Crimean Goths are one of the most mysterious peoples in history. Having lived for almost a millennium in the Crimea, they disappeared without a trace in the 17th century - after the conquest of the peninsula by the Ottoman Turks.
Tribes ready
Some scholars believe that the Great Migration of Nations was provoked by the Goths, who drove the Vandals and Rugs from their lands. The Goths spoke Germanic - Gothic, and in the 4th century the legendary Bishop Wulfila created the Gothic alphabet for them, and soon translated the Bible, since it was the Goths who became the first Germanic tribes to adopt Christianity.
The Goths became famous for crushing the Roman legions, capturing Rome and conquering many lands, for which the Renaissance epoch, adoring the ancient classics, took revenge on them, making the word "Gothic" a synonym for the barbaric, and condemning the subsequent achievements of all Germanic peoples.
Resettlement to Crimea
Having moved to the lower reaches of the Vistula, the Goths started a chain reaction. Under pressure from barbarian tribes, the Roman Empire quickly fell, and the Goths spread their influence from Eastern Europe to the Volga and Crimea.
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In the Crimea, a part of the Goths subjugates the Alans, one of the Sarmatian Iranian-speaking nomadic tribes, after which they raid the peninsula together with them. In the historical sources of that time, there is even a memory of such a close union of the two peoples - the ethnonym Goto-Alans.
The Goths settled in the southern part of the Crimea and on the Kerch Peninsula. Then Europe was shocked by the advance of the Huns, or Xiongnu - nomads from Asia. The Goths at that time were between the Byzantine possessions, in particular, the largest city of Chersonesos, and the Huns.
The fortress of Doros became the stronghold of Gothia, after the conquest by the Khazars and until our time called Mangup-kale - a huge cave city, which is still a tourist mecca of Crimea. The isolated mountain plateau was supplied with drinking water from mountain springs, and therefore was a unique, half artificial and half natural fortification.
The Crimean Goths had a reliable alliance with the Byzantine Empire, from which the intellectual elite of Byzantium flocked to the peninsula, fleeing the persecution of the iconoclasts - educated monks, and once even the exiled Emperor Justinian II, and foreigners called their state "the country of forty castles."
From the 12th century, the Goths began to pay tribute to the Tatars and Polovtsians: even in the "Lay of Igor's Host", the Crimean Goths are described as a people burdened by a foreign yoke. Despite the difficult times, they continued to trade, and even mentions of their trade contacts with Novgorod (XII century) have come down to us. The worldwide reshuffle of forces affects the good neighbors of the Crimean Goths, the Byzantines, with whom the Trebizond Empire begins to compete.
Meanwhile, Genoese colonists buy the lands from Kafa (modern Feodosia), and then, with the help of an agreement with Khan Mamai, they found a small principality of Theodoro there, also called the "Principality of Gothia", displacing the Goths themselves closer to the mountains. From that moment the territory of the Crimean Goths stretched from Balaklava to Alushta - ancient Yambol and Aliston, and the most important fortresses passed into the hands of the Genoese.
So Gothia was divided into two parts, but the stubborn Goths did not surrender in this struggle, and continued to build fortresses - the Isars, and return their lands back. The Crimean Goths also showed themselves as successful politicians, having entered into the marriage of the prince's daughters with the emperor of Trebizond.
However, after a few victories, Gothia suffers a crushing defeat: the Turks take Kafa in 1475 (a fortress is now preserved), and then besiege Mangup, which leads to the destruction of the state of the Crimean Goths. The land falls into decay, finding itself on the outskirts of the Turkish lands, and the Gothic princely family is preserved in the boyar family of the Golovins - Gothic princes-emigrants who lived in Moscow. The Goth peasants, meanwhile, continued to live in isolation in the mountains, and were assimilated only after centuries.
The mystery of the Crimean Goths
Despite the fact that after the 9th century the word "Goth" became a personal name, and archaeologists could not find any newer direct Gothic sources, the Crimean Goths were known thanks to the historical documents of the neighboring countries.
But the fate of the Goths did not end with the fall of their state in the 15th century. At the end of the 16th century, the envoy of the Austrian emperor Ferdinand, Baron Ogier Ghislain de Busbeck, mentions in his letter that once, during a diplomatic mission in the Ottoman Empire, he met a man in Istanbul who claimed that he was a Crimean Goth. He forgot his native language, but his companion, a Greek, allegedly knew the Crimean Gothic language, and after a short conversation Busbek compiled a small Crimean Gothic dictionary, which is the only written monument of this language, similar to the Gothic of Wulfila's time.
In the 18th-19th centuries, among the Crimean Tatars, ethnographers find atypical-looking people who vaguely resemble the Crimean Goths in their anthropological characteristics, as a result of which the theory is born that the Goths continue to exist on the territory of Crimea. Nazi scientists are clinging to this theory, planning to annex Crimea to the Reich and create there "Gotenland", that is, the land is ready.
Thus, the "Gothic question" gave the Germans an excuse to present their historical rights to possession of the ancestral territory, the land of their ancestors. In 1942, an expedition was set up to the peninsula, during which Bakhchisarai and Mangup were examined. Hitler gave the order to populate the territory of Crimea in the future with German immigrants from South America and Palestine, or South Tyrol.
The population of the Crimea, flooded with German emigrants, according to the Fuehrer's plan, had to support this plan. However, the grand scheme failed: followed by the deportation of the Crimean Germans and the Second World War, which destroyed National Socialist Germany. Simferopol never became "Gothenburg" - the city of Goths, Sevastopol - "Gotenshafen", the Gothic harbor, and Crimea itself - "Gothenland"
Sergey Zotov