[2] While the original protograph has not been preserved, the earliest known edition is written in the Novgorod First Chronicle from the 15th century, and was later rediscovered by Russian-German historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller in the early 1760s.

[2] The list remained mostly unknown until the Russian-German historian Gerhard Friedrich Müller discovered it in the early 1760s, after which his colleague August Ludwig von Schlözer published it in Russian in 1816.

The categories consist of Bulgarian and "Vlach" (an old name for Romanians, here referring to Moldavia and Wallachia), Podolian, Kievite, Volhynian, Lithuanian, Smolenskian, Ryazanite, Zalesyean, and (sometimes) Tverite.

According to Soviet-era historian Mikhail Tikhomirov, the list proves that, by as early as the beginning of the 15th century, the Russian land [ru] concept already existed, on the basis of ethnic and linguistic similarities among the East Slavic people at the time.

[2] According to others, including Russian historian Kamil Galeev [Wikidata], the term Rus'/Russian in the list is not based on ethnic differences, but rather on the distribution of Old Church Slavonic.