Errors and falsifications of scientists in assessing the role of the Khazars in the history of the Eastern Slavs

Abstract

Based on the analysis of the works of authoritative representatives of pre-revolutionary, Soviet and modern science (including emigrant and foreign), the inconsistency of their idea of the beneficial effect of the Khazar Khaganate on the life and fate of the Eastern Slavs is shown. At the same time, attention is particularly focused on the fact that the enthusiasm for this idea led D.S. Likhachev to falsify the Povest Vremennih Let, “forced" archaeologists (for example, S.A. Pletneva) to attribute the highly developed Saltovo-Mayatskaya archaeological culture associated with the Alans to the antiquities of the Khazar circle. In this connection, researchers began to perceive the Khazar Khaganate as the most powerful state of Eastern Europe of the 8th 9th centuries, which occupied a huge territory from the Lower Volga to the Dnieper, and in a distorted light to illuminate its relationship with Russia.