THE TRIANGLE OF THE BYZANTINE-BULGARIAN-RUSSIAN CONFLICT IN THE WESTERN BLACK SEA REGION OF THE 10TH CENTURY IN THE INTERPRETATION BY MARIN DRINOV

Abstract

The article deals with M. Drinov’s perception and evaluation of the enemies of Bulgaria in the Russo-Byzantine-Bulgarian confrontation of the tenth century. Particular attention is paid to the impact of Drinov’s personal socio-political views on his interpretation of the Byzantine-Bulgarian war of 966–972 and Prince Sviatoslav’s struggle for supremacy in the Balkans. The «anti-Byzantine position» of Drinov, though a common knowledge in historiography, remains almost without confirmation in his depiction of the Russo-Byzantine-Bulgarian conflict of 966–971. M. Drinov refrains from negative characterizations of Greeks, considering the conquest of Bulgaria by the Rus’ worse than Byzantine control. M. Drinov views Byzantines as a «lesser evil» for Bulgarians than the Rus’. This view is confirmed by the cited examples of the Rus’ army’s atrocities in Bulgaria, such as the execution of over three hundred boyars and twenty thousand civilian population. M. Drinov sympathizes with the Orthodox Emperors more than with the pagan Rus’ Prince; at least the actions of the Byzantines in the Bulgarian lands are not depicted negatively, although it is unlikely that they refrained from pillage. Turning the eastern areas of the Bulgarian state into a Byzantine province made them closer to the powerful Empire and was objectively a progressive development. The rule of the familiar Byzantine Empire, with its orderly system of government and shared Orthodox faith, appeared to M. Drinov a better outcome for Bulgarians. It was to assure a further development of Bulgarian society by following the lead of the brilliant Byzantine civilization. The possible submission to the rule of the cruel pagan Rus’ Prince Sviatoslav, on the other hand, would have thrown Bulgarians back into the recent barbarity, which they had managed to escape thanks to the Empire. Analyzing the context of Drinov’s study thus shows that, according to the scholar, Bulgarians saw in Byzantium their near future and were determined to follow the Byzantine example in developing their statehood. Sviatoslav’s Rus’, on the other hand, presented to them an image of their recent barbaric past to which they by no means wanted to return. In his study “Southern Slavs and Byzantium in the Tenth Century” M. Drinov came very near to the key idea in the conception of the Byzantine Commonwealth, formulated almost a hundred years later by D. Obolensky. This conception underscored the attractiveness of the Byzantine model for the ruling elites of the peoples that entered the imperial orbit. The elites’ wish to copy the Byzantine civilization paradoxically went hand in hand with hostility towards the Empire’s Universalist pretensions and with a desire to distance them from the Empire and to affirm their own independence. At the same time, when it was necessary to choose between Byzantium and a more backward semi-barbaric nation, the choice was unequivocally in favor of the Empire.