1048 years ago, on July 3, 964, our Great ancestor-commander Svyatoslav Khorobre destroyed the Khazar Kaganate
“The small country of Macedonia gave the world history Alexander the Great. The whole world knows the Roman Julius Caesar. However, few people outside Russia know a warrior comparable to Alexander and Caesar, and as a ruler and a person immeasurably superior to them - the Grand Duke of Kiev Svyatoslav Igorevich, nicknamed the Brave. Even the enemies were respectfully called "reigning north of the Danube" and compared to the ancient hero Achilles. All - both the monks-chroniclers hostile to the pagan prince, and his direct enemies, the Byzantines - speak, willingly or unwillingly, of the great prince's unselfishness, incredible for our selfish times, which extended to life itself.
In 962, Prince Svyatoslav the Brave, the son of Igor from the Sons of the Falcon clan, won his first victory. Thanks to her, our ancestors were not sold in Cordoba or Venice with the "Sklave" sign on their chest. They did not starve to death in the castle dungeons. They did not make me forget the speech and the name of their people. He is a warrior - and chooses the most dangerous enemy, so dangerous that a war with him can be likened to a duel with a dragon, a giant man-eating or other monster from ancient legends. He is a prince - and directs weapons against the deadly, old foe of Russia. He is a priest - and raises his sword to the incarnate Filth, the earthly semblance of the demon of the Big World, the revived insult of the Northern Gods. To the Khazar Kaganate. The vampire state, which had been drinking all the juices from neighbors and tributaries for a century and a half, collapsed in one year, 965. Not the Don, but the Volga became the eastern border of the Russian land under him. With his campaign, Svyatoslav drew a line under the age-old confrontation between Russia and Khazaria, under two centuries of the Khazar yoke. Miracle Yudo died, his accession to the throne was postponed for almost a thousand years. A dedication, a test for young Russia was the battle with the monstrous kaganate. We managed to get through it. Thanks to Svyatoslav."
Once the Khazars and Slavs lived more or less peacefully - as much as two barbarian tribes neighbors could in the early Middle Ages. The Slavs abundantly and fearlessly inhabited the generous chernozems of the lower Don and Kuban. In the VIII century, during the war with the still pagan kaganate, the Arab commander Mervan, breaking through to these lands, drove 20 thousand (!) Slavic families into captivity.
There is nothing incredible in the fact that some Slavic daredevils, or even the Rus volunteers who came along the Volga from the Varangian Sea, joined the Khazar horsemen in their campaigns to the Crimea or Transcaucasia. Perhaps, these times are remembered by the Russian epic about the knight Kazarin, the Arab legend about the three brothers - Slavs, Khazar and Ruse. The North Caucasian king Shahriyar - is it not the one to whom Scheherazade told tales? - wrote to the caliph that he was fighting two "enemies of the whole world" - the Rus and the Khazars.
Everything changed after 730. Our chronicles, full of reports on military alliances with the Pechenegs, Torks, Polovtsy, Berendeys (there was even a special word for the steppe allies - "kovui"), are silent about alliances with the Khazars. The Byzantines, who wrote a lot about the alliances of the Slavs with the Huns and Avars, are silent. The chroniclers of the Christian Transcaucasia and Muslim authors are silent.
You can look for the reasons for such alienation for a long time. They will say that the kaganate, with its powerful mercenary army, did not need an alliance with the Slavs. They will say, and they will be wrong. In ancient India, with its unsurpassed blades and war elephants, Maharajahs willingly used units of "forest tribes" in wars. Aborigines living in the jungle, who stood infinitely below the Slavs, and, in fact, have not yet emerged from the Stone Age. Great Rome did not disdain to make the Slavs themselves federal allies, and the Germans who were at the same level of life and military affairs.
It is possible - and somewhat closer to the truth - to say that the Slavs did not go unnoticed for long, the double morality of the Talmud, implanted by the Rakhdonites. She did not just put the promise given to the pagan "goy" to nothing, but she directly made it a duty to deceive him.
However, in reality everything was both more complicated and simpler at the same time. And the epic "Ivan Godinovich" speaks about this best of all.
Its plot is simple. The title character, a Kiev hero - in other versions he is even the grand duke's nephew - wants to marry. And not on anyone, but on Avdotya the prince, the daughter of the "king of Chernigov." The caring prince tells the hero to take his squad with him and generously offers one hundred soldiers from himself, and the same amount from the princess's squad (remember Olga's "small squad"?). The hero proudly refuses. In Chernigov, he learns that the "Tsar Kosherische" wooed Avdotya - that's how a familiar word came up! Despite this, the hero still marries the "princess" and returns home. On the way, they are attacked by Kosherische. An equestrian skirmish is followed by a foot battle and, finally, a wrestling duel. The forces of the opponents are equal. Kosherische asks Avdotya to help him, saying that, having become Godinovich's bride, she will become a "portwasher", a slave:
Very strange - at first glance. After all, Ivan Godinovich is an approximate, or even a relative of the prince, the leader of his own squad. And nothing strange - if Kosher is really a memory of the kosher rulers of Khazaria. Let's remember Ibn Fadlan:
"Yet the peoples living next to them consider the Khazars to be their slaves."
In the eyes of Kosherishch, the Russian hero, and his prince himself, are slaves by birth.
Russian epics have preserved the memory of the Khazar invasion:
"Evil Winds from the East" from the famous "Every Evening …" blow from those long past centuries. A "kalena arrow" is one of the symbols of the declaration of war, like a spear that little Svyatoslav threw at the Drevlyans.
The epics reflected the victory over the Khaganate in the 10th century, the victories of Oleg the Prophet and Svyatoslav the Brave. But there was also something else. A century and a half passed from the "hot arrow" to the collapse of Khazaria.
A century and a half of the Khazar tribute.
But another chronicle, the Radziwill chronicle, has survived. And it says otherwise. Such that one involuntarily understands other chroniclers. So you can imagine how a monk in a cell looks disbelievingly at the ancient lines, and forwards, according to his own understanding, at that very "white faithful".
And it was written: "For the white girl from the smoke."
And next to it, on a miniature, so that no one was mistaken, did not take it for an accidental slip of the tongue - a flock of girls and an elder bowing to the haughty Khazar.
This is just very similar to what we know about the kaganate. Remember - Khazaria was ruled by a clan of slave traders. What was more natural for them than such a tribute - both beneficial and crushing the pride of the tributaries, accustoming them to the omnipotence of the kaganate's messengers and their own lawlessness?
And now, dear reader, if you have not yet understood, or did not believe that the Khazars were monsters in the eyes of their Slavic neighbors, try to try it on yourself. Try to imagine that it is you, having heard the voice of the ram's shofar horns, go to the gate - to let the tribute collectors into your native village. You go and wonder who they will take away. Sister? Daughter? The bride? Imagine what it would be like to live year after year in anticipation of these terrible days. Imagine what it was like to look into the eyes of the mothers of girls who fell out on a merciless lot. And what it was like to crush the disgusting relief in my soul - now they have not taken yours! And to know that someday you will gaze over the faces of your relatives with a desperate glance - "Daughter! Daughter …" - and you will see the shadow of this undisputed relief. And what a woman's howl stood on such days over the three Slavic lands …
The perpetrators of this could not have been human beings. Not "distortion," not "layering," not "epic fantasy."A chilling nightmare of the highest truth, which laid bare the lewdness of a mutated, degenerated alien soul. A soul that made its owners much more disgusting and more terrible than snake scales and fire-breathing heads. "The miracle Yudo koganoe flew in, demanded a red maiden for dinner" …
That is why it is so important to remember what victory our Great ancestor Svyatoslav Khorobre won over the Serpent Khazaria.
