), South Slavic (Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats and others) and West Slavic (Poles, Czechs, Slovaks and others). Although initially there was no particular fragmentation among the Slavs, since the tribal unions had similar languages, customs and laws. Approximately the same time also includes the emergence of large tribal unions of the Eastern Slavs. The tribes of the Eastern Slavs, which merged into a single nationality, made up the main population of the Old Russian state in the Middle Ages.
The main tribes of the Eastern Slavs were: Krivichians, Vyatichians, Ilmen Slovenians, Radimichians, Drevlyans, Dregovichians, Polans, Ulichians, Tivertsians, Severians, Polochans, White Khorvaty and Dulebes (later Buzhans, Volhynians). The final resettlement of the Slavic tribes looked like this:
The main cities of the settlements
The Polans (the largest tribe)
Banks of the Dnieper and south of Kyiv
The Ilmen Slovenians (the northernmost tribe)
Around Novgorod, Ladoga and Lake Peipus
North of the Western Dvina and the upper reaches of the Volga
South of the Western Dvina
Between the upper reaches of the Neman and the Dnieper, along the Pripyat River
South of the Pripyat River
South of the Drevlyans, at the source of the Vistula
The White Khorvaty (the westernmost tribe)
Between the rivers Dniester and Vistula
East of the White Khorvaty
Between the Prut and the Dniester
Between the Dniester and the Southern Bug
The Radimichians (joined the Old Russian state in 885)
Between the Dniester and the Desna
Along the sources of the Oka and Don
Ethnic contacts of the Eastern Slavs during the settlement period:
Peoples and tribal groups in contact with the Slavs
The results of their contacts
Finno-Ugric:
Chud, Merya, Muromian, Meshchera and others
Balts:
Samogitians, Aukštaitians, Latgalians and other ancestors of Latvians and Lithuanians
Partial displacement of these tribes from the territories they originally occupied
Iranian tribes:
Scythians, Sarmatians
oijjdnfortunately, absolutely accurate information about the life history of the Eastern Slavs has not been preserved, this was facilitated by the lack of their own written language (the Glagolitic alphabet was created around 863 specifically for the Slavic languages by Byzantium) and remoteness from the cultural centres of that time. Fragmentary information on the early history of the Eastern Slavs is provided by Byzantine, Arabic and Persian written sources, as well as archaeological data and a comparative analysis of the Slavic languages. There are very few original East Slavic (Old Russian) documents dating back to the 11th century, and there is not a single one recognized by academic science that dates back to the 9th century. The most complete and reliable sources of ancient Russian origin are chronicles, the compilation of which began after the adoption of Christianity, following the model of Byzantine chronicles. Of the currently known, the earliest is The Tale of Bygone Years (the Rus’ Primary Chronicle), a chronicle compilation compiled at the turn of the 11th and 12th centuries and including earlier Russian chronicles that have not come down to us, oral traditions and Byzantine documents.
