Talk:Old East Slavic

Scope

Old Russian redirects here. However, the term "Old Russian" is broader since it covers the history of the Russian language until the 17th century. The language code orv is also used here to represent Old East Slavic, even though this means "Old Russian vernacular" (see this for more details). We do not have a separate article for the earlier stage of the Russian language, although we do have Ruthenian language for the earlier stage of the modern Belarusian and Ukrainian languages.

The term "Old Russian" is still widely used in the literature . See for example Ngram, and of course, "Old Russian" does not necessarily refer to the language only, but this has been used as a justification to make blanket changes of "Old Russian" to "Old East Slavic" in any context. I do not think what we have now is a good solution. Perhaps we need a separate article for Old Russian and a separate article for Old East Slavic to represent the earliest stage? Mellk (talk) 13:43, 24 September 2025 (UTC)

Splitting proposal

See the above section for more details. I propose splitting this article into Old East Slavic and Old Russian (currently a redirect). "Old Russian" is widely used in the literature to refer to the Russian language until the 17th century, therefore it is not synonymous with "Old East Slavic". Although "Old Russian" is also used to refer to the common language of the East Slavs, we can still include this as an alt name and perhaps a hatnote in the "Old Russian" article could work. Mellk (talk) 17:20, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

I think this splitting is no longer relevant, since I created the article as a translation from the Russian Wikipedia. As I understand it, all the misunderstandings arise from the clamor in translating the prefixes drevne- and staro-, which are both translated into English as "old." Modun (talk) 10:59, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for translating the article. However, "Middle Russian" refers to approximately the 15th to 17th centuries only, whereas "Old Russian" is often used to refer to everything until the 17th century and not just the previous stage. The term "Middle Russian" is not that widely used whereas "Old Russian" is widely used with the broader definition, so in my opinion, it still makes sense to have a separate article where we can mention that the term includes everything up to the 17th century, but sometimes the term "Middle Russian" is applied to the latter stage.

In Russian, the term "древнерусский" has the same meaning (i.e. it usually refers to everything up to the 17th century), hence ru:Древнерусская литература (Old Russian literature) includes everything from the 11th to 17th centuries. Mellk (talk) 11:18, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

The term "древнерусский" refers to the period in the history of the East Slavic languages ​​before the language clearly split into three distinct languages. Therefore, Old East Slavic is more accurate than Old Russian, especially because the confusion between these periods is more misleading. Besides, it is more neutral and neat.

As I understand it, “Middle Russian” is a more common term in English for the Russian language in this historical period. At least that's how it's described in the Britannica Modun (talk) 12:02, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I didn't suggest we should rename this article. This is a splitting proposal. "Old Russian" and "Old East Slavic" are not synonyms. Not to mention that the language code orv quite literally means "Old Russian vernacular" and includes everything up to the 17th century. Mellk (talk) 12:04, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, maybe I'm missing something? What do you mean by "Old Russian" and "Old East Slavic"? And in terms of periodization? Modun (talk) 12:11, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

See for example this from The Structure and Development of Russian:

"Our study of the historical development of Russian must be preceded by an account of its earliest recorded form, which from the eleventh to the end of the seventeenth century is generally known as Old Russian, though there is unavoidably a considerable disparity between the language, say, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and that of the eleventh and twelfth. Some investigators have suggested the application of the term 'Middle Russian' to the former..." (pp. 112–113)

Here is another example from Context and the Lexicon in the Development of Russian Aspect:

"Old Russian is the written language used on East Slavic soil from the appearance of the first texts up to the seventeenth century. In its early stages it could justifiably be called Old East Slavic [...] One could adopt terminology like "Early Old Russian," "Middle Old Russian," and "Late Old Russian," but these terms are neither concise nor informative; the "Middle Old Russian" of the Tale of the Taking of Tsargrad may have less in common with the contemporaneous Journey Across Three Seas than with the "Late Old Russian" of Prince Kurbskij" (p. 17).

Mellk (talk) 12:34, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

I think you're a bit confused about the terminology and periodization. The Old Russian (drevnerusskiy) language ended somewhere in the 14th-15th centuries when it split into Ruthenian (also known as Old Belarusian, Old Ukrainian) and Middle Russian languages. Further splitting is simply no longer required. Modun (talk) 13:00, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

How am I confused when the sources above say Old Russian ended in the 17th century and only the "early stages" of Old Russian can "justifiably be called Old East Slavic"?

You are arguing that we can neatly divide the history of the Russian language into "Old East Slavic", "Middle Russian" and "Modern Russian" (which does not make much sense considering we have "Middle Russian" but no "Old Russian" in the first place and supporters of "Middle Russian" include "Old Russian" in their periodization), but the problem is that the literature does not follow this periodization (and we have WP:NPOV).

Russian Wikipedia does have separate articles for "древнерусский язык" and "старорусский язык", but this is English Wikipedia so we need English-language sources to determine how terms like "Old Russian" and "Old East Slavic" are used. Notice how "Old Russian" is used and not "Ancient Russian". The point of splitting is because, again, "Old Russian" and "Old East Slavic" are not synonyms. These are distinct topics (see WP:CONTENTSPLIT) and the language code orv does not belong here because it is referring to Old Russian (in the wider sense). Mellk (talk) 13:11, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Middle Russian is the Old Russian language (starorusskiy).

Here is a literal quote from the Britannica in the article Russian language:

Russian and the other East Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Belarusian) did not diverge noticeably from one another until the Middle Russian period (the late 13th to the 16th century). The term Old Russian is generally applied to the common East Slavic language in use before that time. Modun (talk) 14:36, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Britannica is a tertiary source and generally we try to avoid using it or at least prefer other sources (see WP:BRITANNICA). The Russian language article is attributed to "Britannica Editors" so it does not seem like it was written by a subject-matter expert. It dates the "Middle Russian" period from the 13th century, which is too early.

To be clear, I am not saying the new "Old Russian language" article should replace the "Middle Russian language" article that you created. The former can be treated as a parent article since it covers both the single language stage and the stage afterward.

The issue is that there is no single periodization that is universally accepted, so many authors prefer "Old Russian" to refer to the language up to the 17th century (followed by "Modern Russian"), while some others prefer to apply the term "Middle Russian", but this is a term that has some opposition. Neil Bermel for example (mentioned above) opposed dividing "Old Russian" into "Early Old Russian", "Middle Old Russian" and "Late Old Russian". The division into simply "Old Russian" and "Modern Russian" is more common (and the term "Old Russian" being used to refer to everything before the reign of Peter the Great includes areas such as literature, architecture, art, and so on).

You keep repeating the point that the modern East Slavic languages began to diverge around a certain point but I am not sure how this addresses the points I have made. Are you able to at least agree that most or at least a significant proportion of English-language sources use the term "Old Russian" in the wider sense and not specifically to "Old East Slavic" (the earliest stages) and/or that "Old Russian" is distinct to "Old East Slavic"? Mellk (talk) 15:20, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

@Mellk Now that I think about it, due to variation in terminology, "Old Russian" could be a disambiguation page, with the entries "Old East Slavic" and "Middle Russian". This is more reasonable than a split, and it would lead to less duplication between articles. SVG-image-maker (talk) 01:12, 2 May 2026 (UTC)

For those who use "Middle Russian" I do not think "Old Russian" necessarily corresponds with "Old East Slavic" (but we will need to examine the sources more closely). Zaliznyak for example refers to unified "supra-dialectal Old Russian" until the 13th century (with Vladimir-Suzdal then carrying "supra-dialectal Old Russian") as opposed to the northwestern dialects (i.e. Novgorod and Pskov). On a side note, I only see them referred to as "Old Russian" dialects rather than "Middle Russian" dialects or "Old East Slavic" dialects (the latter would not make much sense if we are talking about the 15th or 16th centuries).

The term "Old Russian" is widely used in a general sense to refer to everything up to the 17th century (not just language, but for example Old Russian literature, Old Russian architecture, Old Russian art, and so on). In some cases this is not something that can simply be replaced with "Old East Slavic" or "Middle Russian".

The other issue is the language code orv which is for "Old Russian" while ru is for Modern Russian.

Personally, I do not think there would be much of an issue in terms of duplication. Old Russian language can be specifically about Russian language history (including the northwestern dialects) while Old East Slavic can cover the single language state in more detail and the debate on whether the East Slavs spoke a single language. This article primarily covers the early history and the debate. Take for example Old Norse and Old Swedish, Old Norwegian, and so on. Mellk (talk) 09:56, 15 May 2026 (UTC)

@Mellk's edits on Old Church Slavonic grammar have sparked a debate that should in fact be resolved here. I've already given some of my thoughts on Talk:Old Church Slavonic grammar, and I'd add a few more here and summarise the old ones.

Mellik's first comment in the direction of splitting referred to ISO and Ngram. Regarding these two: ISO is not a scientific institution, and its language classification is based on the publications of SIL Global, also not a scientific institution. Their classification has, as far as I remember, also already been dismissed on WP when it came to the proposal to split Serbo-Croatian into Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian. Having and not having ISO language codes is irrelevant for how languages are classified on WP. As for Ngram, its sources can be checked and it's immediately obvious that a vast majority of them is irrelevant to Old Russian as a linguistic unit, with hits such as "old Russian saying" from Billionaire Without A Past (Irresistible Russian Tycoons, Book 3) by C. Marinelli.

One component of the usage of "Old Russian" is bound to cause confusion because it's not always used as linguistic, but as cultural/national affiliation, i.e. premodern Russian culture in general, which has been expressed both in vernacular East Slavic and in Church Slavonic language (based on South Slavic). I also mentioned this on the OCS grammar talk page.

Overall, the situation is very complicated, as far as I see, because there's several axes along which the definition and usage of "Old Russian" and "Old East Slavic" differs in practice:

A) Russian vs. English perspective (not to mention Ukrainian and other scholarly traditions)

B) purely linguistic vs. cultural/national

C) temporal: if OR isn't treated as synonymous with OES, then its duration may go on all the way to 17th c.

It would require a complicated table to showcase where each source stands in its usage.

A highly desirable thing would be clear and unambiguous definitions, which, I find, haven't been provided yet. WP's existing model is perhaps oversimplified, but it is at least clear and usable (and not nationally marked, which is a good way to avoid national bickering). On the other hand, I don't entirely understand how we'd distinguish between when OR is meant to mean what we currently call OES, and when it refers to this chronologically broader unit that Mellk is now arguing for. What is this OR, if not synonymous with OES, in relation to OES and to other East Slavic languages? Is OES a part of OR? If yes: entirely or just in part? Can some other part of OES belong to e.g. "Old Ukrainian"? Or, is OR an offshoot of OES? What is OR's relationship to Ruthenian (proto-Ukrainian+Belarusian)? Is Slovo o plъku Igorevě an OR text, or an OES text, or both?

I think that Mellk, as the proposer of the split, hasn't provided enough clear references to sources to support the split. One of his few references (on OCS talk) turned out not to support his definition (though it didn't explicitly disprove it either). It is quite likely that some definitions and statements in the terminology section should be revised, maybe providing an additional/alternative definition of OR to account for different usage, etc. But what I'd really want to see here is clarification of the definitions, and more sources that should be in favour of OR as a distinct term, as well as a critical examination of the sources that support the OES term and claim it to be synonymous to OR.

(Apologies for the wall of text.)

— Phazd (talk|contribs) 00:12, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

Scholarship doesn't have a clear answer as of yet, with different scholars applying different periodizations. To be honest, a more general article called History of the East Slavic languages would be greatly beneficial, as it could encompass the various scholarly views when sources disagree. SVG-image-maker (talk) 20:42, 20 July 2026 (UTC)