Where did Russia's Jews Originate?
Most Russian Jews are descendants of the Khazar Jews. According to the Russian historian and ethnologist Leon Gumilev, the Khazar Turks moved to the Volga delta in the third century A.D. Other related Turkish peoples, who used Khazaria as a base for their military operations between 558 and 650 A.D., played the most important role in the development of the Khazar Turks. In the 10th century A.D., the Khazar Turks stubbornly (and successfully) defended themselves against the Arabs, the strongest and most aggressive military power of the day, as they expanded outward from the Arabian Peninsula. The rise of the Khazar Turks lasted for about 150 years - from the middle of the 7th century to the end of the 8th century, at which point the Jews arrested their development. The first Jews who arrived in Khazaria were fleeing just persecution for anti-government activities in Persia. A second large immigration took place in the 8th century when a large number of Jews left Byzantium to co-operate with the Arabs, which was caused by economic competition from the Greeks and the Armenians. In 723, Emperor Leo III of Byzantium attempted to force Byzantine Jews to adopt Christianity. The original population of Khazaria remained agricultural, whilst the Jewish arrivals became commercial. Jewish merchants (known as "Radokhnids") in Khazaria immediately took control of the caravan routes between Europe and China. These new merchants were especially interested in the slave trade. The Kaganate of Khazaria was a powerful kingdom. The King, or Kagan, received expensive gifts from wealthy Jews and had many Jewish women in his harem. Many children of mixed race were born in the 8th century. These children, and the Jewish people themselves, began to call them-selves Khazars in the 10th century. The original populace may be called Khazar Turks, the newcomers Khazar Jews. Semender(Samandar) was originally the capital of Khazaria, later being replaced as the capital by Itil (now Astrakhan) on the Volga. Other important Khazarian cities were Sarkel on the Dona and later Kiev on the Dniepr. There were about 4000 Jewish families in Itil. The Khazars bought military services from many contingents of mercenaries, of which there were up to 7000 in Itil. The Jews of Itil plundered the Khazar Turks unceasingly.
At the beginning of the 9th century, a Jewish prophet by the name of Obadiah seized power in Khazaria and introduced a strict theocratic regime. The Kagan was not murdered, but was placed under effective house arrest. Once a year he appeared in public to make it seem as if he still wielded some power. This apparent sharing of power was just a sham. Obadiah turned the Kagan (Khan) of the Asina dynasty into his marionette and made the Mosaic faith the official state religion. This coup benefited only the Jews.
The Jewish rabbis did not intend to convert the Khazars to Judaism, but kept the faith exclusively for the people who had come into power. The Khazar Turks remained heathens. The coup triggered a civil war in which Obadiah exploited the tactics of total war, which had been used so successfully during the occupation of Canaan, when the Jewish nation tried to annihilate each and every enemy. By 820 A.D., the new regime was in place. Khazaria became an unnatural union, where the suppressed were constantly confronted by a foreign ruling class. The Khazar Jews were not brave warriors, and instead began terrorising the original population and other neighbouring peoples with the help of Polovtsy (Kipchaks), Pechenegs, Russian and even Islamic mercenaries. They constantly sought to expand their territories and managed to conquer the Crimea for the purpose of trading with the Mediterranean nations. The Khazar Jews attempted to bring about a coup in France in the middle of the 10th century with the help of their own brethren and Berber mercenaries, but before they succeeded, the slavs managed to seize power and crush the state of Khazaria.
In the middle of the 9th century, Khazar Jews made an agreement with the Varangians (Vikings) to split Eastern Europe between them, but in the 10th century, the Jews took control in most areas. The Bulgars, the Mordvins and other races came under their dominion. The Khazar Jews were at their most powerful at the end of the 9th and the beginning of the 1Oth centuries. They threatened to bring a catastrophe upon the inhabitants of Eastern Europe. Their opponents had to choose between slavery and annihilation. Eventually, rebellions broke out. In 922, the Bulgars succeeded in freeing themselves from the oppression introduced by the Jewish. Khazaria, which originally lay in the Volga delta, later extended between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and even reached all the way to Volga-Bulgaria and Kiev. Khazaria existed between the 7th century and 965 A.D. when the Prince of Kiev, Sviatoslav, crushed the Jewish reign of terror. The Khazarian potentates fled and the oppressed Khazar Turks and other peoples were freed. The surviving Khazar Jews founded the Ashkenazi tribes. Their main centres were later in the Ukraine, Poland, and Lithuania. The Khazar Turks mixed with other races. Most of the Khazar Turks later became known as Astrakhan Tartars. Large areas of Khazaria later subsided into the Caspian Sea, where the traces of the great empire were discovered only in the 1960s. (Leon Gumilev, "The Ethnosphere - The History of Man and Nature", Moscow, 1993; Gumilev, "The Discovery of Khazaria", Moscow, 1996.)
The Jews did not change their habits. In 1113, the Prince of Kiev, Vladimir Monomakh, believed it necessary to curb the Jew's usury ("Nordisk Familjebok", Stockholm, 1946, Vol. 20, p. 690). The Khazar Jews repeated this tried and tested method once more when they founded the Soviet Union, which many of them regarded as a kind of twisted revenge against the Russian people.