Which alphabet did Russia use before the missionaries arrived there?

Comments ( 2 )

1. ? says

   "There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing. Despite some suggestive archaeological finds and a corroboration by the 10th-century monk Khrabr that ancient Slavs wrote in "strokes and incisions" (черты и резы /ʧertɪ i rʲezɪ/), the exact nature of this system is not known."

   "Although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The samples of birch-bark writing excavated in Novgorod have provided crucial information about the pure tenth-century vernacular in North-West Russia, almost entirely free of church influence. It is also known that borrowings and calques from Byzantine Greek began to enter the vernacular at this time, and that simultaneously the literary language in its turn began to be modified towards Eastern Slavic."

   Reply

2. Don Adriano says

   Nobody knows. The language that preceded Old Church Slavonic is called Proto-Slavic (which you probably know if you know what Old Church Slovanic is). No verifiable Proto-Slavic writings have ever been found.

   Reply