East Slavs – the Roots of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians

Family Tree

East of the West Slavs, in the vast forests and steppes between the Bug, the Dnieper and the Black Sea, the East Slavs settled. From their tribal confederations – Polans, Drevlians, Krivichs, Vyatichs and others – a mighty realm grew from the 9th century onward: the Kievan Rus.

Before the cross: the pagan pantheon of the Rus with Perun at its head.

The East Slavic Tribes

East European Plain · 6th–10th c.

Around a dozen tribal unions settled the river systems of the East European Plain. They are the common ancestors of today's Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians.

The Kievan Rus

Kiev & Novgorod · 9th–13th c.

A realm on the great trade routes "from the Varangians to the Greeks". Scandinavian Varangians (Rus) and Slavs merged here. Prince Vladimir I had the realm Christianised in 988 (Orthodox, following Constantinople) – the end of Slavic paganism as a state cult.

Eyewitness of the Rus: It was precisely this world – the Rus on the great rivers – that the Arab envoy Ibn Fadlan described on the Volga in 921/922: their appearance, their trade and the famous ship burial. Whether the "Rus" were Nordic merchant-Varangians or a mixed Slavic-Scandinavian stratum is still disputed today – yet the connection to the East Slavs and the Kievan Rus is unmistakable. We have written up the whole account here: Ibn Fadlan among the Vikings on the Volga →

The Belief of the East Slavs

In 988, shortly before his baptism, Vladimir – according to the Primary Chronicle (Nestor Chronicle) – had a pantheon set up in Kiev: at its head Perun, the god of thunder and war (with a silver head and golden moustache), together with Dazhbog (sun), Stribog (wind), Khors, Simargl and the only goddess, Mokosh (women, spinning, fate). In the oaths of the Rus treaties with Byzantium one swore by Perun and Veles (the god of cattle and oaths).

Evidence: The Rus–Byzantine treaties (among others 945, 971) and the Primary Chronicle (around 1113) name these gods explicitly. That is unusually firm evidence – by Slavic standards.

Myth: The famous "basic myth" of Perun's battle against Veles (serpent / thief) is a reconstruction by Russian scholars of the 1970s (Ivanov & Toporov) from folk songs and comparisons – it is told in no source and is considered disputed today. That Vladimir's pantheon was a "genuine", organically grown cult is also questionable – it may have been a political staging.

The strongest real parallel to the North is the thunder god: Perun corresponds to the Baltic Perkūnas and the Germanic Donar/Thor – an ancient Indo-European inheritance.

Finds & Places

The centre of the early East Slavs was the Kievan Rus. Prince Vladimir first had an idol of the thunder god Perun erected and then, at the baptism of the Rus in 988, demonstratively cast into the Dnieper (recorded in the Primary Chronicle). Rich princely graves were yielded by the "Black Mounds" near Chernihiv – among them lavishly gilded drinking horns.

Gilded drinking horn from the Black Grave

Gilded drinking horn (rhyton) from the "Black Grave" near Chernihiv, 10th c. Photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC0.

Caution / Myth: Whether the ruling "Rus" were originally Scandinavian Norsemen is the Normanist controversy, still charged to this day – what is documented is a mixture, not a purely Viking people.

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