Around the year 960 Sviatoslav assumed the kingship in Kyiv. In 962 he began carefully to plan his initial military venture; it would be against the Khazar Empire in the east. Although this empire was no longer as vast as it had been some 250 years earlier at its greatest extent, it was still a formidable steppe power in the mid-10th century.
The motives for the move against the Khazars have been fairly well established. In 962 the Khazars attempted to subdue the Goths living in Crimea, an incident of which is related in a Greek document of the period, the "Report of a Gothic Toparch."_6_ Unable to withstand the Khazars on their own, the Goths decided to invoke the protection of a "ruler north of the Danube who possessed a strong army and was proud of his military forces and from whose people they did not differ in customs or manner."_7_ Although the name of this ruler or his people is not specified in the document, there is little doubt that the reference is to Sviatoslav and the people of Kyivan Rus'.
A delegation was sent north to Kyiv and a treaty concluded whereby the Crimean Goths recognized Sviatoslav as their suzerain; he, in turn, promised to defend them against the Khazars. On their return trip, the delegates observed an unusual cosmologic phenomenon: "Saturn was at the beginning of its passage across Aquarius, while the sun was passing through the winter signs." According to astronomic calculations, the event could only have occurred at the outset of January 963. This is one of those rare occasions where a historic event can be firmly dated with the aid of astronomy._8_
So it was in the spring of 963, not 965 as given in the PVL, that Sviatoslav first moved against the Khazars by taking Gothia (Figure 1). The larger campaign against the empire itself may have taken a year or two of planning and preparation, and the year of 965 may well be accurate for the main thrust against the Khazar heartland. Before undertaking the this decisive strike, Sviatoslav shrewdly enhanced his chances of success by forging a partnership with the Turkic Oghuz, a people centered east of the Aral Sea, near the estuary of the Syr Darya River, and thus on the other side of the Khazar Empire. The Arab historian Ibn Miskawaihi records the Oghuz as attacking the Khazars in 965, so the allies most likely coordinated their attacks._9_
The PVL records that in 965 "Sviatoslav sallied forth against the Khazars. When they heard of his approach, they went to meet him with their Prince, the Kagan and the armies came to blows. When the battle thus took place, Sviatoslav defeated the Khazars and took their city of Bila Vezha. He also conquered the Yasians and the Kasogians."_10_
From Arabic sources we know that Sviatoslav continued his operations eastward, capturing the Khazar cities of Semender (on the Caspian Sea) and Itil (at the mouth of the Volga). The Khazars were thus totally subdued, and their empire ceased to exist.
6. F. Westberg. "Zapiska Gotskogo Toparkha," Vizantiiskii Vremennik 15 (1908), pp. 71-132, 227-286.
7. The Khazars, on the other hand, were considered different in customs and manners since they had adopted Judaism some 150 years earlier.
8. A. A. Vasiliev, earlier "The Goths in the Crimea" (Cambridge, Mass.: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936), pp. 121, 128-129.
9. Omeljan Pritsak, "The Origin of Rus'," Vol. I (Cambridge: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1981) p. 446.
