4 Introduction
against the threat hanging over Khazaria that came from Kievan Rus’14 (as
opposed to a similar statement by M. Artamonov, in which the main danger
came from the East and the Muslims). Later, L. Gumilev’s point of view under-
goes some changes. He deepens his focus on the division of the Khazar state
in accordance with his theory on the evolution of human societies. According
to him, the Khazar society represented a chimera. This term refers to the
division of the Khazars into Judaized ones, who were the leading class, and
the rest (mostly pagans or children of Jews and Khazar women), which were
underprivileged. The two groups could not have shared common interests.15
After the civil war, which the Jews won thanks to the Pechenegs they hired for
money, “the nature of Khazaria changed. From an orderly entity it unraveled
into an unnatural combination of an amorphous mass of subjects and a ruling
class, which was, in blood and religion, foreign to its people”.16 The ruling class
(the Jews) supported itself from transit trade. Thus, the climate changes that
had a devastating impact on the Khazar population, not only did not have a
negative effect on the Khazar state (which by now was embodied by the Jews),
but became the cause for the biggest expansion of the khaganate’s influence
precisely during the first half of the tenth century (also consistent with the
conquest of Kievan Rus’).17
A. Novosel’tsev’s opinion is similar to that of M. Artamonov and S. Pletneva,
both in terms of the assertion that the Khazar ruler Joseph was describing the
boundaries of an earlier Khazaria, and regarding the issue of the division in
Khazar society. In support of the theory regarding the Khazar state’s weak-
ness during the tenth century, he pays greater attention to the account of the
Byzantine emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus.18
V. Petrukhin also believes that Joseph exaggerated the Khazar influence in
the tenth century, but allows for the existence of some Khazar predominance
in the Northern Black Sea region in the mid-tenth century. The historian does
not take literally the statement in the Cambridge Document that Kievan Rus’
fell under the domination of the Khazars, but instead assumes that “the fail-
ures of the campaigns in the 940s probably gave the Khazars a reason to believe
that Rus’ was still under their authority”.19 V. Petrukhin opposes the argument
that the Khazar khagan’s conversion to Judaism caused the alienation of the
14 Gumilev 2003, 126–127.
15 Gumilev 1997, 156–157.
16 Gumilev 1997, 167.
17 Gumilev 1997, 210–212 and 225–226.
18 Novosel’tsev 1990, 7, 153, and 211–219.
19 Petrukhin 1995a, 102.