East Slavs
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 200+ million | |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|
Majority: Belarus, Russia, Ukraine. Minority: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, former Soviet states. |
|
| Languages | |
|
East Slavic languages: Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn, Ukrainian |
|
| Religion | |
| Eastern Orthodoxy, Non-Religious Minorities | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Other Slavs |
Majority: Belarus, Russia, Ukraine.
The East Slavs are Slavic peoples speaking 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 people.
Researchers know relatively little about the Eastern Slavs prior to approximately 859 AD, when the first events recorded in the Primary Chronicle occurred. Zealous Christian missions burned and destroyed all evidences of history of the people before that. The Eastern Slavs of these early times apparently lacked a written language. The few known facts come from archaeological digs, foreign travellers' accounts of the Rus' land, and linguistic comparative analyses of Slavic languages.
Very few native Rus' documents dating before the 11th century (none before the 10th century) have survived. The earliest major manuscript with information on Rus' history, the Primary Chronicle, dates from the late 11th and early 12th centuries. It lists twelve Slavic tribal unions which, by the 10th century, had settled in the later territory of the Kievan Rus between the Western Bug, the Dniepr and the Black Sea: the Polans, Drevlyans, Dregovichs, Radimichs, Vyatichs, Krivichs, Slovens, Dulebes (later known as Volhynians and Buzhans), White Croats, Severians, Ulichs, and Tivertsi.
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