The Russian people ( ) are an East Slavic ethnic group, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries.

The English term Russians is also used to refer to citizens of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity (see demographics of Russia for information on other ethnic groups inhabiting Russia); in Russian, this meaning is covered by term Rossiyanin (Россиянин, plural Rossiyane). According to the 2002 census, ethnic Russians make up about 80% of the population of Russia CIA World Factbook

Origins

• See the article about the old legend Lech, Czech and Rus.
• See the article about the Primary Chronicle.

Russians' predecessors were the medieval East Slavic nation Rus', who were also the predecessors of Belarusians and Ukrainians.

Most of the tribes that took part in the formation of the Russian people were of East Slavic origin. Among those tribes were Krivich, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs and Severians. A genetic study showed that even though most of the Russian blood is Slavic, they also have some Finno-Ugric blood in them.[http://www.newsru.com/russia/28sep2005/russians.html Новости NEWSru.com :: Ученые завершили масштабное исследование генофонда русского народа (Фотороботы) ] That shows that some of the Finno-Ugric peoples that lived among the Slavs in east Europe eventually assimilated among them. Among those peoples were Merya and Muromian.

Very little is known about the Russians and East Slavs in general prior to approximately 859 AD, the date from which the account in the Primary Chronicle (a history of the Ancient Rus from around 850 to 1110 originally compiled in Kiev about 1113) starts.

By 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. The East Slavs flooded Eastern Europe in two streams. One group of tribes settled along the Dnieper River in what is now Ukraine; they then spread northward to the northern Volga Valley, east of modern-day Moscow and westward to the basins of the northern Dniester and the Southern Buh rivers in present-day Moldova and southern Ukraine.

Another group of East Slavs moved from Pomerania to the northeast, where they encountered the Varangians of the Rus' Khaganate and established an important regional centre of Novgorod. The same Slavic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. Having reached the lands of the Merya near Rostov, they linked up with the Dnieper group of Slavic migrants.

Emergence of Russian ethnicity

According to most ethnologists, ethnic Russians originated from the earlier Rus people (East Slavs or Kievan Rus) and gradually evolved into a different ethnicity from the western Rus peoples, who became the modern-day Belarusians and Ukrainians. Early ancestors of the Russians were East Slavic tribes migrating to the East European Plain in the early Middle Ages. Most prominent Slavic tribes in the area of what is now European Russia included Vyatichs, Krivichs, Radimichs, Severians and Ilmen Slavs. By the 11th century, East Slavs assimilated the Finno-Ugric tribes Merya and Muroma and the Baltic tribe Eastern Galindae that used to inhabit the same area with them (now Central Russia).