200 CHAPTER 4
led northwest towards Kiev and Chernigov and north towards the Oka River.
The Slavic settlements were closely related to the Khazar economy. This rela-
tion has been studied in greater detail in the case of the Borshevo culture along
the middle and upper reaches of the Don.124 The settlements in the immediate
vicinity of the Saltovo ones are known to have specialized in hunting animals
with valuable pelts that fed the demands of both the Saltovians in the south
and international trade.125 Evidence shows that in many of the settlements
Slavs and Saltovians lived side by side. It is hardly a coincidence that the places
where Volyntsevo pottery has been found were colonized by Saltovians in the
ninth and tenth centuries.126
Slavic settlements, situated west of the Saltovo ones and related to the
Severians tribe, have similar features. It can be assumed that a large part of
the Slavic population, whose settlements were in the immediate vicinity of the
Saltovo ones, remained in Khazaria even after the ninth century, when Oleg
annexed the Severians to Kievan Rus’. It is not quite clear how far west the
scope of the direct Khazar influence reached. The Bititsa hillfort on the Psel
River, for example, also demonstrates both Saltovo and Volyntsevo features.127
It can be said with certainty that the Slavic population in the area around
the upper reaches of the Severski Donets remained in Khazaria. Its economy
was linked to the Khazar Don Region, which was mostly populated by Bulgars
and Alans. The theory of V. Koloda is therefore quite credible: in his opinion,
even if an altercation did exist between the eastern tribes of the Severian union
and the Khazar Khaganate, it eventually turned “into a mutual penetration of
cultures and ethnic groups and in some monuments it even led to the emer-
gence of a population, which was quite syncretic in its origins and culture”.128
The Slavic settlements increased the Khazar road system that connected
the Arabic world and Byzantium with Kievan Rus’ and Scandinavia. The line
of fortresses, built along the length of this system, should not be regarded as
124 Moskalenko 1981, 131–141; Vinnikov 1995, 122–145.
125 Vinnikov 1995, 45 and 69.
126 Vinnikov 1995, 81, 100–106, 122, and 140–145.
127 Sukhobokov, Voznesenskaia, and Priimak 1989, 104; Moskalenko 1981, 140. According
to Petrukhin 1995b, 120–121, Oleg conquered only part of the tribal communities of the
Severians and the Radimichi. The scholar assumes that the Pereiaslavl’ area (inhabited
by the Volyntsevo population) was annexed to Kievan Rus’ only at the end of the tenth
century.
128 Koloda 2001; see also Tortika 2002; Tortika 2006a, 365–366 and 373–376. L. Gumilev pre-
sumes that in the mid-tenth century (the 940s), some Slavic tribes, related to the commu-
nities of the Severians and the Radimichi, were conquered once again by the khaganate
(Gumilev 1997, 223, 226, 235–236, and 254–255).