Khazar city of Kyiv. Russian Kaganate

The existence of the Russian Kaganate is recognized by many historians. And although we have few sources, archaeological research can still shed light on what kind of state it was - the Russian Kaganate.

When did the Russian Kaganate exist?

Most of our sources about the beginning of Russian history were written many years after the events. The same Tale of Bygone Years is a work of the 12th century (and its predecessor, which has not reached us, was created around 997). The beginning of the history of our Fatherland traditionally dates back to the 9th century.

This raises the question: how much can you trust texts written down 200 years after the events? Therefore, sources created simultaneously with ongoing events are doubly valuable. One of these records was made in 839 in the empire of Louis the Pious by the Frankish bishop-chronographer Prudentius. It said that along with the ambassadors from the Byzantine emperor Theophilus, ambassadors who called themselves dews also arrived.

Their ruler bore the title of kagan. A few years later, the title of Kagan will again be discussed in the West by the rulers of the two strongest states - the West Frankish Kingdom and Byzantium. The Franks knew only the Khagan of the Avars, but the Byzantine emperor (whose letter has not reached us) knew someone else.

Eastern geographers write in more detail about the Kagan of the Rus, but their information cannot be dated accurately: if the geographer did not have modern information, he could easily insert into the story a description from a hundred years ago. Thus, we can say for sure that in the 830s, in the territory of the southeast of modern Ukraine and the Belgorod, Voronezh and Kursk regions, there was a certain Rus Khaganate.

Who is the Kagan?

The titles of rulers were taken very seriously in the Middle Ages. Titles were achieved through bloody wars and long sieges: just remember the coronation of German emperors in Rome or the system of localism in Rus'.

Therefore, we need to take a closer look at the word “Kagan” in the sources. Kagan is the title of ruler among nomadic peoples, common in the Eurasian steppes of the 1st millennium AD. It denoted a ruler who not only did not submit to anyone else, but also ruled over a large number of rulers (khans) of different nations. In fact, he was the emperor of the steppes.

And we have no reason to think that the Kagan of the Rus was called that way inappropriately (neither the Frankish king nor the Byzantine emperor had any special love for the Kagan of the Rus).

This means that it was also a fairly strong and respected state. Maybe not for so long, but, obviously, it brought fear to the neighbors. True, another question arises here: what was the relationship between the Kagan of the Rus and the Kagan of the Khazars? Archeology can shed some light on this issue.

Why were white stone fortresses built?

On the territory of the Russian Kaganate for that time, archaeologists have recorded monuments of the Saltovo-Mayak culture, or more precisely, its forest-steppe variant. The culture itself is firmly associated with the Khazars, but it is impossible to say that each archaeological culture corresponds to a specific ethnic group.

Therefore, the commonality of cultural artifacts can speak of a similar way of life, but in no way about the political borders and wars of the people who inhabited this culture among themselves.

In this regard, it is interesting to look at another mystery associated with the Russian Kaganate: white-stone fortresses, the remains of which are preserved on the banks of the Seversky Donets, Oskol and Don.

In official historiography they are spoken of little and are almost unconditionally classified as Khazars (especially since some of them were flooded during the creation of the Tsimlyansk Reservoir in Soviet times). It is worth paying attention to one important detail: all the fortresses were built on the right banks of the rivers, i.e. defended by rivers from the east. Why the Khazars adhered to the inconvenient location of the fortresses is unclear.

At a certain point, which can be interpreted as the 830s - 850s, these fortresses are attacked and destroyed. At the same time, some of them, located in the east, remain intact (one of these fortresses was Sarkel, known to Russian chroniclers as Belaya Vezha). The reason for these destructions is also unclear; some scientists see it as the death of the Russian Kaganate, others are more skeptical.

Multi-ethnic kaganate

The burial grounds excavated by archaeologists within the forest-steppe variant of the Saltovo-Mayak culture provide significant evidence of the multi-ethnicity of the people living in these fortresses. Among them there are nomads and sedentary people, people with skulls of different types (the craniological type is one of the most important now when determining an ethnic group based on the skeleton), buried according to different rituals. These markers allow us to conclude that in a relatively short period of time (30–40 years), different ethnic groups lived on the territory of the Russian Kaganate, interacting and generally coexisting peacefully with each other.

Slavic neighbors

Based on the above data, the famous archaeologist V.V. Sedov believes that the population of the Russian Kaganate were Slavs. However, this hypothesis does not fit well with both the ethnonym Rus and the title Kagan. At the same time, Slavic burials are found among the population of white-stone fortresses, whose inhabitants actively traded with the Slavs. But the richest are the burials of the nomads of this time. Some scientists include the Alans, an Iranian tribe known in the Kuban and the east of the Northern Black Sea region since the beginning of our era.

Perhaps it was the Alans who were the dominant layer of the Russian Kaganate and it was them who the Arab geographers called the Rus.

However, the last statement is controversial and is unlikely to be proven. After all, debates about the ethnic origin of the Rus have been going on for centuries.

Nomadic crafts?

Another of the mysteries of the Russian Kaganate is the presence of craft workshops in the fortresses. It is quite difficult to imagine them among nomads. However, archeology says otherwise. Craftsmen who lived in the fortress suburbs produced weapons, jewelry, religious objects and household items - for example, dishes. These data are even less consistent with the hypothesis that the fortresses belonged to the Khazars. They lived only by transit trade and produced nothing.

The Russians themselves, according to the testimony of the Arabs, made excellent swords and sabers, forged using complex technologies.

Iron was actively mined from bog ore, and pottery production was developed.

Coins of the Russian Kaganate

Several dozens of counterfeit Arab silver coins were found in several treasures buried after 839. However, they were not actually counterfeited, because the weight of silver in them is even greater than in the original ones. What then were the fakes used for?

The theory seems quite reasonable that these coins imitating Arab dirhams, with the names of non-existent caliphs, were made precisely in the Russian Kaganate. No more reasonable explanations for this phenomenon have been proposed, however, there is also insufficient data to confirm it. The Russian Kaganate still remains a mystery to historians, but perhaps some of them will be solved in the future. It would be very interesting.

Who created the state in Rus', what roots does the great culture of the pre-Mongol period have? The vision of Russia's future depends on the answer to these questions. Of course, not a single expert denies that several different ethnic groups took part in the formation of Kievan Rus and the Old Russian people, and the name “Rus” is originally of non-Slavic origin. Who these Rus were, how they influenced the formation of the socio-economic and political system of Rus' - all this gives rise to a knot of problems that have not yet been fully resolved, inextricably woven into the overall picture of the history of South-Eastern Europe at the end of the 1st millennium AD. It is the study of this territory, especially the areas adjacent to the lands of the Eastern Slavs, that can bring some clarity to the question of the origins of Rus'.

It is quite understandable why so much attention is paid to the problem of the ethnicity of the “Rus” tribe. After all, the Rus, as contemporaries of the events testify, were the social elite of the Old Russian state (Arab geographers wrote about this back in the 9th century, and the Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus in the 10th century, and others).

The Norman concept now claims a leading role in Russian science. Eastern Europe of the 8th - 10th centuries, according to the ideas of current Norman scientists, was divided into two approximately equal spheres of influence: the Varangian Normans (aka Rus) collected tribute from the northern regions, and the Khazar Khaganate from the southern regions. And it would seem that written sources contemporary with events provide grounds for this. The most famous of these sources is the “Annals of Bertin” by Bishop Prudentius, written in the second half of the 9th century. The annals report the arrival in 839 of the embassy of the Byzantine emperor Theophilus in the capital of the Franks to Louis the Pious. Along with this embassy there were also ambassadors of another nation, who called themselves “Rus” and their ruler “Khakan”. The Byzantine emperor asked his colleague to help them return to their homeland, because “the path along which they arrived in Constantinople” was cut by “barbarian tribes, the most terrible, characterized by immeasurable savagery.” After questioning the ambassadors of this mysterious people, Louis learned that they were from the “Sveon” people, and suspected them of espionage.

This evidence is supplemented by the correspondence of the Byzantine Emperor Basil I of Macedon with Louis II of Germany, in which the Norman and Khazar Khaganates are mentioned nearby. And since the scientific world rightly recognizes that the title of “Kagan” in the early Middle Ages meant no less than the imperial title and showed justified claims to dominance in Eastern Europe, the “Swedish-Khazar redistribution” of this region is almost 100% “justified.”

And if we add, for example, this record of the Arab-Persian geographer Ibn Ruste: “They (Russians - E.G.) attack the Slavs, board ships, go to them, capture them, take them to Khazaran and Bulgar (Volga Bulgaria. - E.G.), sell them; They have no arable fields, since they eat what they bring from the land of the Slavs.” Who else can come to mind than the famous Normans-Varangians-Russians in one person, who took possession of the northern Slavic tribes and took tribute from them? The south of the Slavic lands was for a long time under the Khazar yoke (or beneficial influence - as one likes).

Meanwhile, the Norman-Khazar concept, which has recently found itself in the “avant-garde” of historical science thanks to political support, has a very shaky foundation. This equally applies to both Normanism and the version of the dominance of the Khazar Kaganate over the south of Eastern Europe.

Undoubtedly, Khazar historical myth-making did not arise out of nowhere. Khazaria has attracted researchers for a very long time. And the reason is not only the famous Khazar Judaism. Eastern, Byzantine, Western sources, the “Tale of Bygone Years”, which testified to the Khazar tribute, Jewish-Khazar correspondence - all this, at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries, formed a view of the Khazar Kaganate as the most powerful state in Eastern Europe, under which all the peoples who inhabited it in the 8th - 9th centuries. With the development of archeology, the need arose to find “material” evidence for this hypothesis. And when in 1900 archaeologist V.A. Babenko, in the village of Verkhny Saltov, on the Seversky Donets River, next to the ruins of an ancient white-stone fortress, excavated a burial ground that belonged to an unknown people with a high culture; almost immediately an opinion arose about its Khazar affiliation. There was and could not be evidence of this - the science of archeology was in its infancy. But there was a stereotype: if they are not “Varangians” and not Slavs, then they are Khazars. When other settlements of the same archaeological culture (it was called Saltovo-Mayatskaya) were discovered between the Dnieper and Don, they were also attributed to the Khazars.

But soon, in the light of the achievements of archeology and anthropology, it was convincingly proven that the basis of the Saltov culture was not the Khazars, but the Alans, the ancestors of modern Ossetians.

Nobody denies this fact even now. But the myth of the “northwestern Khazaria,” which means the Saltov culture, continues to exist in the scientific and pseudo-scientific world to this day.

It seems that written sources just confirm the usual Khazar theory. The main source - "The Tale of Bygone Years" - says: "...Kozari imah tribute in Polyana, and in Severyan, and in Vyatichi." This is confirmed by the famous Jewish-Khazar correspondence of the 10th century. The Khazar king Joseph wrote to the Spanish Jew Hasdai ibn Shafrut: “Numerous nations... Bur-t-s, Bul-g-r, S-var, Arisu, Ts-r-mis, V-n-n-tit, S-v- r, S-l-viyun... They all serve me and pay me tribute.” The last three peoples are understood as Slavic tribes (Vyatichi, Northerners, Slovenes).

The message from the Russian chronicle will be discussed below. It is incorrect to include all the peoples listed in Joseph’s message into the territory of Khazaria. It describes the tribes and lands that were ever subordinate to it in the history of this kaganate (naturally, Joseph was inclined to exaggerate the power of his state, the affairs of which were not going well at all in the middle of the 10th century). Consequently, when searching for Khazar archaeological culture, one must proceed from the borders of Khazaria itself, which, by the way, are also indicated in the letter of the Khazar ruler.

A brief version of the letter states that in the western direction of interest to us, Khazaria extends for 40 farsakhs, that is, approximately 300 km. A lengthy edition of the document, going back to an older source, estimates the boundaries even more modestly - about 200 km. In this lengthy edition, in addition, among the border points from the west, Sh-r-kil is called, that is, Sarkel (in the future Russian Belaya Vezha, a city in the lower reaches of the Don).

Judging by the distance indicated in Joseph’s letter, the main territory of the “apple of discord” - the Saltov culture - the area between the Don and Seversky Donets rivers was in no case included in the permanent composition of the Khazar Kaganate. Naturally, in this case, this highly developed culture cannot in any way be recognized as the state culture for Khazaria. Muslim medieval geographers also confirm the conclusion about the modest size of the Khazar Kaganate: the Khazar country is presented in Arab-Persian geographical works as lying on the Itil (Volga) River and the Khazar Sea (the so-called Caspian Sea). Of course, the version of the long-term rule of the powerful Khazaria over the good half of Eastern Europe is based not only on written evidence. Based on archaeological material, the territory of Khazaria is delineated with the help of the same Saltov culture, into which various archaeological cultures that do not have too much in common are artificially included under the guise of “variants”. For the first time, the unification of the population of the undoubtedly Khazar Sarkel and Upper Saltov into one “ethnocultural environment” was carried out by M.I. Artamonov. As is known, Sarkel was built with the participation of a specially invited Byzantine architect Petrona Kamatira around 835 - 839. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus talks about this in his work “On the Administration of the Empire”.

The population of Sarkel included two large ethnic groups: a sedentary agricultural population who lived in dugouts in the western, most accessible part of the fortress, and buried the dead according to the Proto-Bulgarian rite (in ground pits), and a population with clear signs of a nomadic life, living in the citadel itself. All the men and some of the women of the early Sarkel during the construction of the fortress are anthropologically Turkic. But the other part of the female population of Sarkel is Sarmatian-Alan, clearly one of those who lived in the area between the Don and Seversky Donets.

This fact, which the Khazar scholars missed, is especially significant, since in the burial grounds of the upper reaches of the Seversky Donets, pit Bulgarian-Turkic burials are characterized as the graves of a dependent population. Based on this, it is quite logical to assume that the people who built Sarkel, the western border point of Khazaria (as the Khazar king Joseph writes), hardly had any special sympathy for the Saltovites and, apparently, deliberately went over to the side of Khazaria. Sarmato-Alan women in Sarkel are most likely captives.

The archaeological picture, in the light of the relationship between the Saltovskaya culture and the Khazar Kaganate, is as follows: from the time of the appearance in the Donets and Don basin (probably it was at the turn of the 7th - 8th centuries), the Saltovskaya culture was formed as the culture of the Sarmatian-Alan agricultural population. There are no close analogies with the inhabitants of the lower Volga and Dagestan that would allow us to combine these two groups into a single archaeological culture, at least at the state level.

Therefore, the following conclusion suggests itself: in the area between the Don and Seversky Donets, on the territory of one of the most highly developed cultures of Eastern Europe, there was an independent state not related to Khazaria. This state led an active foreign policy and was unlikely to live in peace with its Khazar neighbor. The Saltovo-Mayak culture was never part of the Khazar Khaganate. We do not have a single piece of evidence - neither written nor archaeological - in favor of the concept of the existence of “northwestern Khazaria”. But if there was an independent state formation between the Don and the Seversky Donets, then why don’t medieval chronicles, historical and geographical works say anything about it? After all, neither the Sarmatians nor the Alans at the end of the 1st millennium AD were recorded in this territory by any written source. I wonder what their neighbors called this people and this state?

Among the peoples living or wandering between the Volga and the Dnieper, Arab and Persian geographers and travelers named the Khazars, Bulgars, Burtases, Pechenegs, Ugrians, Rus and Slavs. According to archaeological data, the population of the territory of the Saltov culture of the peoples living at that time is closest to the North Caucasian Alans and Bulgarians. But there are no Alans among the peoples between the Volga and Dnieper. To assume that a huge and influential ethno-political massif centered on the upper reaches of the Seversky Donets, Oskol and Don was ignored by meticulous eastern travelers and traders would be simply unscientific. This means that the inhabitants of these lands just need to be looked for under a different name.

Most of the ethnic groups mentioned in medieval Eastern literature have long been quite clearly localized by orientalists. Disputes still flare up around two peoples: the Burtases and the Rus. As for the first, contemporaries describe it very, very modestly. The Burtases lived on the Itil (Volga) River and were subordinate to the Khazars.

Another thing is the Russians. It is the reports about the Rus that cause the greatest difficulties and clashes of opinions. Behind this lies a long-term confrontation between various concepts of the origin of Rus' and attempts to bring a powerful eastern source base under one of them.

In general, eastern medieval geography is best informed about the Russian tribal union. Ibn Ruste, Jaykhani, Gardizi, the anonymous author “Hudud al-alam” talk about one ethnic group, knowing in detail its customs and relations with its neighbors. Geographers know more about these Rus than about the Slavs. Consequently, these Rus lived closer to the Arab Caliphate than the Slavs. Ibn Ruste and his followers write that “there are a large number of cities in the country of the Rus, and they live in contentment.” These geographers describe the burial ritual of a Rus as follows: “When one of the nobles dies among them, they dig a grave for him in the form of a large house, put him there and with him... both his clothes and gold bracelets... then they put a lot of food there supplies, vessels with drinks and minted coins. Finally, the deceased’s beloved wife is placed in the grave alive. Then the opening of the grave is blocked, and the wife dies in custody.” Only one burial rite in Eastern Europe at the turn of the 1st - 2nd millennium AD, which has been discovered archaeologically, can be compared with this description. These are the so-called catacomb burials of the Sarmato-Alan of the Saltovsk culture.

The corpus of information from this eastern tradition also reports that “the Rus call their sovereign Rus-Khakan,” and between the Volga and the Dnieper there were only three states (as Arab travelers believed): Rus, Khazar and Sarir. This means that in the 8th - 9th centuries the Rus not only could not be subordinated to Khazaria. On the contrary, the Russian tribal union fought with the Khazar Khaganate for hegemony, for dominance in South-Eastern Europe. This is precisely what the title of kagan testifies to. The assignment of this title by the head of the Rus symbolized claims to dominance in the region. “Kagan” in the early Middle Ages meant no less than “emperor”.

But not only eastern geographers called the ruler of the Rus Kagan. This was first done in the “Annals of Bertin”, beloved by the Normanists, in 839... Then the Rus of the Don region became known in Western Europe. This document is the first to record the existence of the Russian Kaganate - long before the calling of the Varangians and the formation of Kievan Rus. How did Saltovskaya Rus appear in the south of Eastern Europe? Why did it disappear almost without a trace and what connects it with the history of Ancient Rus'?..

For the first time, a people with the name “ros” was mentioned in the Syrian chronicle of Pseudo-Zechariah of the 6th century AD. in the Black Sea steppes in the neighborhood of the Amazons and other Scythian-Sarmatian tribes. (The Amazons of ancient historians are a collective mythologized image of Indo-Iranian nomadic tribes that preserved the traditions of matriarchy.)

We are talking about the Sarmatian-Alanian tribe of the Rus, related to the Persians and living in the Northern Black Sea region. It is known that the Sarmato-Alans have been in this territory for a long time. Ancient historians of those centuries mention the Roksolan tribe that lived in the Black Sea region at that time. The first component of this ethnonym is translated from Iranian dialects as “light, white” (by the way, the word rukhs also means this in the modern Ossetian language). “Light” symbolizes not so much the color of, say, hair, but has a social connotation, showing the special position of the Roksolan tribe in the Sarmatian environment. White in Indo-Aryan and Iranian mythology is the color of power. Then “rocks”, “rukhs” turned into “rus”.

The Rus unite during the Great Migration with the Proto-Bulgarians from Great Bulgaria. This is evidenced by the finds in this region of polished ceramics made on a potter's wheel, and the ceramics already acquired characteristic Saltovsky features. After the defeat of Great Bulgaria, the remnants of this conglomerate move north, to the upper reaches of the Seversky Donets and Don.

Close acquaintance with the Alan Rus and Khazars dates back to the 6th - 7th centuries, when the latter appeared in the Don and Azov regions. They then adopted the art of polished ceramics and other characteristic elements of culture from the Rus. The same period, probably, can be attributed to the indications of a long-standing connection between the Khazars and the Rus in the work “Genealogy of the Turks” (they developed in the Khazar-Persian environment in the 8th - 10th centuries), where the Khazar and Rus are siblings.

By the middle of the 8th century, a strong state was already emerging in the Don region with its own system of social relations, a developed economy and extensive trade ties. The Rus were not originally an agricultural people (like, for example, the Slavs). Their ancestors - the Scythians and Sarmatians - roamed the Black Sea steppes, living in war and trade (occupations are interrelated: you rob some, sell to others).

This is how eastern geographers see the Rus. They write about the “Solomon swords” of the Rus, about their trips on ships, about the custom of leaving property as an inheritance to a daughter, so that the son could obtain property for himself with his sword. They report that the slave trade flourished among the Rus; Ibn Ruste even claims that “Rus has neither real estate, nor villages, nor arable land; Their only trade is trade... in furs, which they sell.” It is known that Russian mercenaries were popular and made up a significant percentage in the troops of the Khazar Kagan. The military prowess of the Rus was widely known not only in South-Eastern Europe, but also in Iran, Syria, and Central Asia. The glory of the Russian warriors received a particularly wide response in their ethnically related Iran, with which they maintained close trade ties. The Rus are mentioned in Persian medieval poetry as allies or opponents (it happens in different ways) of the beloved hero of eastern legends, Alexander the Great. “From the Arab steppe he led the army to Rum, went to war through flourishing countries, entered into an alliance with the ruler of the Rus, Filkus ruled the Rumian state,” - this is how the great Ferdowsi wrote in his epic poem “Shahnameh” (Filkus is Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander; Rum - Byzantium, Eastern Roman Empire, according to medieval concepts). The creation of Nizami Ganjavi “Iskander-Name” already tells about Alexander (Iskander) himself and also mentions the Rus of Sarmatian-Alan origin: “Russian fighters from Alans and Arki made a night attack like hail.”

The most important trade routes of the early Middle Ages ran through the Russian tribal union - the Russian Kaganate, in particular, the great Volga-Baltic route, which determined trade relations not only in Eastern, but in many ways also in Western Europe in the 8th - first half of the 9th century. (The route “from the Varangians to the Greeks” began to function only at the end of the 9th century). The Russian Kaganate was one of the priority trading partners of the states of Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Moreover, the abundance of treasures on the territory of the Russian Tribal Union suggests that Arab silver coins - dirhams - settled here, and that for the merchants who possessed these riches, the lands between the Don and Donets were native (treasures are usually not buried in foreign lands). The complete opposite in this regard is the Khazar Khaganate. The entire complex of coin finds on the lower Volga and lower Donets, which could be associated with the trade movement directly in Khazaria, consists of two poor treasures and several coins. The Khazar Jews were engaged in transit trade, and neither money nor goods in large quantities settled there.

Judging by the finds of archaeologists, the trade relations of the Saltov Rus were very extensive. Iranian fabrics, silk, which only the Persian Shah wore, goods from Khorezm, Syria - gold and silver dishes, expensive jewelry are found at the ancient settlements. The Rus also received goods from China and India: the eastern borders of the Russian tribal union were located at the intersection of various branches of the famous “Silk Road” - there was the Right Bank Tsimlyansk settlement, an outpost of the Rus in the east.

The Rus were also included in trade along the Volga-Baltic route. It is from the Baltic that amber comes to the Saltovites, from which the Rus made amulets with symbols of the sun. Moreover, “solar amulets” relate mainly to the end of the VTII - the first half of the 20th century. It was from the end of the 8th century that intensive movement along the Volga-Baltic route began. From the west, first of all, the Baltic Slavs come along it, from the east - Saltovsky merchants. But the Rus, unlike the Khazars, were not only engaged in trading in foreign goods. By the beginning of the 20th century, the development of crafts in the Don region had reached the European level of that time, and in many cases surpassed Western Europe. Saltovskaya polished ceramics, made using a potter's wheel, which was then the latest technology, were very popular. Weapons manufacturing was no less developed. Of course, Saltov sabers could not compete with Damascus steel, and therefore the Rus, in the eyes of eastern geographers, remained only traders and warriors.

So, at the beginning of the 9th century, the economy of the Russian tribal union was in a stage of unprecedented growth. There was a need for our own currency. And the Rus, who until recently decorated their wives and concubines with gold and silver coins, began to mint their own coins. This conclusion can be made on the basis of finds of so-called “barbaric imitations” of dirhams found in the upper reaches of the Don and Donets. These “imitations” were not inferior in quality to genuine Arabic coins, but there were significant intentional distortions in the legend of the coins, and a runic sign was drawn on the reverse side. A study of these coins shows that they were produced at the same mint somewhere in the northern regions of the Don region. The last coins were minted in 837 - 838.

The political structure of the Russian Kaganate also developed. Around the head of the Rus, who, in accordance with Indo-Iranian religious traditions, also had sacred power, a squad of young warriors was grouped. The head of the Rus was for them both a priest and a judge (the status of the Kyiv prince Oleg the Prophet was similar). If one of the Rus had a claim against another, they turned to the head of the tribal union for resolution of the issue. The pagan religion of the Rus, like other Indo-Aryan and Iranian tribes, was the worship of the sun and light. This is evidenced by solar amulets made of amber, and ancient symbols of the sun on the walls of white-stone fortifications. One of these symbols can be observed in modern reality on the coat of arms of independent Ukraine: this is the so-called “sign of Rurikovich,” which originally depicted one of the symbols of the sun - a soaring falcon. “Signs of the Rurikovichs” are one of the most common graffito found in the lands of the core of the Russian Kaganate. It was not for nothing that the Persian geographer al-Istakhri wrote about the Russian Kaganate as one of the three states of South-Eastern Europe, also referring to high culture. Among other things, the Rus also had their own written language. Russian writing is medieval Ossetian (Alanian), rooted in the ancient Scythian-Sarmatian writing. The runic inscriptions found during excavations of the Saltovsk culture are also read in the Alan language. The Khazars borrowed Russian writing. As proven by linguist G.F. Turchaninov, the inscriptions on the ceramics of Sarkel, built by the Byzantines for Khazaria in the 30s of the century on the left bank of the Don, are made in Alan script in the Turkic language.

With such a development of the socio-economic life of the tribal union and its culture, the events that occurred in Eastern Europe at the beginning of the 9th century are quite natural. The territory of the Saltov Rus not only became one of the busiest trading areas in Eastern Europe, the Rus not only acquired their own written language and began to mint their own coins. The successes of the young Russian proto-state in expanding territories were significant. On the Lower Don, on the right bank of the river, at the end of the 8th century, a fortress was built, now known as the Right Bank Tsimlyansk settlement. Thus, the Rus occupied one of the most advantageous positions in European and Asian trade: this fortress stood at the intersection of two important trade routes - the Volga-Baltic and the “Silk” routes. But not only. Thus, the Russian tribal union came close to the unstable western borders of the Khazar Kaganate.

The influence of the Rus also advanced in the direction of the Dnieper, into the lands inhabited by the Slavs. The Slavs appeared on the left bank of the Dnieper in the 8th century. First, the Romny archaeological culture (chronicled northerners) appears there, and at the end of the 8th - beginning of the 9th century, tribes of the Borshev culture (ancestors of the Vyatichi) settled on the Don, in the heart of the Russian tribal union. The Rus-warriors defended the Slavs from the nomads of the Khazar Khaganate. Relations between the Slavs and the Rus were built rather on the basis of a mutually beneficial alliance. The Slavs received access to free black soil for farming (the fallow system used by the Slavic plowmen was the most effective in terms of yield, but constantly required new land) and reliable protection from nomads. Archaeological materials show that this period was exclusively peaceful for the Slavs on the left bank of the Dnieper. The Rus acquired a new sphere of political influence and markets for transit and their own goods. The joint settlements of Slavs and Rus testify to peaceful neighborly relations. Villages of Russian potters appeared on the Dnieper - Pastyrskoe fortified settlement and Kantserka. Thanks to the Saltovites, the Slavs of the Dnieper region became involved in international trade, began to use the potter's wheel, and jewelry made by Russian craftsmen became popular among Slavic women. From the turn of the 8th - 9th centuries, the northerners received from the Rus connections with the Caspian provinces of the Arab Caliphate. Thanks to the trade route along the Rus River (Seversky Donets and Middle Dnieper), the Slavic center on the Dnieper - Kyiv - flourished. And the Russes borrowed from the Slavs the design of half-dugouts and a stove (previously, in the houses of the Saltovites there was an above-ground hearth - since Sarmatian times).

As anthropology shows, there were frequent mixed marriages between Slavs and Rus. And this development of events is quite natural: if the Rus had a blood-related community with a strict hierarchy and gradation of clans within the tribe, then the Slavs lived as a territorial community. And the territorial community accepted any foreigner into its ranks; the strength of the cultural tradition of the Slavs always turned out to be stronger than any blood-related ties of the newcomer, and he assimilated into the Slavic environment. This happened with the Russians.

But, be that as it may, the Slavic lands of the Dnieper left bank entered the zone of political and economic influence of the Russian tribal union. This situation was finally consolidated in the first third of the 9th century with the strengthening of Slavic-Russian ties. And if we remember that at the same time there was an advance of the Rus to the borders of Khazaria, then it was then that the Russian ethnopolitical union became a kaganate in the full sense of the word, which was invested in it in the early Middle Ages. He was already truly the supreme overlord, who had grounds for claiming dominance in the region. And the head of the Rus took the title of Kagan.

But there could only be one Kaganate in South-Eastern Europe: after all, the title of Kagan was equal to the imperial one. The Rus became dangerous competitors of Khazaria not only in economics, but also in politics. The Khazar Kaganate (or rather, its Jewish elite) lived by trade and produced practically nothing. By the beginning of the 20th century, according to the testimony of merchants and travelers, Khazaria was already largely dependent on Russian goods: “Their (Khazar - E.G.) main food is rice and fish; the rest... is brought from Rus', Bulgar (Volga Bulgaria - E.G.), Cuiaba.” However, the Khazar Kaganate at the beginning of the 9th century was no longer the same as the Rus knew a little earlier. In Itil - the capital of Khazaria - great political changes took place, namely the Jewish coup of King Obadiah. A religious reform was carried out, as a result of which the Khazar Jews were familiarized with the Mishnah and the Talmud, that is, the foundations of classical rabbinic Judaism (previously there was some other version of this religion in Khazaria). Obviously, the matter was not limited to religious changes; there were also some political transformations that are unknown to us. We can only say with certainty that after this coup, the politics of Khazaria changed dramatically, and the star of this kaganate flashed brightly and began to slowly fade. The conflict between the Russian Kaganate and Khazaria began, apparently, with the defeat of the latter of the Right Bank Tsimlyansky settlement - a military and trading outpost of the Rus on the Lower Don. This fortress, in terms of the complexity of its layout, the development of the tower system, the construction of gates and other indicators, had no equal in this territory either earlier or later. The population was partly slaughtered, partly taken captive; others - the Bulgarians - went over to the side of the related Khazars.

After this successful raid (the center of the Russian Kaganate was too far from the lower reaches of the Don to provide operational assistance), the Khazars, with the direct help of Byzantium, built the Sarkel fortress against the enemy from the west in 834 - 837 on the left bank of the Don. The growing activity of the Rus on the Black Sea coast created the conditions for the creation in the 30s of the 9th century of the Byzantine-Khazar alliance in the field of defensive policy against the Rus.

The actions of Khazaria and Byzantium against the Rus were not limited to the construction of Sarkel. The Khazar lands between the Volga and Lower Don were full of nomadic tribes who were vassals of Khazaria, and Khazaria spent a lot of effort on keeping these tribes in a subordinate state, that is, in this territory. The strongest, most numerous and active among these tribes were the Hungarians, who roamed the Kuban region. The Emperor of Byzantium, Constantine Porphyrogenitus, showing amazing and non-random awareness of the events (this is proven by the direct participation of Byzantium in the intrigues of Khazaria around the Russian Kaganate), talks about a military agreement between the Khazars and the Hungarians, sealed by the marriage of the Hungarian leader to a “noble Khazar woman” of the Jewish religion. And the Khazar rulers, in alliance with Byzantium, skillfully directed the energy of the Hungarian nomads to the steppes between the Don and Dnieper and the Northern Black Sea region, that is, to the territory subject to the Rus.

At this time, sensing that such contact with the allies-vassals of Khazaria - the tribes of the steppe civilization, brings with it, the Russian Kaganate sends an embassy to Byzantium for help, hoping that the empire, which is constantly pursuing a dual policy, will find it more profitable to help the Rus. It was this embassy, sent around 837, that was received at the court of the German Emperor Louis the Pious in 839. Constantinople really pursued a dual policy, pitting two kaganates against each other. Byzantium helped Khazaria, worried about its possessions in the Black Sea region, but it, of course, was not interested in the Khazars appearing in place of the Saltovites. Therefore, the embassy of the “people grew” was received with honors, despite the obvious futility of the mission.

During the long - three years - embassy of the Rus, the Hungarians, wandering between the Don and the Dnieper, passed through Kyiv. In the “Tale of Bygone Years” they left only a brief memory of themselves: “Idosha Ugri past Kiev now calls Ougorskoe a mountain and came to the Dnieper and became the Vezhas...”. Obviously, the Hungarians did not leave this territory immediately: the “Deeds of the Hungarians” tell in detail, greatly embellishing, about the “exploits” of the Hungarians on the Dnieper. After this, around the 850s, the Hungarians went further in search of their homeland. And if the Slavic lands of the Dnieper region did not suffer much from the uninvited guests, then the core of the Russian Kaganate was devastated. Khazaria did not achieve its main goal for long. First of all, the “Russian” trade route leading from Syria and Transcaucasia along the Seversky Donets ceased to exist, and treasures of oriental coins along the “Rus River” disappeared. It was then that “naidosha Kozare” imposed tribute on the Russian and Slavic lands, re-subordinating those Slavic tribes that were under the influence of the Saltov Rus. This is where the actual history of the Russian Kaganate on the Seversky Donets ends, since it was no longer a Kaganate. Part of the population of the Russian Kaganate left their homeland. First of all, this was done by the clan and entourage of the Kagan - they had no other choice.

It is unclear where the Saltovsk elite went. Traces of it are found in written sources telling about the southern coast of the Baltic Sea. After all, the Saltovsky Rus were active participants in trade along the Volga-Baltic route, the amulets of the Rus were made from pure Baltic amber. In the embassy of the Russian Kaganate to Byzantium in 837 - 839, according to the Vertinsky Annals, there were representatives of the Sveons - residents of the Baltic Pomerania (they are often confused with the Sves - Swedes).

It is possible that the Kyiv princes Oleg the Prophet and Igor belonged to Alanian Rus' in the Baltic. At least, the closest linguistic parallel to the name Oleg is not the “Norman” Helgu, but the Iranian Khaleg. Many Iranian names are also mentioned in the treaties between Rus' and the Greeks during the times of Oleg and Igor.

In addition, in the 10th - early 11th centuries, Kyiv still retained the trade relations inherited from the Russian Kaganate with the southern coast of the Baltic Sea: amber jewelry in Kiev was then made from light Baltic amber, and from the 12th century, dark local varieties began to be used. It is possible that some of the Rus remained in the Dnieper Nadporozhye, where there were Saltov craft settlements before. Their existence there at least until the 10th century is confirmed by archaeologists. In addition, the “Russian” names of the Dnieper rapids from the expert on the history of Eastern Europe Konstantin Bagryanorodny have obvious Ossetian parallels. It is known that these names are not explained either in the Slavic or in the German-Scandinavian languages. For example, Essupi means “don’t sleep,” and in Iranian languages the first vowel is negation.

It is also interesting that Oleg’s first task, according to the “Tale of Bygone Years,” was to “deal with” the Khazars: “Oleg go to the Northerners and impose a light tribute on them and do not let them pay tribute to Kozar, because they are disgusting and you have nothing.” . Was this a memory of 839? But be that as it may, the Khazars’ dominance over the Slavic and other territories did not last long. The strength of the new Khazar leadership was only enough for a brief rapid rise in the political power of Khazaria with the active support of the Byzantine Empire. Then a long period of slow extinction and decay began, which was brought to an end in 965 by the Kiev prince Svyatoslav. The Old Russian state and East Slavic society for a long time retained the connections and traditions left over from the Sarmatian-Alanian Rus. It is fundamentally significant that in Byzantine sources of the 10th century the Rus of Sarmatian roots are identified with Kievan Rus. Informed Byzantines could not simply confuse different tribes all the time. Here we can also recall the mention of the “Korsun country” in Igor’s treaty with the Greeks. Igor is charged with the duty, on the one hand, not to encroach on the Greeks, and on the other, to protect their Crimean settlements from an external threat. This means that the rights of Rus' to the Black Sea territories were recognized by Byzantium, and the rights were old, “ancestral”.

And what about the “signs of the Rurikovichs,” the closest analogies to which archaeologists find when excavating the lands of the Russian Kaganate? This series could be continued - this opens up a whole unexplored layer in the Russian and East Slavic history of politics, pagan religion, and culture.

But something else is more important. Many, many peoples took part in the formation of the Old Russian state. This phenomenon is the rule for the early Middle Ages, and not only. This means that the theory of the division of Eastern Europe into Khazar and Norman spheres of influence collapses upon an objective analysis of archaeological data and written sources. Most likely, the Russian Kaganate on the Seversky Donets left the name “Rus” to the Slavs. But the state itself among the Slavs of the Dnieper region arose under the influence of internal socio-economic and political preconditions. The ruling dynasty already from the middle of the 10th century adopted Slavic names and titles. Already at that time, the opposition of the Rus to the Slavs symbolized not two peoples, but two poles of the social structure of Ancient Rus' - “Earth” and “Power”.

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials from the site http://www.bestreferat.ru were used

Sabit Akhmatnurov.

In the 6th century, the Greek historian Jordan (Gothic by origin) wrote about the “treacherous people of the Rossomons,” who helped the Huns in the 4th century. ready to break. But many modern researchers, pointing to the participation of non-Slavic tribes of the Rossomons and Slavic Antes (Polyans) in the ethnogenesis of the ancient Rus, do not seem to notice the Huns. “...The descendants of the Antes in the 4th century, who won together with the Rossomonians and the Huns, are Goths, by the beginning of the 9th century. have their own “khaganate”, i.e. a sovereign state with a center in Kyiv and a king named Dir" . It turns out that in the defeat of the Goths, and then in the formation of the ancient Russian state, the descendants of the Antes are recognized as the main active forces. Which, to put it mildly, is not entirely true. The fact that the Goths, shortly before the arrival of the Turkic-speaking Huns in Eastern Europe, defeated the Antes, destroying dozens of their leaders, is known to history, but for some reason is overlooked by most researchers. Just as later facts of the participation of the Turks in ancient and medieval history are not welcomed. First of all, this concerns the Polovtsians, that is, the Kipchaks, almost all Rurikovichs had a close relationship with whose leaders.

Although, there is also an opposite point of view, according to which it is declared that the Turks are the founders of Kievan Rus. And Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaisky (1832 - 1920) completely classified the Huns and Rus as Slavic tribes. Evgraf Savelyev, who did a lot to study the history of the Cossacks, also called the Huns Slavs.

This discrepancy probably occurs due to the fact that the history of the 7th - 9th centuries. poorly illuminated not only in Byzantine historiography, but also in other sources about the South Russian steppes of that time, where its peoples were again, as in ancient times, called Scythians or Sarmatians. Only in the 9th century did “Rus” appear, loudly declaring itself with an attack on Constantinople. Official Russian history begins in the second half of the 9th century. Dmitry Ivanovich Ilovaisky (1832 – 1920) wrote about this at the end of the 19th century, complaining about the persistence of the “Varangian” legend about the origin of Rus', gleaned from the initial chronicle of 862.

“...A whole series of respectable workers of science spent a lot of learning and talent to explain, frame this legend and establish it on historical grounds; Let us recall the respected names of Bayer, Strube, Miller, Thunman, Stritter, Schlozer, Lerberg, Krug, Frehn, Butkov, Pogodin, Kunik. In vain some opponents appeared to them and objected to their positions with more or less wit; which are: Lomonosov, Tatishchev, Evers, Neumann, Venelin, Kechenovsky, Moroshkin, Savelyev, Nadezhdin, Maksimovich, etc. In the field of Russian historiography, the field has hitherto remained with the Scandinavian system; Let’s name the works of Karamzin, Polevoy, Ustryalov, German, Solovyov...”

But refusing the Norman hypothesis of the origin of Rus', D.I. Ilovaisky goes to the other extreme, placing the Proto-Turks (Huns) and Rossomons in the Slavic ethnic group. This point of view is no less doubtful. It seems more correct to consider the Kyiv or Russian Kaganate (the term “Kievan Rus” is artificial, introduced by historians many centuries after the decline of Kyiv) as one of the many fragments of the Turkic Khaganate that finally collapsed by the middle of the 8th century. Here the Russians become the dominant ethnic group! The situation with their origin is more complicated. It is only known that they were not Slavs.

It turns out that Russia was fenced off from hundreds and thousands of years of history of the peoples who lived on earth from the Black Sea to the Pacific Ocean, starting from the Middle Ages - from the 9th century. But those who today are called the Russian people could not fall from heaven or emerge from swamps and forests only in the ninth century of the new era! And not only the Slavs took part in the ethnogenesis of the people, whose origin still remains a task with many unknowns for scientists. Including, determining the time of their settlement in Europe and the geography of the places they occupied in the first centuries of the Christian chronology. In Europe, numerous Slavs “emerge” somehow immediately and suddenly after the collapse of the European Hunnic Empire.

But we know that the Turks buried themselves this way.

The Russes shaved their heads, leaving a tuft of hair on the crown of the head; the Slavs cut their hair in a circle. The Rus lived in military settlements and “fed” on military booty, part of which they sold to the Khazar Jews, and the Slavs were engaged in agriculture and cattle breeding.

Arab authors of the late 8th - early 9th centuries also point to hostile relations between the Rus and Slavs. The Rus were excellent sailors. But since the Arabs themselves never climbed along the Volga-Baltic route above Volga Bulgaria, some researchers conclude that the Rus they describe could not be Varangians and live in the north-west of Eastern Europe. E.S. Galkina believes that the Russians, Alans, Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians took part in the formation of the Russian Kaganate. Moreover, the Russians constituted the social elite of the state. And after the blow of the Magyar-Onogur-Khazar alliance, the Russian Kaganate broke up into separate tribes, some of which migrated, others remained in place, but submitted to the Khazars.

The most likely ancestors of the ancient Rus, to a greater extent than the Slavs, can be called the Rossomons, about whom Jordan wrote. But the question arises again: who are the Rossomons? Where did they come from in the 4th century in the Don and Dnieper regions?

As one of the possible answers, I would like to cite an excerpt from the poem “Rossomons and Dinlins” by the modern Kyrgyz poet Choro Tukembaev:

“...As a first priority, Asgard1 was erected at the navel of the Earth

To trade valuable goods,

So that ships can sail from China along the Ob

Through the Arctic to the British.

There they were called Vikings

or European Normans,

And in Eurasia - dinlins,

that is, the Yenisei Kyrgyz.

Those blue-eyed dinlins -

Powerful tall blondes

Among Asians the article stood out

And an army of eighty thousand!

And the militia is the same in number

Defended their possessions from enemies.

When the holy army galloped across the steppe

On white, black horses,

All Asia shook and trembled

From the noise in their houses

And meekly watched

Troops under the blue and red flag.

Their song is in an unknown language,

Flying over the steppe in orderly rows,

It was ringing deafeningly in my head

In your non-Asian ways.

So from Asia to the west, 2 rushing,

Blue and red banners were flying...

…………………………………………..

...First he conquered England with the sword,

Her name was then Gardarika,

That's why the Viking became the ruler

And he destroyed the Saxon Country in the south, 3

And squeezed Europe in the palm of his hand

From the Arctic to Boulogne!

So says “The Saga of the Inglins”

About the defeat of the Carolingians.

This is how the genes were given to Kuzka’s mother

They invested in the beginning, even under lock and key!

That's how their genes turned white!

What is reflected in the flesh, in the body.

That's why they are born

Fashion models among the clumsy and bad ones...”

Choro Tukembaev, http://www.stihi.ru/2014/11/29/7728

___________

Asgard - Minusinsk, not far from which in the south Kashgar is the Country of the Turks: exactly like the “Saga of the Inglins”. On the entire planet there is only one mountain range, which is oriented from northeast to southwest, these are the Sayans, Altai and Tien Shan. Therefore, it is this ridge that is mentioned in the Inglin Saga.

2 Due to climate warming in the 9th century, Odin was forced to take the people from Asgard - Great Sweden to the west to Cold Sweden (see "The Saga of the Inglins"), where the descendants - the current Swedes and Norwegians, having lost their orientation, forgot where the land of their ancestors was. The Swedish flag is blue, the Norwegian flag is red.

3 This is what it says in the Inglin Saga. But before that, from China to England by boat along the Ob and Arctic.

This is how, according to the poet, tall blue-eyed blonds came from the center of Asia to Europe! Behind the romantic lines of the poem, you can see what today is manifested not only in legends, but in historical science, supported by the discoveries of geneticists.

Haplogroup R1a1, as a result of mutations in humanity, first appeared in Central Asia and was spread by descendants around the world - to the South to India and Persia (or rather to where these states later arose), to the West, to the North, including Scandinavia. It is there that R1a1 representatives live today, representing in varying percentages a significant part of the population of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Scotland, Scandinavian countries, northern India, Iran and Pakistan. But most of all this haplogroup is represented among the Altaians, Kyrgyz, Shors and Tajiks.

Based on the study of the DNA of the remains of ancient people from archaeological finds and the gene pool of the modern population, an undoubted genetic connection is revealed between the population of the eastern area of the Andronovo culture (Sayano-Altai, Semirechye) with the territory of Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and India. In ancient Chinese sources, the inhabitants of Sayan-Altai were described as tall blonds. And in some sources, the Chinese even now call the direct ancestors of the Russian Central Asian Wusuns. That is why it seems that Choro Tukembaev’s romantic poem reflects the ancient history of the great people closer to the truth, in comparison with the one that official historical science in Russia has adhered to since the time of Tsar Peter I.

Only fragmentary information about the Slavs has been preserved in ancient literature. From which we can conclude that they did not participate in significant historical events at the beginning of the millennium. But the Turks, after the collapse of whose state the Kiev Kaganate was formed, are not being spoiled by modern researchers. Therefore, let’s try to understand their participation in the life and formation of the Kyiv Kaganate.

There is no need to repeat that “Kievan Rus,” like Khazaria, in almost all ancient sources was called a state led by a kagan. And in order not to confuse Kievan Rus with Muscovite Rus, which is so disliked in modern Ukraine, it is proposed to call it “Kievan Kaganate,” which is also true from a historical point of view.

The ethnogenesis of any people is a complex process in which different tribes invariably participate, including hostile and allied ones. Conqueror warriors may leave or die in subsequent battles, leaving children born to the women of the conquered peoples. This is also how the R1a1 genotype spread across the planet. After all, this trait is transmitted through the male Y chromosome, which women do not have. Children are more often raised by their mothers. They teach them to speak, instill knowledge and culture. This is how a people arises, whose maternal ancestors in the past were unable to resist the conquerors, but the blood of those same conquerors already flows within them. In Eurasia, this process occurred with a certain frequency more than once or twice...

Of course, it also happened differently:

“...Suppose the king had children

From a Turkish, Mongolian and Jewish woman.

These mothers will teach their children, even in the womb,

Hate each other, quarrel and live in anger,

And they will tear the state apart

Using intrigue and deceit..."

Choro Tukembaev, http://www.stihi.ru/2014/11/29/7728

Only if many “mothers” of one defeated people give birth to strong children from conquering warriors, will they be raised in maternal culture. Perhaps this is why the nomads from the east invariably disappeared into the peoples they conquered in the west.

Someday, scientists will explain the reasons for the desire of the inhabitants of the center of Asia to develop new lands, breaking away from the way of life of their distant ancestors, who remained in their homeland not only as an escape from cold weather, drought or stronger rivals. After all, there always remained people who were less passionate according to L.N. Gumilyov, who preferred a calm, measured life to the unknowns of fate far from their homeland. And it is not surprising that the anthropological features of the majority of modern inhabitants of Sayan-Altai and the lands adjacent to China and Mongolia today have distinct Mongoloid characteristics. They are dominant and intensified with each generation among the same Central Asian Turks, whose ancestors a thousand years ago were depicted by Chinese historiographers as tall, fair-haired.

In the XI – XII centuries. Mongol-speaking tribes displaced or subjugated the few remaining Turks of Ordos and the Baikal region. The anthropological and racial characteristics of the indigenous inhabitants of the Sayan-Altai and Kazakh steppes gradually changed.

But in the era of the Turkic Khaganate, an ancient genetic drift was still going on from the banks of the Orkhon, spreading the trait to the outskirts of the population area. And steppe heroes on campaigns to the west “rewarded local beauties with their favor”(L.N. Gumilyov), and the emerging descendants inherited the passionarity of their fathers. Therefore, the attempts of modern historians and archaeologists to find Mongoloid characteristics, for example, among the Khazars, are untenable only on the basis that one of the ancient chronicles describes an episode when in 627 the Turks and Khazars, together with the Byzantines, besieged Tbilisi, the Georgians brought a pumpkin to the wall of the city, drawing on it the face of a Turkic kagan. This can hardly be called a scientific approach. Today, researchers do not have reliable facts indicating Mongoloid characteristics among nomads in Eastern Europe from the 6th to 9th centuries, not to mention earlier newcomers from the east!

At the end of the 9th century, the political situation changed in the Northern Black Sea region and the Caspian steppes. The Pechenegs and Oguzes invade the Khazars' possessions and move further to the west. For the war with them and the Arabs, the Khazar king invited the Scandinavian Varangians, in particular the squad of Helga (Oleg), promising the division of Eastern Europe and support for the destruction of the Kyiv Kaganate. And in 882, King Oleg already captured Smolensk and Kiev. In 885 he subjugated the former tributaries of Khazaria, the northerners and Rodimichs. From the same time, the Kyiv Varangians sent the Khazar king “tribute in blood” and sent the Slavic-Russians subordinate to them to die for the trade routes of the Rakhdonites.

In the middle of the 10th century, Princess Olga (reigned from 945 to 962) took power in Kyiv and immediately concluded an agreement with Byzantium, breaking off relations with the Khazar Khaganate, to which Kyiv was paying tribute at that time. In 957 she was baptized and, having received support in Constantinople, began a war against Khazaria. Already in 965, her son, the young prince Svyatoslav (945 - 972), with the Turks, namely the Pechenegs and Oguzes (Torks), captured the Khazar cities of Itil, Semender and Sarkel on the Don. True M.I. Artamonov believed that it was the Oguzes who, in 965, in alliance with the Kyiv prince Svyatoslav Igorevich, defeated Khazaria. The Russes left after the victory, the Oguzes remained on her land.

Subsequently, relations between the Oguzes and the Russian princes developed differently, from joint campaigns against common enemies to mutual hostility and mutual raids. However, most of them, together with the Pechenegs, later went into the service of the Russian princes.

The Scandinavian Varangians, at one time invited by the Khazar king, actually usurped power in the Russian principalities. But during the regency rule of Kiev by Princess Olga, the ethnicity of the ruling elite there changed. This is evidenced by the names of the members of its government. If the older generation still has Scandinavian names, then the younger generation has Slavic ones. Thus, power is concentrated in the hands of either the Slavs or the glorified Rus. The Slavic element triumphed over the Norman and the Rossomon, retaining from the latter only the name itself: “the glades, which are now called Rus'.”

With the adoption of Christianity as the state religion by the Kyiv Khaganate in 988, the situation changed even more. The Church becomes a great unifying force, which later became even higher than the princely power. The same nomads, accepting the Orthodox faith, became citizens of Russian principalities. A striking example of this is the relationship with the new wave of nomads - the Cumans, who by the beginning of the 11th century occupied a dominant position in the steppes of Eastern Europe.

Despite the colorful pictures of antagonistic relations between Rus' and nomads accepted in Russian literature, by the 12th century the Polovtsians and Russians already formed a single ethno-social system. At the same time, the number of Russians reached 5.5 million, and the Polovtsians - several hundred thousand. The Russian princes knew how to negotiate with the Polovtsians even better than among themselves, and the people, like the princely offspring, took great pleasure in marrying the “red Polovtsian girls.” Their descendants became Zaporozhye and Sloboda Cossacks.

According to Alexander Ludov, the Cossacks existed in the Northern Black Sea region in all historical periods, including the Kai-saki, that is, the royal Scythians in the description of Herodotus. Although the author derives the ethnonym “Polovtsy” from their habitat - in the field, and not from the sexual color of their hair, he calls them direct descendants of the ancient Sakas and Saka-Masagets. In his opinion, the Greek Kasaks, the Kivchaks of the Georgian chronicles, the Arab Kasaks and the Kipchaks of the Persian authors are none other than the Cossacks, known in Rus' under the nickname Polovtsy and Kasogs.

Including the baptized descendants of the Turko-Khazars in the 11th century. abandoned their ethnonym and began to call themselves, first in Slavic, Brodniks, and then in Turkic, Cossacks. Then the ethnonym “Khazar” was retained by the descendants of the Jews, but only until the end of the 11th century, when the ethnic group disappeared from the historical arena.”

To better understand why L.N. Tolstoy argued that Russia was created by the Cossacks, it is worth turning to the family relationships of the Polovtsians and Rurikovichs. It turns out that almost all the princely families of the Kyiv Kaganate, and especially the Rurikovichs, were related to the Polovtsian princes.

After the death of Grand Duke Yaroslav Mudrgo in 1054, the usual civil strife began, associated with the death of a strong ruler with the involvement of the Polovtsian cavalry. The son of Yaroslav the Wise marries Anna Polovetskaya. She bore him Rostislav and three daughters: Yanka, Irina and Eupraxia - the future Empress of the Holy Roman Empire.

In 1078, the grandson of Yaroslav the Wise, the legendary prince of Tmutarakan and Chernigov Oleg Svyatoslavovich, cousin of Vladimir Monomakh, married the daughter of the Polovtsian khan Osoluk. From her he had four sons: Gleb, Svyatoslav, Vsevolod and Igor. In 1094, another grandson of Yaroslav the Wise, the Kiev prince Svyatopolk Izyaslavovich, another cousin of Vladimir Monomakh and Oleg Svyatoslavovich, sealed a peace treaty with Tugor Khan by marrying his daughter Elena, who gave birth to four sons from him: Mstislav, Izyaslav, Yaroslav, Bryachislav and two daughters: Predslava (future Queen of Hungary) and Sbyslava (future Queen of Poland).
Vladimir Monomakh married his son Yuri (Dolgoruky) to the daughter of the Polovtsian khan Aepa Osenevich. From her, Yuri had 11 sons: Rostislav, Andrei Bogolyubsky (whose second wife was a Polovtsian), Svyatoslav, Ivan, Boris, Gleb, Mstislav, Vasilko, Yaroslav, Mikhalko, Vsevolod (matchmaker of Khan Yuri Konchakovich) and two daughters: Elena, Oleg’s wife Svyatoslavovich, the mother of Prince Svyatoslav (three-quarters Polovtsy), and Olga, the wife of Yaroslav of Galitsky, from whom she had a son, Vladimir, and a daughter, Euphrosyne Yaroslavna, the wife of Prince Igor Svyatoslavovich of Novgorod Seversky. And so on. Already in 1223 Mstislav Mstislavovich Udaloy married on the daughter of the famous Polovtsian Khan Kotyan. Their daughter was married to Daniil Galitsky, who in turn married one of his sons to the daughter of the Polovtsian khan.

Thus, by the time of the formation of the Golden Horde in the Northern Black Sea region, it was not easy to say: who are the Russians and who are the Cumans? There is also no reason to call the scattered fragments of the Kievan Kaganate, which had finally disintegrated by that time, the term “Kievan Rus”. Why is it not worth inventing the reasons for the alliance of the Russian and Polovtsian princes, who acted together against the Mongol expeditionary force on the Kalka River in 1223. In essence, it was already a single ethnic group with only differences in lifestyle.

It is appropriate to note that the internecine wars of nomads since the collapse of the Great Turkic Khaganate were no less bloody than those between Russian princes. And when a force appeared that could unite everyone, there were its supporters and opponents. The Cossack wanderers then took the side of the nomads from the east, who decided to once again unite the Great Steppe. The Polovtsians became one of those who did not want to recognize the khans of the Genghis Khan empire as the “elder brother”.

When did the Russian Kaganate exist?

Who is the Kagan?

And we have no reason to think that the Kagan of the Rus was called that way inappropriately (neither the Frankish king nor the Byzantine emperor had any special love for the Kagan of the Rus).

Why were white stone fortresses built?

Therefore, the commonality of cultural artifacts can speak of a similar way of life, but in no way about the political borders and wars of the people who inhabited this culture among themselves.

Multi-ethnic kaganate

Slavic neighbors

Perhaps it was the Alans who were the dominant layer of the Russian Kaganate and it was them who the Arab geographers called the Rus.

However, the last statement is controversial and is unlikely to be proven. After all, debates about the ethnic origin of the Rus have been going on for centuries.

Russian Kaganate

Who is Kagan

And we have no reason to think that the Kagan of the Rus was called that way inappropriately (neither the Frankish king nor the Byzantine emperor had any special love for the Kagan of the Rus).

White stone fortresses

Therefore, the commonality of cultural artifacts can speak of a similar way of life, but in no way about the political borders and wars of the people who inhabited this culture among themselves.

Multi-ethnic kaganate

These markers allow us to conclude that in a relatively short period of time (30–40 years), different ethnic groups lived on the territory of the Russian Kaganate, interacting and generally coexisting peacefully with each other.

Slavic neighbors

Some scientists include the Alans, an Iranian tribe known in the Kuban and the east of the Northern Black Sea region since the beginning of our era. Perhaps it was the Alans who were the dominant layer of the Russian Kaganate and it was them who the Arab geographers called the Rus.

However, the last statement is controversial and is unlikely to be proven. After all, debates about the ethnic origin of the Rus have been going on for centuries.

Nomadic crafts

The Russians themselves, according to the testimony of the Arabs, made excellent swords and sabers, forged using complex technologies. Iron was actively mined from bog ore, and pottery production was developed.

Coins of the Khaganate

The Russian Kaganate still remains a mystery to historians, but perhaps some of them will be solved in the future. It would be very interesting.