East Slavs are Slavic peoples speaking East Slavic languages. The main population of the loose medieval federal state Kievan Rus by the XVII century turned into Belarusians, Russians, Ruthenians and Ukrainians.
The history of the Russian people before Rurik: Russia and Rus
Russia in English-speaking science is usually understood as an ethnically or primordially Scandinavian people, trading and raiding river routes between the Baltic and Black Seas from about the eighth to eleventh centuries AD. Therefore, in English studies, they are often called the "Vikings of Russia." Scientists agree that the Russian people happened in what is now coastal Middle Sweden, around the eighth century, and that their name has the same origin as Roslagen in Sweden (the older name is Roden). All this is part of the history of Russia before Rurik.
Russia as a people and estate
Based on the Slavic and Finnish peoples in the upper Volga region, they formed a diaspora of merchants and raiders who exchange furs and slaves for silk, silver and other goods available in the east and south. Around the ninth century, on the river routes to the Black Sea, they played an unclear, but significant role in the formation of the principality of Kievan Rus, gradually assimilating with the local Slavic population. They also expanded their operations much further east and south among the Turkic Bulgars and Khazars along the routes to the Caspian Sea.
By the eleventh century, the word Rus was increasingly associated with the Principality of Kiev, and the term "Varangian" became more and more common as a term for Scandinavians traveling along river routes. Such a way of life was characteristic of our ancestors, as evidenced by the history of Russia before Rurik.
Russia and Russians
Evidence of our ancestors of those times is very small. A shortage of evidence and records is characteristic of the entire history of the Slavs before Rurik. largely due to the fact that, although Russian people have been active over a long period of time and great distances, text evidence of their activities is very scarce and almost never created by the Russian people themselves. It is believed that the written language was brought to Russia by Slavs solely for religious reasons. The word "Rus" in the original sources does not always mean the same as when used by modern scientists. Meanwhile, archaeological data and understanding of researchers accumulate only gradually. As a trading diaspora, the peoples of Russia mixed widely with the Finnish, Slavic, and Turkic peoples, and their customs and identity seemed to vary significantly in time and space. One way or another, such was the history of Russia before Rurik.
Political role
Another key reason for the debate about the origin of Russian people is the likelihood that they played a role in the ninth to tenth century public education in Eastern Europe (ultimately, calling themselves Russia and Belarus), which makes them relevant for what are today viewed as national histories of Russia, Ukraine, Sweden, Poland, Belarus, Finland and the Baltic countries. This caused a fierce debate, as various groups of political interests compete for who Russia was originally, believing that the politics of the ancient past are legitimate in the present.
The story from the flood to Rurik is known to us much worse than the history of our country after the arrival of the Varangians. Researchers know relatively little about the Eastern Slavs living until 859 AD, when the first events recorded in the Primary Chronicle occurred. The Eastern Slavs of these early times clearly lacked writing. Few known facts are obtained from archaeological excavations, reports of foreign travelers about the land of Russia, and a linguistic comparative analysis of Slavic languages.
Chronicles and manuscripts
In the history of Russia before Rurik there are many secrets and mysteries. Very few documents of Russia, dating from periods prior to the eleventh century, have been preserved. The earliest main manuscript with information on the history of Russia, the Primary Chronicle, dates from the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century. It lists twelve Slavic tribal unions that settled in the later territory of Kievan Rus by the 10th century, between the Western Bug, the Dnieper and the Black Sea: glades, Drevlyans, Dregovichi, Radimichi, Vyatichi, Krivichi, Slovenes, Dulebes (later known as Volyn and Buzhan), white Croats, northerners, streets and tivertsy.
Ancestral home of the Slavs
The ancient history of Russia before Rurik still contains many mysteries. Among scientists there is no consensus on the ancestral home of the Slavs. In the first millennium AD, Slavic settlers were likely in contact with other ethnic groups who moved across the East European Plain during the migration period. Between the first and ninth centuries, Sarmatians, Huns, Alans, Avars, Bulgars and Magyars passed through the Pontic steppe in their migrations to the west. Although some of them could enslave the Slavs of the region, these foreign tribes left few traces on Slavic lands. The early Middle Ages also considered Slavic expansion as a farmer and beekeeper, hunter, fisherman, herder and catcher of people. By the eighth century, the Slavs were the dominant ethnic group on the East European Plain.
By 600 AD Slavs linguistically divided into southern, western and eastern branches. The Eastern Slavs practiced farming methods on the principle of “cut and burn”, extensive forests were actively used in which they settled. This method of farming included the cleaning of forests from a fire, its cultivation and subsequent promotion in a few years. The history of Russia from the flood to Rurik occurred in the same territories - Ukraine, Belarus and the North of European Russia.
Farming with cutting and burning requires frequent movements, because the soil cultivated in this way gives good harvests only for several years before exhausting itself, and the dependence of the East Slavs on agriculture with felling and burning explains their rapid spread in Eastern Europe . Eastern Slavs flooded Eastern Europe with two streams. One group of tribes settled along the Dnieper in the territory of modern Ukraine and Belarus in the north. Then they spread north to the northern Volga region, east of modern Moscow and west to the river basins of the Northern Dniester and Southern Bug in modern Ukraine and southern Ukraine. It was in these territories that the whole history of Russia before Rurik took place.
Russian Kaganate
Another group of eastern Slavs moved to the northeast, where they met with the Vikings of the Russian Kaganate and founded the important regional center of Novgorod. The same Slavic population also inhabited the modern Tver region and the Beloozero region. Having reached the lands of Merya near Rostov, they connected with the Dnieper group of Slavic immigrants.
Russian Kaganate is a name that some modern historians apply to a hypothetical state that supposedly existed during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe, around the end of the VIII and early to mid IX centuries AD
It has been suggested that the Russian Haganate State was a state or a group of city-states created by people, in all modern sources described as Norwegians, somewhere in modern European Russia, as a chronological predecessor of the Rurik dynasty and Kievan Rus. The population of the region at that time consisted of Slavic, Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Baltic, Finnish, Hungarian and Norwegian peoples. The region was also the site of operations for the Vikings, East Scandinavian adventurers, merchants and pirates.
Title controversy
In rare modern sources, the leader or leaders of the Russian people at that time were called the ancient Turkic titles of the Hagans, hence the alleged name of their state.
This period is considered the time of the emergence of a special Russian ethnos, which spawned Kievan Rus and later states from which modern Russia, Belarus and Ukraine originated.
In the eighth and ninth centuries, the southern branches of the East Slavic tribes were supposed to pay tribute to the Khazars, Turkic-speaking people who adopted Judaism at the end of the eighth or ninth century and lived in the southern Volga region and the Caucasus. Around the same time, the Ilmen Slavs and Krivichs were dominated by the Vikings of the Russian Haganate, who controlled the trade route between the Baltic Sea and the Byzantine Empire.
Tribal centers
The earliest tribal centers of the Eastern Slavs included Novgorod, Izborsk, Polotsk, Gnezdovo and Kiev. Archeology indicates that they appeared at the turn of the tenth century, shortly after the Slavs and Finns of Novgorod rebelled against the Norwegians and forced them to leave for Scandinavia. The reign of Oleg Novgorod at the beginning of the 10th century witnessed the return of the Varangians to Novgorod and the relocation of their capital to Kiev on the Dnieper. From this base, a mixed Varangian-Slavic population (known as Rus) undertook several expeditions against Constantinople.
At first, the ruling elite was primarily Norwegian, but by the middle of the century it was quickly Slavonic. Kiev Svyatoslav I (reigned in the 960s) was the first Russian ruler with a Slavic name.