Before the Grand Duchy of Moscow or even Kievan Rus, the East Slavs settled in what is now Western Russia. But who were they? Where did they come from? And what was their connection with the Vikings? This lesson answers those questions and more.
!!!Separation of the Slavs
The Slavs are one of Europe's largest ethnic groups, but despite that, their origins are shrouded in mystery. In fact, the first we really know about them comes from the time that they had already split into three groups. However, most scholars now believe that they came from somewhere in western Central Asia, close to the shores of the Caspian and Black seas. By far the largest of these was the Eastern Slavs, ancestors to today's Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians. These early Eastern Slavs arrived in modern-day Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia sometime during the middle of the first millennium AD. This was about the same time that many other previously Central Asian groups were moving west as a result of the Great Migration.
[{Image src='eastern_slavs.jpg' alt='Eastern Slavs' caption='Range of the Eastern Slavs'}]
!!!How we know about them
But how do we know all this? Is it all conjecture? Surprisingly, starting about the time that the Kievan Rus began to be a real political power in Eastern Europe during the 9th
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The Vikings tended to try to take over any place that was making plenty of money, and during the eighth century, that was the land of the Slavs. The Slavs were able to defeat the Vikings, making them give up on ruling the region. However, the Slavs soon spent so much time fighting each other that they realized that they were better off with the Vikings as rulers! Known as the __Varangians__, these Vikings settled as rulers, not conquerors, and intermarried with the Slavs. The resulting group, known as the Rus, united much of the region under the Kievan