The “Internal” Ethnic Communities in Khazaria 265
records on Tsar Samuil (991–1014) for example, and his descendants in Danube
Bulgaria).203 The campaigns of the Kievan Prince Sviatoslav did not destroy
the Khazar Khaganate. However, as with Danube Bulgaria, they did initiate
the beginning of the khaganate’s end. A relation should therefore be sought
between the simultaneous downfall of two states that for several centuries
defined the shape and development of a large part of Eastern Europe.
V. Tatishchev’s Russian History contains interesting facts about the cam-
paigns of Prince Sviatoslav from the 960s. According to him, the reason behind
Sviatoslav’s campaign to Bulgaria in 968 was the help that the Bulgars offered
the Khazars. On the banks of the Dniester the Rus’ were met by the joined
forces of the Bulgars, Khazars, Kasogs and the Yases. With the help of Magyar
troops Sviatoslav won the battle, defeating the Bulgars and the Khazars and
capturing 80 cities along the Dniester, the Danube and some other rivers.
He settled in Preslavets on the Danube, maintaining good relations with the
Magyars.204
We should ask ourselves why Danube Bulgaria and the Khazar Khaganate
both sustained irreparable damage at the same time from the same enemy.
Based on our knowledge of the reign of the Bulgarian Tsar Petar (927–970)
and the Khazar ruler Joseph, their defeat seems surprising. In reality, the
events examined here reflect a major conflict that engulfed Eastern Europe
and Middle Asia. It involved Kievan Rus’, the Khazar Khaganate, Byzantium,
Danube Bulgaria, but also Khwarezm, the Oghuz and the Pechenegs, as well as
Germany and Hungary. Gradually, the Polish, Czechs and the Danes were also
drawn into it.205
203 There are sporadic reports of Rus’ military actions against the Khazars and the Volga
Bulgars during the 980s and 990s. In addition, there is also information on campaigns of
the Rus’ in Dagestan during the second half of the 980s (as allies of the emir of Derbent),
aimed against Shirvan, whose ruler, according to Ibn Hawqal, after 969 supported
the return of the Khazars to Itil. See Gadlo 1990, 21–23; Pashuto 1968, 95 and 103–104;
Artamonov 1962, 435–439; Tolstov 1948b, 256–262; Novosel’tsev 1990, 228; Kalinina 1976,
93; Ashurbeili 1983, 81; Fakhrutdinov 1984, 44–45.
204 Tatishchev 1963, 49; the account is from the Ioachim Chronicle (from the the seventeenth
century), the content of which has been preserved only in the work of V. Tatishchev, writ-
ten in the seventeenth or eighteenth century (books 1–5, 1768–1848) (Mikhailov 1999, 14
and 56–57). The account from this source is wholly supported by Sakharov 1991, 50 and 119.
205 During the second half of the tenth century, the rivalry between Germany and Byzantium
grew into a full-blown military conflict on the territory of Italy (in the 960s). Prior to 988,
as well as between 1015 and 1019, Kievan Rus’ wavered between Germany and Byzantium,
which caused conflicts among the Rus’ princes. In the 970s, warfare raged between
Germany on one hand and the Czech state, Poland and Denmark on the other. At the