DECLINE
1
"IT was", wrote D. Sinor,1 "in the
second half of the eighth century that the Khazar empire
reached the acme of its glory" that is, between the conversion
of Bulan and the religious reform under Obadiah. This is not
meant to imply that the Khazars owed their good fortune to
their Jewish religion. It is rather the other way round: they
could afford to be Jews because they were economically and
militarily strong. .A
living symbol of their power was the Emperor Leo the Khazar,
who ruled Byzantium in 775-80 - so named after his mother, the
Khazar Princess "Flower" - the one who created a new fashion at
the court. We remember that her marriage took place shortly
after the great Khazar victory over the Muslims in the battle
of Ardabil, which is mentioned in the letter of Joseph and
other sources. The two events, Dunlop remarks, "are hardly
unrelated".2.However,
amidst the cloak-and-dagger intrigues of the period, dynastic
marriages and betrothals could be dangerous. They repeatedly
gave cause - or at least provided a pretext - for starting a
war. The pattern was apparently set by Attila, the erstwhile
overlord of the Khazars. In 450 Attila is said to have received
a message, accompanied by an engagement ring, from Honoria,
sister to the West Roman Emperor Valentinian III. This romantic
and ambitious lady begged the Hun chieftain to rescue her from
a fate worse than death - a forced marriage to an old Senator -
and sent him her ring. Attila promptly claimed her as his
bride, together with half the Empire as her dowry; and when
Valentinian refused, Attila invaded Gaul..Several
variations on this quasi-archetypal theme crop up throughout
Khazar history. We remember the fury of the Bulgar King about
the abduction of his daughter, and how he gave this incident as
the main reason for his demand that the Caliph should build him
a fortress against the Khazars. If we are to believe the Arab
sources, similar incidents (though with a different twist) led
to the last flare-up of the Khazar-Muslim wars at the end of
the eighth century, after a protracted period of peace.
.According
to al-Tabari, in AD 798,*[The date, however, is
uncertain.] the Caliph ordered the Governor of Armenia to
make the Khazar frontier even more secure by marrying a
daughter of the Kagan. This governor was a member of the
powerful family of the Barmecides (which, incidentally, reminds
one of the prince of that eponymous family in the Arabian
Nights who invited the beggar to a feast consisting of rich
dish-covers with nothing beneath). The Barmecide agreed, and
the Khazar Princess with her suite and dowry was duly
dispatched to him in a luxurious cavalcade (see I, 10). But she
died in childbed; the newborn died too; and her courtiers, on
their return to Khazaria, insinuated to the Kagan that she had
been poisoned. The Kagan promptly invaded Armenia and took
(according to two Arab sources)3 50000 prisoners. The Caliph
was forced to release thousands of criminals from his gaols and
arm them to stem the Khazar advance. .The
Arab sources relate at least one more eighth-century incident
of a misfired dynastic marriage followed by a Khazar invasion;
and for good measure the Georgian Chronicle has a particularly
gruesome one to add to the list (in which the royal Princess,
instead of being poisoned, kills herself to escape the Kagan's
bed). The details and exact dates are, as usual, doubtful,4 and
so is the real motivation behind these campaigns. But the
recurrent mention in the chronicles of bartered brides and
poisoned queens leaves little doubt that this theme had a
powerful impact on people's imagination, and possibly also on
political events.
2
No more is heard about Khazar-Arab
fighting after the end of the eighth century. As we enter the
ninth, the Khazars seemed to enjoy several decades of peace at
least, there is little mention of them in the chronicles, and
no news is good news in history. The southern frontiers of
their country had been pacified; relations with the Caliphate
had settled down to a tacit non-aggression pact; relations with
Byzantium continued to be definitely friendly.
.Yet
in the middle of this comparatively idyllic period there is an
ominous episode which foreshadowed new dangers. In 833, or
thereabouts, the Khazar Kagan and Bek sent an embassy to the
East Roman Emperor Theophilus, asking for skilled architects
and craftsmen to build them a fortress on the lower reaches of
the Don. The Emperor responded with alacrity. He sent a fleet
across the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov up the mouth of the
Don to the strategic spot where the fortress was to be built.
Thus came Sarkel into being, the famous fortress and priceless
archaeological site, virtually the only one that yielded clues
to Khazar history - until it was submerged in the Tsimlyansk
reservoir, adjoining the Volga-Don canal. Constantine
Porphyrogenitus, who related the episode in some detail, says
that since no stones were available in the region, Sarkel was
built of bricks, burnt in specially constructed kilns. He does
not mention the curious fact (discovered by Soviet
archaeologists while the site was still accessible) that the
builders also used marble columns of Byzantine origin, dating
from the sixth century, and probably salvaged from some
Byzantine ruin; a nice example of Imperial
thrift.5
.The potential enemy against whom
this impressive fortress was built by joint Roman-Khazar
effort, were those formidable and menacing newcomers on the
world scene, whom the West called Vikings or Norsemen, and the
East called Rhous or Rhos or Rus. .Two
centuries earlier, the conquering Arabs had advanced on the
civilized world in a gigantic pincer movement, its left prong
reaching across the Pyrenees, its right prong across the
Caucasus. Now, during the Viking Age, history seemed to create
a kind of mirror image of that earlier phase. The initial
explosion which had triggered off the Muslim wars of conquest
took place in the southernmost region of the known world, the
Arabian desert. The Viking raids and conquests originated in
its northernmost region, Scandinavia. The Arabs advanced
northward by land, the Norsemen southward by sea and waterways.
The Arabs were, at least in theory, conducting a Holy War, the
Vikings waged unholy wars of piracy and plunder; but the
results, as far as the victims were concerned, were much the
same. In neither case have historians been able to provide
convincing explanations of the economical, ecological or
ideological reasons which transformed these apparently
quiescent regions of Arabia and Scandinavia quasi overnight
into volcanoes of exuberant vitality and reckless enterprise.
Both eruptions spent their force within a couple of centuries
but left a permanent mark on the world. Both evolved in this
time-span from savagery and destructiveness to splendid
cultural achievement..About
the time when Sarkel was built by joint Byzantine-Khazar
efforts in anticipation of attack by the eastern Vikings, their
western branch had already penetrated all the major waterways
of Europe and conquered half of Ireland. Within the next few
decades they colonized Iceland, conquered Normandy, repeatedly
sacked Paris, raided Germany, the Rhne delta, the gulf of
Genoa, circumnavigated the Iberian peninsula and attacked
Constantinople through the Mediterranean and the Dardanelles -
simultaneously with a Rus attack down the Dnieper and across
the Black Sea. As Toynbee wrote:6 "In the ninth century, which
was the century in which the Rhos impinged on the Khazars and
on the East Romans, the Scandinavians were raiding and
conquering and colonizing in an immense arc that eventually
extended south-westward ... to North America and southeastward
to ... the Caspian Sea.".No
wonder that a special prayer was inserted in the litanies of
the West: A furore Normannorum libera nos Domine. No wonder
that Constantinople needed its Khazar allies as a protective
shield against the carved dragons on the bows of the Viking
ships, as it had needed them a couple of centuries earlier
against the green banners of the Prophet. And, as on that
earlier occasion, the Khazars were again to bear the brunt of
the attack, and eventually to see their capital laid in ruins.
.Not
only Byzantium had reason to be grateful to the Khazars for
blocking the advance of the Viking fleets down the great
waterways from the north. We have now gained a better
understanding of the cryptic passage in Joseph's letter to
Hasdai, written a century later: "With the help of the Almighty
I guard the mouth of the river and do not permit the Rus who
come in their ships to invade the land of the Arabs.... I fight
heavy wars [with the Rus]."
3
The particular brand of Vikings which
the Byzantines called "Rhos" were called "Varangians" by the
Arab chroniclers. The most probable derivation of "Rhos",
according to Toynbee, is "from the Swedish word 'rodher',
meaning rowers".7 As for "Varangian", it was used by the Arabs
and also in the Russian Primary Chronicle to designate Norsemen
or Scandinavians; the Baltic was actually called by them "the
Varangian Sea".8 Although this branch of Vikings originated
from eastern Sweden, as distinct from the Norwegians and Danes
who raided Western Europe, their advance followed the same
pattern. It was seasonal; it was based on strategically placed
islands which served as strongholds, armouries and supply bases
for attacks on the mainland; and its nature evolved, where
conditions were favourable, from predatory raids and forced
commerce to more or less permanent settlements and ultimately,
amalgamation with the conquered native populations. Thus the
Viking penetration of Ireland started with the seizure of the
island of Rechru (Lambay) in Dublin Bay; England was invaded
from the isle of Thanet; penetration of the Continent started
with the conquest of the islands of Walcheren (off Holland) and
Noirmoutier (in the estuary of the Loire)..At
the eastern extreme of Europe the Northmen were following the
same blueprint for conquest. After crossing the Baltic and the
Gulf of Finland they sailed up the river Volkhov into Lake
Ilmen (south of Leningrad), where they found a convenient
island - the Holmgard of the Icelandic Sagas. On this they
built a settlement which eventually grew into the city of
Novgorod.*[Not to be confused with Nizhny Novgorod (now
re-named Gorky).] From here they forayed on southward on
the great waterways: on the Volga into the Caspian, and on the
Dnieper into the Black Sea. .The
former route led through the countries of the militant Bulgars
and Khazars; the latter across the territories of various
Slavonic tribes who inhabited the north-western outskirts of
the Khazar Empire and paid tribute to the Kagan: the Polyane in
the region of Kiev; the Viatichi, south of Moscow; the
Radimishchy east of the Dnieper; the Severyane on the river
Derna, etc.*[Constantine Porphyrogenitus and the Russian
Chronicle are in fair agreement concering the names and
locations of these tribes and their subjection to the
Khazars.] These Slavs seemed to have developed advanced
methods of agriculture, and were apparently of a more timid
disposition than their "Turkish" neighbours on the Volga, for,
as Bury put it, they became the "natural prey" of the
Scandinavian raiders. These eventually came to prefer the
Dnieper, in spite of its dangerous cataracts, to the Volga and
the Don. It was the Dnieper which became the "Great Waterway" -
the "Austrvegr" of the Nordic Sagas - from the Baltic to the
Black Sea, and thus to Constantinople. They even gave
Scandinavian names to the seven major cataracts, duplicating
their Slavonic names; Constantine conscientiously enumerates
both versions (e.g., Baru-fors in Norse, Volnyi in Slavonic,
for "the billowy waterfall")..These
Varangian-Rus seem to have been a unique blend unique even
among their brother Vikings - combining the traits of pirates,
robbers and meretricious merchants, who traded on their own
terms, imposed by sword and battle-axe. They bartered furs,
swords and amber in exchange for gold, but their principal
merchandise were slaves. A contemporary Arab chronicler
wrote:
- In this island [Novgorod]
there are men to the number of 100000, and these men
constantly go out to raid the Slavs in boats, and they seize
the Slavs and take them prisoner and they go to the Khazars
and Bulgars and sell them there. [We remember the slave
market in Itil, mentioned by Masudi]. They have no
cultivated lands, nor seed, and [live by] plunder
from the Slavs. When a child is born to them, they place a
drawn sword in front of him and his father says: "I have
neither gold nor silver, nor wealth which I can bequeath to
thee, this is thine inheritance, with it secure prosperity
for thyself."9
A modern historian, McEvedy, has
summed it up nicely:
- Viking-Varangian activity, ranging
from Iceland to the borders of Turkestan, from
Constantinople to the Arctic circle, was of incredible
vitality and daring, and it is sad that so much effort was
wasted in plundering. The Northern heroes did not deign to
trade until they failed to vanquish; they preferred
bloodstained, glorious gold to a steady mercantile
profit.10
Thus the Rus convoys sailing southward
in the summer season were at the same time both commercial
fleets and military armadas; the two roles went together, and
with each fleet it was impossible to foretell at what moment
the merchants would turn into warriors. The size of these
fleets was formidable. Masudi speaks of a Rus force entering
the Caspian from the Volga (in 912-13) as comprising "about 500
ships, each manned by 100 persons". Of these 50000 men, he
says, 35000 were killed in battle.*[See below, Chapter IV,
1.] Masudi may have been exaggerating, but apparently not
much. Even at an early stage of their exploits (circa
860) the Rus crossed the Black Sea and laid siege on
Constantinople with a fleet variously estimated as numbering
between 200 and 230 ships. .In
view of the unpredictability and proverbial treacherousness of
these formidable invaders, the Byzantines and Khazars had to
"play it by ear" as the saying goes. For a century and a half
after the fortress of Sarkel was built, trade agreements and
the exchange of embassies with the Rus alternated with savage
wars. Only slowly and gradually did the Northmen change their
character by building permanent settlements, becoming
Slavonized by intermingling with their subjects and vassals,
and finally, adopting the faith of the Byzantine Church. By
that time, the closing years of the tenth century, the "Rus"
had become transformed into "Russians". The early Rus princes
and nobles still bore Scandinavian names which had been
Slavonized: Rurik from Hrˆekr, Oleg from Helgi, Igor from
Ingvar, Olga from Helga, and so on. The commercial treaty which
Prince Igor-Ingvar concluded with the Byzantines in 945
contains a list of his companions, only three of which have
Slavonic names among fifty Scandinavian names.11 But the son of
Ingvar and Helga assumed the Slavonic name Svyatoslav, and from
there onward the process of assimilation got into its stride,
the Varangians gradually lost their identity as a separate
people, and the Norse tradition faded out of Russian history.
.It
is difficult to form a mental picture of these bizarre people
whose savagery sticks out even in that savage age. The
chronicles are biased, written by members of nations who had
suffered from the northern invaders; their own side of the
story remains untold, for the rise of Scandinavian literature
came long after the Age of the Vikings, when their exploits had
blossomed into legend. Even so, early Norse literature seems to
confirm their unbridled lust for battle, and the peculiar kind
of frenzy which seized them on these occasions; they even had a
special word for it: berserksgangr - the berserk way.
.The
Arab chroniclers were so baffled by them that they contradict
not only each other, but also themselves, across a distance of
a few lines. Our old friend Ibn Fadlan is utterly disgusted by
the filthy and obscene habits of the Rus whom he met at the
Volga in the land of the Bulgars. The following passage on the
Rus occurs just before his account of the Khazars, quoted
earlier on:
- They are the filthiest creatures
of the Lord. In the morning a servant girl brings a basin
full of water to the master of the household; he rinses his
face and hair in it, spits and blows his nose into the
basin, which the girl then hands on to the next person, who
does likewise, until all who are in the house have used that
basin to blow their noses, spit and wash their face and hair
in it.12
In contrast to this, Ibn Rusta writes
about the same time: "They are cleanly in regard to their
clothing" - and leaves it at that.13.Again,
Ibn Fadlan is indignant about the Rus copulating and defecating
in public, including their King, whereas Ibn Rusta and Gardezi
know nothing of such revolting habits. But their own accounts
are equally dubious and inconsistent. Thus Ibn Rusta: "They
honour their guests and are kind to strangers who seek shelter
with them, and everyone who is in misfortune among them.14 They
do not allow anyone among them to tyrannize them, and whoever
among them does wrong or is oppressive, they find out such a
one and expel him from among them.".But
a few paragraphs further down he paints a quite different
picture - or rather vignette, of conditions in Rus
society:
- Not one of them goes to satisfy a
natural need alone, but he is accompanied by three of his
companions who guard him between them, and each one of them
has his sword because of the lack of security and treachery
among them, for if a man has even a little wealth, his own
brother and his friend who is with him covet it and seek to
kill and despoil him.15
Regarding their martial virtues,
however, the sources are Unanimous:
- These people are vigorous and
courageous and when they descend on open ground, none can
escape from them without being destroyed and their women
taken possession of, and themselves taken into
slavery.16
4
Such were the prospects which now
faced the Khazars..Sarkel
was built just in time; it enabled them to control the
movements of the Rus flotillas along the lower reaches of the
Don and the Don-Volga portage (the "Khazarian Way"). By and
large it seems that during the first century of their presence
on the scene*[Very roughly, 830 1.-930.] the plundering
raids of the Rus were mainly directed against Byzantium (where,
obviously, richer plunder was to be had), whereas their
relations with the Khazars were essentially on a trading basis,
though not without friction and intermittent clashes. At any
rate, the Khazars were able to control the Rus trade routes and
to levy their 10 per cent tax on all cargoes passing through
their country to Byzantium and to the Muslim lands.
.They
also exerted some cultural influence on the Northmen, who, for
all their violent ways, had a naive willingness to learn from
the people with whom they came into contact. The extent of this
influence is indicated by the adoption of the title "Kagan" by
the early Rus rulers of Novgorod. This is confirmed by both
Byzantine and Arab sources; for instance, Ibn Rusta, after
describing the island on which Novgorod was built, states "They
have a king who is called Kagan Rus." Moreover, Ibn Fadlan
reports that the Kagan Rus has a general who leads the army and
represents him to the people. Zeki Validi has pointed out that
such delegation of the army command was unknown among the
Germanic people of the North, where the king must be the
foremost warrior; Validi concludes that the Rus obviously
imitated the Khazar system of twin rule. This is not unlikely
in view of the fact that the Khazars were the most prosperous
and culturally advanced people with whom the Rus in the early
stages of their conquests made territorial contact. And that
contact must have been fairly intense, since there was a colony
of Rus merchants in Itil - and also a community of Khazar Jews
in Kiev. .It
is sad to report in this context that more than a thousand
years after the events under discussion, the Soviet regime has
done its best to expunge the memory of the Khazars' historic
role and cultural achievements. On January 12, 1952, The
Times carried the following news item:
EARLY RUSSIAN
CULTURE
BELITTLED
SOVIET HISTORIAN REBUKED
Another Soviet historian has been
criticized by Pravda for belittling the early culture
and development of the Russian people. He is Professor
Artamonov, who, at a recent session of the Department of
History and Philosophy at the USSR Academy of Sciences,
repeated a theory which he had put forward in a book in 1937
that the ancient city of Kiev owed a great deal to the Khazar
peoples. He pictures them in the role of an advanced people who
fell victim to the aggressive aspirations of the Russians.
."All
these things," says Pravda, "have nothing in common
with historical facts. The Khazar kingdom which represented the
primitive amalgamation of different tribes, played no positive
role whatever in creating the statehood of the eastern Slavs.
Ancient sources testify that state formations arose among the
eastern Slavs long before any record of the Khazars. The Khazar
kingdom, far from promoting the development of the ancient
Russian State, retarded the progress of the eastern Slav
tribes. The materials obtained by our archaeologists indicate
the high level of culture in ancient Russia. Only by flouting
the historical truth and neglecting the facts can one speak of
the superiority of the Khazar culture. The idealization of the
Khazar kingdom reflects a manifest survival of the defective
views of the bourgeois historians who belittled the indigenous
development of the Russian people. The erroneousness of this
concept is evident. Such a conception cannot be accepted by
Soviet historiography." .Artamonov,
whom I have frequently quoted, published (besides numerous
articles in learned journals) his first book, which dealt with
the early history of the Khazars, in 1937. His magnum opus,
History of the Khazars, was apparently in preparation
when Pravda struck. As a result, the book was
published only ten years later - 1962 - carrying a recantation
in its final section which amounted to a denial of all that
went before - and, indeed, of the author's life-work. The
relevant passages in it read:
- The Khazar kingdom disintegrated
and fell into pieces, from which the majority merged with
other related peoples, and the minority, settling in Itil,
lost its nationality and turned into a parasitic class with
a Jewish coloration. .The
Russians never shunned the cultural achievements of the
East.... But from the Itil Khazars the Russians took
nothing. Thus also by the way, the militant Khazar Judaism
was treated by other peoples connected with it: the Magyars,
Bulgars, Pechenegs, Alans and Polovtsians.... The need to
struggle with the exploiters from Itil stimulated the
unification of the Ghuzz and the Slavs around the golden
throne of Kiev, and this unity in its turn created the
possibility and prospect for a violent growth not only of
the Russian state system, but also of ancient Russian
culture. This culture had always been original and never
depended on Khazar influence. Those insignificant eastern
elements in Rus culture which were passed down by the
Khazars and which one usually bears in mind when dealing
with the problems of culture ties between the Rus and the
Khazars, did not penetrate into the heart of Russian
culture, but remained on the surface and were of short
duration and small significance. They offer no ground at all
for pointing out a "Khazar" period in the history of Russian
culture.
The dictates of the Party line
completed the process of obliteration which started with the
flooding of the remains of Sarkel.
5
Intensive trading and cultural
interchanges did not prevent the Rus from gradually eating
their way into the Khazar Empire by appropriating their
Slavonic subjects and vassals. According to the Primary Russian
Chronicle, by 859 - that is, some twenty-five years after
Sarkel was built - the tribute from the Slavonic peoples was
"divided between the Khazars and the Varangians from beyond the
Baltic Sea". The Varangians levied tribute on "Chuds",
"Krivichians", etc. - i.e., the more northerly Slavonic people
- while the Khazars continued to levy tribute on the Viatichi,
the Seviane, and, most important of all, the Polyane in the
central region of Kiev. But not for long. Three years later if
we can trust the dating (in the Russian Chronicle), the key
town of Kiev on the Dnieper, previously under Khazar
suzerainty, passed into Rus hands. .This
was to prove a decisive event in Russian history, though it
apparently happened without an armed struggle. According to the
Chronicle, Novgorod was at the time ruled by the
(semilegendary) Prince Rurik (Hrˆekr), who held under his
sway all the Viking settlements, the northern Slavonic, and
some Finnish people. Two of Rurik's men, Oskold and Dir, on
travelling down the Dnieper, saw a fortified place on a
mountain, the sight of which they liked; and were told that
this was the town of Kiev, and that it "paid tribute to the
Khazars". The two settled in the town with their families,
"gathered many Northmen to them, and ruled over the
neighbouring Slavs, even as Rurik ruled at Novgorod. Some
twenty years later Rurik's son Oleg [Helgi] came down
and put Oskold and Dir to death, and annexed Kiev to his sway."
.Kiev
soon outshone Novgorod in importance: it became the capital of
the Varangians and "the mother of Russian towns"; while the
principality which took its name became the cradle of the first
Russian state. .Joseph's
letter, written about a century after the Rus occupation of
Kiev, no longer mentions it in his list of Khazar possessions.
But influential Khazar-Jewish communities survived both in the
town and province of Kiev, and after the final destruction of
their country they were reinforced by large numbers of Khazar
emigrants. The Russian Chronicle keeps referring to heroes
coming from Zemlya Zhidovskaya, "the country of the
Jews"; and the "Gate of the Khazars" in Kiev kept the memory of
its erstwhile rulers alive till modern times.
6
We have now progressed into the second
half of the ninth century and, before continuing with the tale
of the Russian expansion, must turn our attention to some vital
developments among the people of the steppes, particularly the
Magyars. These events ran parallel with the rise of Rus power
and had a direct impact on the Khazars - and on the map of
Europe.
.The Magyars had been the Khazars'
allies, and apparently willing vassals, since the dawn of the
Khazar Empire. "The problem of their origin and early
wanderings have long perplexed scholars", Macartney wrote;17
elsewhere he calls it "one of the darkest of historical
riddles".18 About their origin all we know with certainty is
that the Magyars were related to the Finns, and that their
language belongs to the so-called Finno-Ugrian language family,
together with that of the Vogul and Ostyak people living in the
forest regions of the northern Urals. Thus they were originally
unrelated to the Slavonic and Turkish nations of the steppes in
whose midst they came to live - an ethnic curiosity, which they
still are to this day. Modern Hungary, unlike other small
nations, has no linguistic ties with its neighbours; the
Magyars have remained an ethnic enclave in Europe, with the
distant Finns as their only cousins. .At
an unknown date during the early centuries of the Christian era
this nomadic tribe was driven out of its erstwhile habitat in
the Urals and migrated southward through the steppes,
eventually settling in the region between the Don and the Kuban
rivers. They thus became neighbours of the Khazars, even before
the latter's rise to prominence. For a while they were part of
a federation of semi-nomadic people, the Onogurs ("The Ten
Arrows" or ten tribes); it is believed that the name
"Hungarian" is a Slavonic version of that word;19 while
"Magyar" is the name by which they have called themselves from
time immemorial..From
about the middle of the seventh to the end of the ninth
centuries they were, as already said, subjects of the Khazar
Empire. It is a remarkable fact that during this whole period,
while other tribes were engaged in a murderous game of musical
chairs, we have no record of a single armed conflict between
Khazars and Magyars, whereas each of the two was involved at
one time or another in wars with their immediate or distant
neighbours: Volga Bulgars, Danube Bulgars, Ghuzz, Pechenegs,
and so on - in addition to the Arabs and the Rus. Paraphrasing
the Russian Chronicle and Arab sources, Toynbee writes that
throughout this period the Magyars "took tribute", on the
Khazars' behalf, from the Slav and Finn peoples in the Black
Earth Zone to the north of the Magyars' own domain of the
Steppe, and in the forest zone to the north of that. The
evidence for the use of the name Magyar by this date is its
survival in a number of place-names in this region of northerly
Russia. These place-names presumably mark the sites of former
Magyar garrisons and outposts."20 Thus the Magyars dominated
their Slavonic neighbours, and Toynbee concludes that in
levying tribute, "the Khazars were using the Magyars as their
agents, though no doubt the Magyars made this agency profitable
for themselves as well".21 .The
arrival of the Rus radically changed this profitable state of
affairs. At about the time when Sarkel was built, there was a
conspicuous movement of the Magyars across the Don to its west
bank. From about 830 onward, the bulk of the nation was
re-settled in the region between the Don and the Dnieper, later
to be named Lebedia. The reason for this move has been much
debated among historians; Toynbee's explanation is both the
most recent and the most plausible:
- We may ... infer that the Magyars
were in occupation of the Steppe to the west of the Don by
permission of their Khazar suzerains.... Since the
Steppe-country had previously belonged to the Khazars, and
since the Magyars were the Khazars' subordinate allies, we
may conclude that the Magyars had not established themselves
in this Khazar territory against the Khazars' will....
Indeed we may conclude that the Khazars had not merely
permitted the Magyars to establish themselves to the west of
the Don, but had actually planted them there to serve the
Khazars' own purposes. The re- location of subject peoples
for strategic reasons was a device that had been practised
by previous nomad empire builders.... In this new location,
the Magyars could help the Khazars to check the
south-eastward and southward advance of tile Rhos. The
planting of the Magyars to the west of the Don will have
been all of a piece with the building of the fortress Sarkel
on tile Don's eastern bank.22
7
This arrangement worked well enough
for nearly half a century. During this period the relation
between Magyars and Khazars became even closer, culminating in
two events which left lasting marks on the Hungarian nation.
First, the Khazars gave them a king, who founded the first
Magyar dynasty; and, second, several Khazar tribes joined the
Magyars and profoundly transformed their ethnic character.
.The
first episode is described by Constantine in De
Administrando (circa 950), and is confirmed by the fact
that the names he mentions appear independently in the first
Hungarian Chronicle (eleventh century). Constantine tells us
that before the Khazars intervened in the internal affairs of
the Magyar tribes, these had no paramount king, only tribal
chieftains; the most prominent of these was called Lebedias
(after whom Lebedia was later named):
- And the Magyars consisted of seven
hordes, but at that time they had no ruler, either native or
foreign, but there were certain chieftains among them, of
which the principal chieftain was the aforementioned
Lebedias.... And the Kagan, the ruler of Khazaria, on
account of their [the Magyars'] valour and military
assistance, gave their first chieftain, the man called
Lebedias, a noble Khazar lady as wife, that he might beget
children of her; but Lebedias, by some chance, had no family
by that Khazar woman.
Another dynastic alliance which had
misfired. But the Kagan was determined to strengthen the ties
which bound Lebedias and his tribes to the Khazar
kingdom:
- After a little time had passed,
the Kagan, the ruler of Khazaria, told the Magyars ... to
send to him their first chieftain. So Lebedias, coming
before the Kagan of Khazaria, asked him for the reason why
he had sent for him. And the Kagan said to him: We have sent
for you for this reason: that, since you are well-born and
wise and brave and the first of the Magyars, we may promote
you to be the ruler of your race, and that you may be
subject to our Laws and Orders.
But Lebedias appears to have been a
proud man; he declined, with appropriate expressions of
gratitude, the offer to become a puppet king, and proposed
instead that the honour should be bestowed on a fellow
chieftain called Almus, or on Almus's son, Arpad. So the Kagan,
"pleased at this speech", sent Lebedias with a suitable escort
back to his people; and they chose Arpad to be their king. The
ceremony of Arpad's installation took place "after the custom
and usage of the Khazars, raising him on their shields. But
before this Arpad the Magyars never had any other ruler;
wherefore the ruler of Hungary is drawn from his race up to
this day." ."This
day" in which Constantine wrote was circa 950, that is, a
century after the event. Arpad in fact led his Magyars in the
conquest of Hungary; his dynasty reigned till 1301, and his
name is one of the first that Hungarian schoolboys learn. The
Khazars had their fingers in many historic pies.
8
The second episode seems to have had
an even more profound influence on the Hungarian national
character. At some unspecified date, Constantine tells us,23
there was a rebellion (apostasia) of part of the
Khazar nation against their rulers. The insurgents consisted of
three tribes, "which were called Kavars [or Kabars],
and which were of the Khazars' own race. The Government
prevailed; some of the rebels were slaughtered and some fled
the country and settled with the Magyars, and they made friends
with one another. They also taught the tongue of the Khazars to
the Magyars, and up to this day they speak the same dialect,
but they also speak the other language of the Magyars. And
because they proved themselves more efficient in wars and the
most manly of the eight tribes [i.e., the seven original
Magyar tribes plus the Kabars], and leaders in war, they
were elected to be the first horde, and there is one leader
among them, that is in the [originally] three hordes of
the Kavars, who exists to this day." .To
dot his i's, Constantine starts his next chapter with a list
"of the hordes of Kavars and Magyars. First is that which broke
off from the Khazars, this above-mentioned horde of the
Kavars.", etc.24 The horde or tribe which actually calls itself
"Magyar" comes only third. .It
looks as if the Magyars had received - metaphorically and
perhaps literally - a blood transfusion from the Khazars. It
affected them in several ways. First of all we learn, to our
surprise, that at least till the middle of the tenth century
both the Magyar and Khazar languages were spoken in Hungary.
Several modern authorities have commented on this singular
fact. Thus Bury wrote: "The result of this double tongue is the
mixed character of the modern Hungarian language, which has
supplied specious argument for the two opposite opinions as to
the ethnical affinities of the Magyars."25 Toynbee26 remarks
that though the Hungarians have ceased to be bilingual long
ago, they were so at the beginnings of their state, as
testified by some two hundred loan-words from the old Chuvash
dialect of Turkish which the Khazars spoke (see above, Chapter
I, 3). .The
Magyars, like the Rus, also adopted a modified form of the
Khazar double-kingship. Thus Gardezi: "... Their leader rides
out with 20000 horsemen; they call him Kanda [Hungarian:
Kende] and this is the title of their greater king, but the
title of the person who effectively rules them is Jula. And the
Magyars do whatever their Jula commands." There is reason to
believe that the first Julas of Hungary were Kabars.27
.There
is also some evidence to indicate that among the dissident
Kabar tribes, who de facto took over the leadership of the
Magyar tribes, there were Jews, or adherents of "a judaizing
religion".28 It seems quite possible - as Artamonov and Bartha
have suggested29 - that the Kabar "apostasia" was somehow
connected with, or a reaction against, the religious reforms
initiated by King Obadiah. Rabbinical law, strict dietary
rules, Talmudic casuistry might have gone very much against the
grain of these steppe-warriors in shining armour. If they
professed "a judaizing religion", it must have been closer to
the faith of the ancient desert-Hebrews than to rabbinical
orthodoxy. They may even have been followers of the
fundamentalist sect of Karaites, and hence considered heretics.
But this is pure speculation.
9
The close cooperation between Khazars
and Magyars came to an end when the latter, AD 896, said
farewell to the Eurasian steppes, crossed the Carpathian
mountain range, and conquered the territory which was to become
their lasting habitat. The circumstances of this migration are
again controversial, but one can at least grasp its broad
outlines..During
the closing decades of the ninth century yet another uncouth
player joined the nomad game of musical chairs: the
pechenegs.*[Or "Paccinaks", or in Hungarian,
"Bescnyk".] What little we know about this Turkish tribe is
summed up in Constantine's description of them as an insatiably
greedy lot of Barbarians who for good money can be bought to
fight other Barbarians and the Rus. They lived between the
Volga and the Ural rivers under Khazar suzerainty; according to
Ibn Rusta,30 the Khazars "raided them every year" to collect
the tribute due to them. .Toward
the end of the ninth century a catastrophe (of a nature by no
means unusual) befell the Pechenegs: they were evicted from
their country by their eastern neighbours. These neighbours
were none other than the Ghuzz (or Oguz) whom Ibn Fadlan so
much disliked - one of the inexhaustible number of Turkish
tribes which from time to time cut loose from their
Central-Asiatic moorings and drifted west. The displaced
Pechenegs tried to settle in Khazaria, but the Khazars beat
them off.*[This seems to be the plausible interpretation of
Constantine's statement that "the Ghuzz and the Khazars made
war on the Pecheisegs". [Cf. Bury, p. 424.]] The
Pechenegs continued their westward trek, crossed the Don and
invaded the territory of the Magyars. The Magyars in turn were
forced to fall back further west into the region between the
Dnieper and the Sereth rivers. They called this region
Etel-Kz, "the land between the rivers". They seem to
have settled there in 889; but in 896 the Pechenegs struck
again, allied to the Danube Bulgars, whereupon the Magyars
withdrew into present-day Hungary. .This,
in rough outline, is the story of the Magyars' exit from the
eastern steppes, and the end of the Magyar-Khazar connection.
The details are contested; some historians31 maintain, with a
certain passion, that the Magyars suffered only one defeat, not
two, at the hands of the Pechenegs, and that Etel-Kz
was just another name for Lebedia, but we can leave these
quibbles to the specialists. More intriguing is the apparent
contradiction between the image of the Magyars as mighty
warriors, and their inglorious retreat from successive
habitats. Thus we learn from the Chronicle of Hinkmar of
Rheims32 that in 862 they raided the Fast Frankish Empire - the
first of the savage incursions which were to terrorize Europe
during the next century. We also hear of a fearful encounter
which St Cyril, the Apostle of the Slavs, had with a Magyar
horde in 860, on his way to Khazaria. He was saying his prayers
when they rushed at him luporum more ululantes -
"howling in the manner of wolves". His sanctity, however,
protected him from harm.33 Another chronicle34 mentions that
the Magyars, and the Kabars, came into conflict with the Franks
in 881; and Constantine tells us that, some ten years later,
the Magyars "made war upon Simeon (ruler of the Danube Bulgars)
and trounced him soundly, and came as far as Preslav, and shut
him up in the fortress called Mundraga, and returned
home."35
.How is one to reconcile all these
valiant deeds with the series of retreats from the Don into
Hungary, which took place in the same period? It seems that the
answer is indicated in the passage in Constantine immediately
following the one just quoted:
- "... But after Symeon the Bulgar
again made peace with the Emperor of the Greeks, and got
security, he sent to the Patzinaks, and made an agreement
with them to make war on and annihilate the Magyars. And
when the Magyars went away on a campaign, the Patzinaks with
Symeon came against the Magyars, and completely annihilated
their families, and chased away miserably the Magyars left
to guard their land. But the Magyars returning, and finding
their country thus desolate and ruined, moved into the
country occupied by them today [i.e.
Hungary].
Thus the bulk of the army was "away on
a campaign" when their land and families were attacked; and to
judge by the chronicles mentioned above, they were "away"
raiding distant countries quite frequently, leaving their homes
with little protection. They could afford to indulge in this
risky habit as long as they had only their Khazar overlords and
the peaceful Slavonic tribes as their immediate neighbours. But
with the advent of the land-hungry Pechenegs the situation
changed. The disaster described by Constantine may have been
only the last of a series of similar incidents. But it may have
decided them to seek a new and safer home beyond the mountains,
in a country which they already knew from at least two previous
forays. .There
is another consideration which speaks in favour of this
hypothesis. The Magyars seem to have acquired the raiding habit
only in the second half of the ninth century - about the time
when they received that critical blood-transfusion from the
Khazars. It may have proved a mixed blessing. The Kabars, who
were "more efficient in war and more manly", became, as we saw,
the leading tribe, and infused their hosts with the spirit of
adventure, which was soon to turn them into the scourge of
Europe, as the Huns had earlier been. They also taught the
Magyars "those very peculiar and characteristic tactics
employed since time immemorial by every Turkish nation - Huns,
Avars, Turks, Pechenegs, Kumans - and by no other ... light
cavalry using the old devices of simulated flight, of shooting
while fleeing, of sudden charges with fearful, wolf-like
howling."36 .These
methods proved murderously effective during the ninth and tenth
centuries when Hungarian raiders invaded Germany, the Balkans,
Italy and even France - but they did not cut much ice against
the Pechenegs, who used the same tactics, and could howl just
as spine-chillingly. .Thus
indirectly, by the devious logic of history, the Khazars were
instrumental in the establishment of the Hungarian state,
whereas the Khazars themselves vanished into the mist.
Macartney, pursuing a similar line of thought, went even
further in emphasizing the decisive role played by the Kabar
transfusion:
- The bulk of the Magyar nation, the
true Finno-Ugrians, comparatively (although not very)
pacific and sedentary agriculturalists, made their homes in
the undulating country ... west of the Danube. The plain of
the Alfld was occupied by the nomadic race of Kabars, true
Turks, herdsmen, horsemen and fighters, the driving force
and the army of the nation. This was the race which in
Constantine's day still occupied pride of place as the
"first of the hordes of the Magyars". It was, I believe,
chiefly this race of Kabars which raided the Slavs and
Russians from the steppe; led the campaign against the
Bulgars in 895; in large part and for more than half a
century afterwards, was the terror of half
Europe.37
And yet the Hungarians managed to
preserve their ethnic identity. "The brunt of sixty years of
restless and remorseless warfare fell on the Kabars, whose
ranks must have been thinned by it to an extraordinary extent.
Meanwhile the true Magyars, living in comparative peace,
increased their numbers."38 They also succeeded, after the
bilingual period, in preserving their original Finno-Ugric
language in the midst of their German and Slav neighbours - in
contrast to the Danube Bulgars, who lost their Original Turkish
language, and now speak a Slavonic dialect. .However,
the Kabar influence continued to make itself felt in Hungary,
and even after they became separated by the Carpathian
Mountains, the Khazar-Magyar connection was not completely
severed. According to Vasiliev,39 in the tenth century the
Hungarian Duke Taksony invited an unknown number of Khazars to
settle in his domains. It is not unlikely that these immigrants
contained a fair proportion of Khazarian Jews. We may also
assume that both the Kabars and the later immigrants brought
with them some of their famed craftsmen, who taught the
Hungarians their arts (see above, Chapter I,
13).
.In the process of taking
possession of their new and permanent home, the Magyars had to
evict its former occupants, Moravians and Danube Bulgars, who
moved into the regions where they still live. Their other
Slavonic neighbours too - the Serbs and Croats - were already
more or less in situ. Thus, as a result of the chain-reaction
which started in the distant Urals - Ghuzz chasing Pechenegs,
chasing Magyars, chasing Bulgars and Moravians, the map of
modern Central Europe was beginning to take shape. The shifting
kaleidoscope was settling into a more or less stable
jigsaw.
10
We can now resume the story of the Rus
ascent to power where we left it - the bloodless annexation of
Kiev by Rurik's men around AD 862. This is also the approximate
date when the Magyars were pushed westward by the Pechenegs,
thus depriving the Khazars of protection on their western
flank. It may explain why the Rus could gain control of Kiev so
easily. .But
the weakening of Khazar military power exposed the Byzantines,
too, to attack by the Rus. Close to the date when the Rus
settled in Kiev, their ships, sailing down the Dnieper, crossed
the Black Sea and attacked Constantinople. Bury has described
the event with much gusto:
- In the month of June, AD 860, the
Emperor [Michael III], with all his forces, was
marching against the Saracens. He had probably gone far when
he received the amazing tidings, which recalled him with all
speed to Constantinople. A Russian host had sailed across
the Euxine [Black Sea] in two hundred boats, entered
the Bosphorus, plundered the monasteries and suburbs on its
banks, and overrun the Island of the Princes. The
inhabitants of the city were utterly demoralized by the
sudden horror of the danger and their own impotence. The
troops (Tagmata) which were usually stationed in the
neighbourhood of the city were far away with the Emperor ...
and the fleet was absent. Having wrought wreck and ruin in
the suburbs, the barbarians prepared to attack the city. At
this crisis ... the learned Patriarch, Photius, rose to the
occasion; he undertook the task of restoring the moral
courage of his fellow-citizens.... He expressed the general
feeling when he dwelt on the incongruity that the Imperial
city, "queen of almost all the world", should be mocked by a
band of slaves [sic] a mean and barbarous crowd. But
the populace was perhaps more impressed and consoled when he
resorted to the ecclesiastical magic which had been used
efficaciously at previous sieges. The precious garment of
the Virgin Mother was borne in procession round the walls of
the city; and it was believed that it was dipped in the
waters of the sea for the purpose of raising a storm of
wind. No storm arose, but soon afterwards the Russians began
to retreat, and perhaps there were not many among the joyful
citizens who did not impute their relief to the direct
intervention of the queen of heaven.40
We may add, for the sake of piquantry,
that the "learned Patriarch", Photius, whose eloquence saved
the Imperial city, was none other than "Khazar face" who had
sent St Cyril on his proselytizing mission. As for the Rus
retreat, it was caused by the hurried return of the Greek army
and fleet; but "Khazar face" had saved morale among the
populace during the agonizing period of waiting.
.Toynbee
too has interesting comments to make on this episode. In 860,
he writes, the Russians "perhaps came nearer to capturing
Constantinople than so far they have ever come since then".41
And he also shares the view expressed by several Russian
historians, that the attack by the eastern Northmen's Dnieper
flotilla across the Black Sea was coordinated with the
simultaneous attack of a western Viking fleet, approaching
Constantinople across the Mediterranean and the
Dardanelles:
- Vasiliev and Paszkievicz and
Vernadsky are inclined to believe that the two naval
expeditions that thus converged on the Sea of Marmara were
not only simultaneous but were concerted, and they even make
a guess at the identity of the master mind that, in their
view, worked out this strategic plan on the grand scale.
They suggest that Rurik of Novgorod was the same person as
Rorik of Jutland.42
This makes one appreciate the stature
of the adversary with whom the Khazars had to contend. Nor was
Byzantine diplomacy slow in appreciating it - and to play the
double game which the situation seemed to demand, alternating
between war, when it could not be avoided, and appeasement in
the pious hope that the Russians would eventually be converted
to Christianity and brought into the flock of the Eastern
Patriarchate. As for the Khazars, they were an important asset
for the time being, and would be sold out on the first decent -
or indecent - opportunity that offered itself
11
For the next two hundred years
Byzantine-Russian relations alternated between armed conflict
and treaties of friendship. Wars were waged in 860 (siege of
Constantinople), 907, 941, 944, 969- 71; and treaties concluded
in 838-9, 861,911,945, 957, 971. About the contents of these
more or less secret agreements we know little, but even what we
know shows the bewildering complexity of the game. A few years
after the siege of Constantinople the Patriarch Photius (still
the same) reports that the Rus sent ambassadors to
Constantinople and - according to the Byzantine formula for
pressurized proselytizing - "besought the Emperor for Christian
baptism". As Bury comments: "We cannot say which, or how many,
of the Russian settlements were represented by this embassy,
but the object must have been to offer amends for the recent
raid, perhaps to procure the deliverance of prisoners. It is
certain that some of the Russians agreed to adopt Christianity
... but the seed did not fall on very fertile ground. For
upwards of a hundred years we hear no more of the Christianity
of the Russians. The treaty, however, which was concluded
between AD 860 and 866, led probably to other consequences."43
.Among
these consequences was the recruiting of Scandinavian sailors
into the Byzantine fleet - by 902 there were seven hundred of
them. Another development was the famous "Varangian Guard", an
lite corps of Rus and other nordic mercenaries, including even
Englishmen. In the treaties of 945 and 971 the Russian rulers
of the Principality of Kiev undertook to supply the Byzantine
Emperor with troops on request.44 In Constantine
potphyrogenitus' day, i.e., the middle of the tenth century,
Rus fleets on the Bosphorus were a customary sight; they no
longer caine to lay siege on Constantinople but to sell their
wares. Trade was meticulously well regulated (except when armed
clashes intervened): according to the Russian Chronicle, it was
agreed in the treaties of 907 and 911 that the Rus visitors
should enter Constantinople through one city gate only, and not
more thin fifty at a time, escorted by officials; that they
were to receive during their stay in the city as much grain as
they required and also up to Six months' supply of other
provisions, in monthly deliveries, including bread, wine, meat,
fish, fruit and bathing facilities (if required). To make sure
that all transactions should be nice and proper, black-market
dealings in currency were punished by amputation of one hand.
Nor were proselytizing efforts neglected, as the ultimate means
to achieve peaceful coexistence with the increasingly powerful
Russians..But
it was hard going. According to the Russian Chronicle, when
Oleg, Regent of Kiev, concluded the treaty of 911 with the
Byzantines, "the Emperors Leo and Alexander [joint
rulers], after agreeing upon the tribute and mutually
binding themselves by oath, kissed the cross and invited Oleg
and his men to swear an oath likewise. According to the
religion of the Rus, the latter swore by their weapons and by
their god Perun, as well as by Volos, the god of cattle, and
thus confirmed the treaty."45 .Nearly
half a century and several battles and treaties later, victory
for the Holy Church seemed in sight: in 957 Princess Olga of
Kiev (widow of Prince Igor) was baptized on the occasion of her
state visit to Constantinople (unless she had already been
baptized once before her departure - which again is
controversial). .The
various banquets and festivities in Olga's honour are described
in detail in De Caerimonus, though we are not told how
the lady reacted to the Disneyland of mechanical toys displayed
in the Imperial throne-room - for instance, to the stuffed
lions which emitted a fearful mechanical roar. (Another
distinguished guest, Bishop Liutprand, recorded that he was
able to keep his sang-froid only because he was forewarned of
the surprises in store for visitors.) The occasion must have
been a major headache for the master of ceremonies (which was
Constantine himself), because not only was Olga a female
sovereign, but her retinue, too, was female; the male diplomats
and advisers, eighty-two of them, "marched self-effacingly in
the rear of the Russian delegation".46*[Nine kinsmen of
Olga's, twenty diplomats, forty-three commercial advisers, one
priest, two interpreters, six servants of the diplomats and
Olga's special interpreter.] .Just
before the banquet there was a small incident, symbolic of the
delicate nature of Russian-Byzantine relations. When the ladies
of the Byzantine court entered, they fell on their faces before
the Imperial family, as protocol required. Olga remained
standing "but it was noticed, with satisfaction, that she
slightly if perceptibly inclined her head. She was put in her
place by being seated, as the Muslim state guests had been, at
a separate table."47 .The
Russian Chronicle has a different, richly embroidered version
of this state visit. When the delicate subject of baptism was
brought up, Olga told Constantine "that if he desired to
baptize her, he should perform this function himself; otherwise
she was unwilling to accept baptism". The Emperor concurred,
and asked the Patriarch to instruct her in the
faith.
- The Patriarch instructed her in
prayer and fasting, in almsgiving and in the maintenance of
chastity. She bowed her head, and like a sponge absorbing
water, she eagerly drank in his teachings....
.After
her baptism, the Emperor summoned Olga and made known to her
that he wished her to become his wife. But she replied, "How
can you marry me, after yourself baptizing me and calling me
your daughter? For among Christians that is unlawful, as you
yourself must know." Then the Emperor said, "Olga, you have
outwitted me."48
When she got back to Kiev, Constantine
"sent a message to her, saying, 'Inasmuch as I bestowed many
gifts upon you, you promised me that on your return to Ros you
would send me many presents of slaves, wax and furs, and
despatch soldiery to aid me.' Olga made answer to the envoys
that if the Emperor would spend as long a time with her in the
Pochayna as she had remained on the Bosphorus, she would grant
his request. With these words, she dismissed the envoys."49
.This
Olga-Helga must have been a formidable Scandinavian Amazon. She
was, as already mentioned, the widow of Prince Igor, supposedly
the son of Rurik, whom the Russian Chronicle describes as a
greedy, foolish and sadistic ruler. In 941 he had attacked the
Byzantines with a large fleet, and "of the people they
captured, some they butchered, others they set up as targets
and shot at, some they seized upon, and after binding their
hands behind their backs, they drove iron nails through their
heads. Many sacred churches they gave to the flames."50 In the
end they were defeated by the Byzantine fleet, spouting Greek
fire through tubes mounted in the prows of their ships. "Upon
seeing the flames, the Russians cast themselves into the
sea-water, but the survivors returned home [where] they
related that the Greeks had in their possession the lightning
from heaven, and had set them on fire by pouring it forth, so
that the Russes could not conquer them."*[Toynbee does not
hesitate to call this famous secret weapon of the Greeks
"napalm". It was a chemical of unknown composition, perhaps a
distilled petroleum fraction, which ignited spontaneously on
contact with water, and could not be put out by water.]
This episode was followed by another treaty of friendship four
years later. As a predominantly maritime nation, the Rus were
even more impressed by the Greek fire than others who had
attacked Byzantium, and the "lightning from heaven" was a
strong argument in favour of the Greek Church. Yet they were
still not ready for conversion..When
Igor was killed in 945 by the Derevlians, a Slavonic people
upon which he had imposed an exorbitant tribute, the widowed
Olga became Regent of Kiev. She started her rule by taking
fourfold revenge on the Derevlians: first, a Derevlian peace
mission was buried alive; then a delegation of notables was
locked in a bath-house and burned alive; this was followed by
another massacre, and lastly the main town of the Derevlians
was burnt down. Olga's bloodlust seemed truly insatiable until
her baptism. From that day onward, the Chronicle informs us,
she became "the precursor of Christian Russia, even as daybreak
precedes the sun, and as the dawn precedes the day. For she
shone like the moon by night, and she was radiant among the
infidels like a pearl in the mire." In due course she was
canonized as the first Russian saint of the Orthodox
Church.
12
Yet in spite of the great to-do about
Olga's baptism and her state visit to Constantine, this was not
the last word in the stormy dialogue between the Greek Church
and the Russians. For Olga's son, Svyatoslav, reverted to
paganism, refused to listen to his mother's entreaties,
"collected a numerous and valiant army and, stepping light like
a leopard, undertook many campaigns"51 among them a war against
the Khazars and another against the Byzantines. It was only in
988, in the reign of his son, St Vladimir, that the ruling
dynasty of the Russians definitely adopted the faith of the
Greek Orthodox Church - about the same time as Hungarians,
Poles, and Scandinavians, including the distant Icelanders,
became converted to the Latin Church of Rome. The broad
outlines of the lasting religious divisions of the world were
beginning to take shape; and in this process the Jewish Khazars
were becoming an anachronism. The growing rapprochement between
Constantinople and Kiev, in spite of its ups and downs, made
the importance of Itil gradually dwindle; and the presence of
the Khazars athwart Rus-Byzantine trade-routes, levying their
10 per cent tax on the increasing flow of goods, became an
irritant both to the Byzantine treasury and the Russian warrior
merchants. .Symptomatic
of the changing Byzantine attitude to their former allies was
the surrender of Cherson to the Russians. For several centuries
Byzantines and Khazars had been bickering and occasionally
skirmishing, for possession of that important Crimean port; but
when Vladimir occupied Cherson in 987, the Byzantines did not
even protest; for, as Bury put it, "the sacrifice was not too
dear a price for perpetual peace and friendship with the
Russian state, then becoming a great power".52
.The
sacrifice of Cherson may have been justified; but the sacrifice
of the Khazar alliance turned out to be, in the long run, a
short-sighted policy.