The world history of writing teaches that writing appears when the state arises. Based on this thesis, it can be argued that writing appeared in Russia in the tenth century, but most likely it is not: there are several evidences that the Slavs knew how to write in Ancient Russia long before Cyril and Methodius.
Instructions
Step 1
The famous Russian historian Vasily Tatishchev was the first to suggest the existence of pre-Christian writing in Ancient Rus. In doing so, he relied on the chronicles of Nestor, who described the events that took place 150 years before his birth. Tatishchev argued that it was simply impossible to do this, relying only on oral speech. This suggests that Nestor used written sources that have not reached our days.
Unfortunately, little is known about the pre-Christian Slavic writing. The Slavs carved signs on the wood, but, according to the information of the tenth century Bulgarian writer Brave, they also used Greek and Latin letters. An additional argument in favor of pre-Christian writing is the linguistic factor - in the ancient Slavic speech there were such words as write and read, which suggests that the Slavs were familiar with writing before the adoption of Christianity.
Step 2
Officially, the brothers Cyril and Methodius are considered the creators of Slavic writing. Their origin is still the subject of controversy among modern scientists, it is only known that they were fluent in the language spoken by the Slavs.
Step 3
The reason for the creation of writing in Russia was the spread of the Christian religion and the need to conduct church services in a language understandable to the people, and not in Latin, as was practiced in most European countries, but which almost no one understood.
Step 4
For a long time, two types of alphabet were known in Russia: Cyrillic and Glagolitic. Today we use the Cyrillic alphabet, but the Glagolitic alphabet has not taken root. According to historians, there is a possibility that Cyril created the verb and the Cyrillic alphabet was created by one of his students, Clement, after which he named it after his teacher. Initially, there were forty-three letters in Cyrillic, some of which also denoted numbers. Only after a series of reforms, thirty-three letters remained in the Cyrillic alphabet, as in the modern alphabet.
Step 5
Despite the fact that a single written language in Ancient Russia arose only with the adoption of Christianity in 988, apparently, the Slavs, long before this date, were able to express their thoughts on “paper”. It was Cyril and Methodius who streamlined the Slavic writing, taking as a basis one of the dialects of the Old Bulgarian language and adapting it to Slavic speech.
Largely thanks to the emergence of a single written language, Christianity gained such a large-scale distribution, and the service in the native language, and not in Latin, became a real example, which was followed by other European peoples.
