Lecture 5: The Slavs and Khazars

Professor Paul Robert Magocsi — Ukraine: A History Course.

The Ukrainian Jewish Encounter is pleased to present a lecture series by Paul Robert Magocsi titled Ukraine: A History Course. Magocsi recorded 45 lectures in 2023 at the University of Toronto, where he holds the professorial Chair of Ukrainian Studies and is a history and political science professor. He is also a Board Member of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.

Magocsi, one of the world’s leading experts on Ukraine, explores this fascinating country in all its complexity, from its history, culture, geography, politics, and multi-ethnic composition. The lectures are an important counterweight to Russian propaganda and explain Ukraine’s importance to global security today.

Time stamps are available for each lecture. Auto-translate is available in Ukrainian, major European, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern languages, including Hebrew and Yiddish.

Recordings of the lecture series were made possible with the support of the Temerty Foundation.

All the lectures are available on YouTube here.

0:30 Typical proto-Slavic settlement pattern along a valley in the forest steppe zone. Bronze artifacts and pottery associated with the Zarubyntsi culture along the middle Dnieper region, second century BC
2:38 Map of original homeland of the Slavs
3:00 Jan Peisker
4:22 Lubor Niederle, Max Vasmer
6:30 Boris Rybakov
8:39 The Greeks and the Scythians in Ukraine map
13:45 Alans, Antes began to organize Slavic tribes living farther north, beyond the open steppe - Podolia, Galicia, Volhynia
14:30 Archeological findings:

• Sarkel along the lower Don River
• Sixth-century Byzantine Christian basilica in Chersonesus on the southern coast of the Crimea near present day Sevastopol
• Scythian burial mound (kurhan), Chortyk, just northwest of Kamianka, measured 20 meters high and 350 meters in diameter

18:48 Reconstruction of a Polianian tribal hill-fort (horodyshche) at Chuchyn along the Right Bank of the Dnieper River
19:54 Arabic or Kufic coins and silver jewellry found along the Volga-Dnieper Trade routes
21:30 Original homeland of the Slavs map
26:18 East Slavic tribes paying tribute to the Khazars as depicted in the 15-century Radzill Chronicle
28:20 Khazar Kaganate map: Itil', Sarkel (Bila Vezha), Samander, Tmutorokan', Doros, Chersonesus, Roden'
30:27 Reconstruction of a Polianian tribal hill-fort (horodyshche) at Chuchyn along the Right Bank of the Dnieper River
32:20 Slavic tribes map
36:20 The Byzantine monks Cyril and Methodius translating Biblical texts into Old Slavonic as depicted in the 15th-century Radziwill Chronicle
44:12 Trade routes, 8th-10th centuries

For further information, you may wish to consult: A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples (University of Toronto Press, 2010)

Robert Paul Magocsi
Chair of Ukrainian Studies University of Toronto
Toronto, Canada, September 2023.