Settlement of the Eastern Slavs

The ancestors of the Slavs stand out from the Indo-European group around the first half of the first millennium BC. At the same time, it is possible to judge the settlement of these tribes that has begun and the settlement of permanent territories by them. The origin and settlement of the Slavs is a debatable question among the majority of historians. He studied for many years, and on the basis of a variety of sources. According to some versions, the Slavs are autochthonous, that is, the local population. A different part of historians is of the opinion that they are an alien people.

The main historical work from which the origin and settlement of the Eastern Slavs can be traced is the "Tale of Bygone Years", written by the monk Nestor. In its style, it is a chronicle that, in chronology, described the events taking place in those times. At the very beginning of the narrative, the monk also determines the area of settlement - the tribes of the Eastern Slavs, in his opinion, originally lived in the Danube river basin. Due to the fact that the so-called "Volokhas" attacked the Slavic tribes , they were forced to change their place of residence, and advanced eastward to the Dnieper River. Archaeological sources, however, confirm the presence of the Slavs in the Oder basin, which casts doubt on Nestor's theory, although at the moment it is the most acceptable.

Settlement of the Eastern Slavs in the Dnipro basin leads to their settling in this territory. However, Nestor's "Tale of Bygone Years" is not the only source from which you can learn this information. Thus, the Byzantine chronicles also show that by the time of the great migration of peoples the Slavs occupied the territory of the center and the east of Europe, and even then the Byzantines singled out three branches of the Slavs - Sklaviny, Anta and Venedi. In total, more than one hundred and fifty different tribes, who lived in the specified territory, are counted among these branches. Unfortunately, today most of the names of these tribal unions have been lost, and to this day only mention has been made of glades, drevlyane, volynyany, tivertsy, northerners, vyatichi, dulebah, radimichi, buzhany, krivich, snails and other tribes.

The settlement of the Slavs was also written by the Romans and Arabs. Mention of these tribes are found in the writings of Tacitus, Pliny the Elder, Ptolemy. The Slavic leaders, as brave warriors, were written by the Gothic leaders, namely Hermanarh, defeated by the Slav fighters. Despite the single victories, the Slavs were a peaceful population, unadapted for war. This is evidenced by sources describing the execution of seventy Slavic representatives Vinitarom, nephew of Hermanarich.

The settlement of the eastern Slavs in the Danube was confirmed by such outstanding Russian historians as Karamzin, Klyuchevsky, Soloviev. However, for Kliuchevskii, the version about the ousting of the Slavs is less acceptable: the historian speaks of their slow settlement towards the Dnieper, which excludes the compulsion of this process. For example, Boris Rybakov prefers to combine these two theories and not to allocate the Danube and the Dnieper basin. At present, the synthesis of these two points of view is the most acceptable, although recently research has been conducted towards the northern regions. Perhaps, after a while these theories will also be changed.

It is worth saying that the settlement of the Eastern Slavs was not limited to the Danube and Dnieper basins. By the ninth century AD, the first cities began to appear, which are increasingly moving away from the primary place of settlement. One of the first outposts were the following: Kiev, Chernigov, Smolensk, Novgorod, Murom. And if Kiev became the consolidating center near the Dnieper, then Novgorod becomes closer to the north.