History of Ukraine
Strikingly different interpretations of the medieval state of Kievan Rus' appear in the four schools of historiography within Ukraine: Russophile, Sovietophile, Eastern Slavic, and Ukrainophile. The Sovietophile and Russophile schools have become marginalized in independent Ukraine, with the Ukrainophile school being dominant in the early 21st century. The Ukrainophile school promotes an identity that is mutually exclusive of Russia. It has come to dominate the nation's educational system, security forces, and national symbols and monuments, although it has been dismissed as nationalist by Western historians. The East Slavic school, an eclectic compromise between Ukrainophiles and Russophilism, has a weaker ideological and symbolic base, although it is preferred by Ukraine's centrist former elites.
History of Proto-Slavic
Despite these developments, Slavic remained conservative and was still typologically very similar to other Balto-Slavic dialects. Even into the Common Era, the various Balto-Slavic dialects formed a dialect continuum stretching from the Vistula to the Don and Oka basins, and from the Baltic and upper Volga to southern Russia and northern Ukraine. Exactly when Slavs began to identify as a distinct ethno-cultural unit remains a subject of debate. For example, links the phenomenon to the Zarubinets culture 200 BC to AD 200, Vlodymyr Baran places Slavic ethnogenesis within the Chernyakov era, while Curta places it in the Danube basin in the sixth century CE. It is likely that linguistic affinity played an important role in defining group identity for the Slavs. The term "Slav" is proposed to be an autonym referring to "people who (use the words to) speak."