Home > Early East Slavs
The East Slavs are the ethnic group that evolved into the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian peoples. Each of the many nationalities of Russia has a separate history and complex origins. The historical origins of the Russian state, however, are chiefly those of the East Slavs and the assimilated Finno-Ugric peoples of the North-Eastern Europe.
1 Inhabitants of the East European Plain
Many ethnically diverse peoples migrated onto the East European Plain, but the late arriving East Slavs gradually became dominant.
Long before the organization of Kievan Rus', Iranian and other peoples lived in the area of present-day Ukraine. The best known of those groups was the nomadic Scythians, who occupied the region from about the 6th century BC to the 2nd century BC and whose skill in warfare and horsemanship is legendary. Between the 1st century AD and the 9th century, Goths and nomadic Huns, Avars, and Magyars passed through the region in their migrations. Although some of them subjugated the Slavs in the region, those tribes left little of lasting importance. More significant in this period was the expansion of the Slavs, who were agriculturists and beekeepers as well as hunters, fishers, herders, and trappers. By the 6th century, the Slavs were the dominant ethnic group on the East European Plain.
Little is known of the origin of the Slavs. Philologists and archaeologists theorize that the Slavs settled very early in the Carpathian MountainsThis article is about the terrestrial mountain range. There is also a range on the Moon called the Carpathian Mountains (Moon). The Carpathian Mountains are the eastern wing of the great central mountain system of Europe curving 1500 km (~900 miles) along or in the area of present-day BelarusThe Republic of Belarus ( Belarusian: #x301 Russian: #x301 (former: #x301 ) is a landlocked nation of Eastern Europe with the capital Minsk. Name Main article: White Russia The spellings Belorussia and Byelorussia are transliterations of the name of the c. By 600 AD, they had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. The East Slavs settled along the Dnepr in what is now UkraineUkraine Ukrayina in Ukrainian; in Russian) is a republic in eastern Europe which borders the Black Sea to the south, the Russian Federation to the east, Belarus to the north, Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west and Romania and Moldova to the west and; then they spread northward to the northern Volga valley, east of modern-day MoscowMoscow ( Russian: Moskva capital of Russia, located on the river Moskva, and encompassing 878. The city's population is rapidly increasing, with 11. 2 million inhabitants counted in 2004. The city is in the federal district called Central Russia (which is, and westward to the basins of the northern Dnestr and the Western BugOne of the two rivers called Bug (pronounced , the Western Bug or Buh ( Belarusian: ; Russian: ; Ukrainian: , Zakhidnyi Buh , flows from central Ukraine to the west, forming part of the boundary between that nation and Poland, passes along the Polish- Bel rivers, in present-day Moldova and southern Ukraine. In the eighth and ninth centuries, many East Slavic tribes paid 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.
