The Forgotten Kazars

Timothy Birdnow

Historian Lawrence W. Reed dishes on the Kazars of Eastern Europe/Western Asia.

From the article:

Take Khazaria, for example. It lasted over 300 years (650 to 965 AD) and covered more territory than the combined Scandinavian nations of our time. It spanned the eastern half of modern-day Ukraine, the steppes of the Volga-Don region of present Russia, the entire Crimean Peninsula, and the northern Caucasus. Its southern portion took in most of the shorelines of three seas: the Black, the Caspian and the Aral.

It’s my thesis that for a country to be "successful” for a considerable period—success being defined loosely here as economically prosperous, politically stable, and militarily defensible—it must possess substantial TTD. That’s not a pronounceable acronym, unfortunately, but it stands for trade, tolerance and decentralization.

Each of these three criteria for success is worth volumes of discussion but here’s the nub of it: When economic freedom and private property exist, trade flourishes. And trade is what peaceful humans do to satisfy wants and improve material well-being. Choke it off and living standards plummet. Tolerance is a sign that people appreciate the benefits derived from diversity in personal choices. An intolerant people deprive themselves of what others can offer and waste time and resources fighting instead of collaborating. Decentralizationpreserves the rich identities of local communities and stymies the concentration of authority with its inevitable corruption. Power dispersed is power tamed.

So a successful country is one that can boast a lot of TTD. It encourages exchange, celebrates diversity and avoids top-down, political command-and-control. Almost every "failed state” in history did just the opposite by stifling commerce; stoking racial, ethnic or nationalistic hatred; and/or installing a dictatorship.

Khazaria, to its great credit, practiced remarkable measures of trade and tolerance and enough decentralization to prevent its government from sabotaging either one. In the end, it met its demise not from internal decay but from foreign assault.

A word from Tim:

Near the end the Kazars mostly became Jewish, and many of the Jews in America and Europe are descended from them. Why did they adopt Judaism? Because they were imperiled by Christian Russia to the north and the Islamic Ottomans and so they split the difference, hoping to keep both away from their door. It worked for a while but in the end the Russians destroyed them.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 09:18 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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