Ancient Slavs were people of Vedic culture, therefore it would be more correct to call Old Slavic religion Vedaism, not paganism. The word “Veda” is consonant to modern Russian "to know”. It is a peaceful religion of the highly cultured agricultural people, related to the other religions of Vedic origin - Ancient Indian and Iranian, the Ancient Greek religions.

The beginning of Slavic culture dates from VI century. At early stages of development the nature of the country had a great influence on the course of its history. Before the Kiev state was formed, the Slavs had the significant history, noticeable successes in the field of material culture, owned the secrets of metal forming, applied agricultural instruments. This people had framed conceptions of the terrestrial and the next world, there were strictly observed rituals, and when the process of ethnogenesis has come to the end these cultural achievements of the past were not forgotten.

The important feature of the way of life and thought of the ancient Slavs is the idea of indissoluble unity and relationship of the living with the ancestors - forefathers and gods as a condition of harmony of the terrestrial and the heavenly worlds.  The fragility of this balance was felt by people and personified in the fight of the Truth and the Falsehood (“Pravda” and “Krivda”).

The outlook of the ancient Slavs was characterized by anthropotheocosmizm i.e. the Slavs did not divide the understanding of the world as created by no one into spheres of human, divine and natural.

Orthodoxy began to supersede the ancient culture and beliefs of the Slavs not earlier the XI century - much later, than in other European countries. It had been existing for not less than a thousand and a half years before. The heritage of such a powerful layer of Slavic cultural archaic continues to declare itself in the mentality, style and phraseology of speech, mimicry and gestures, not realized movements of the soul adjoining the world of the native nature. Its value consists in the fact that we get acquainted with the images of characters of that far world in the early childhood when a person is most opened to the universe.

            From ancient times, beside agriculture and cattle breeding the population of early Rus was successfully engaged in trade. At this rate it is possible to suppose the early existence of cities in VII-VIII centuries already. The cities were not only the items of tribal defense and cult. By XI century they are the centers of political, cultural life, craft manufacture. In the Scandinavian sagas of IX century the early Russ was called "Gardarika" – the country of cities. The forming culture of the Kiev Russia was urban. Thus, till the second half of the IX century, before the formation of the state, east Slavs had already had significant history, had already reached noticeable success in the field of material culture which was a basis of public life.

Pagan religion took the central place in culture of this period. Religious views of the ancient Slavs reflected the outlook of our ancestors. A person lived in a mythological picture of the world in the centre of which there was the nature to which the collective adapted.

The pagan rites included various kinds of arts. By means of sculpture, carving, embossing the images, the possession of which, as Slavs thought, gave power over the forces of nature, protection from troubles and dangers were made. Pagan symbols were shown in Slavic folklore (images of a birch, a pine, a mountain ash), in architecture – the images of birds, horse heads were cut out on the roofs of the houses.

Now it is possible to judge about the Slavic mythology only by secondary – written, folklore and material sources. The folklore - fairy tales, bylinas, ceremonial songs, spells and etc. based on ancient myths and legends - is a rich source for Slavic mythology researchers. Certainly, myths in such exposition were strongly deformed, and the main problem of researchers consists in exarticulation, reconstructing of the most ancient conceptions, to clear them from everything that was introduced later. A fairy tale, and also bylinas in some cases keep some plots of pagan myths about animals, gods, spirits and the structure of the world.