In this book, the encyclopedically educated Ukrainian scientist Viktor Petrov covers the complex issues of Ukrainian ethnogenesis. The book was published in 1947 abroad, reprinted in 1992 in Kyiv. Petrov's scientific heritage as an archaeologist is the study of Trypillian, Chernyakhov, Zarubinets culture, the discovery of monuments of the "urban type," the refutation of the theory of the Gothic origin of Chernyakhov culture. The main thing for him was the problem of ethnogenesis of the Eastern Slavs and Ukrainian.