The book is devoted to the problem of the formation of the Russian state in the geopolitical context of the political and ethnocultural processes that took place in Eurasia at the end of the 1st millennium AD, starting with the resettlement of the Slavs. Particular importance is attached to the study of the historical foundations of the annalistic news of the first Russian princes, starting with the legend of Kie and the calling of the Varangians.