Pereyaslavets

The Tale of Bygone Years first mentions Pereyaslavts in connection with the 1st campaign of Prince Svyatoslav to Bulgaria:

“In the year 6475 ( 967 ). Svyatoslav went to the Danube to the Bulgarians. And both sides fought, and Svyatoslav defeated the Bulgarians, and took their cities 80 along the Danube, and sat down to reign there in Pereyaslavts, taking tribute from the Greeks. ”

When Svyatoslav had to return to Kiev to fight off the Pechenegs' raid, he informed his mother, Princess Olga , about the plans to transfer the capital of Russia to the Danube:

“I don’t like to sit in Kiev, I want to live in Pereyaslavtsy on the Danube - for there is the middle of my land, all the blessings flow there: from the Greek land - gold, pavoloks , wines, various fruits, from the Czech Republic and from Hungary silver and horses, from Russia but furs and wax, honey and slaves. ” ^[1]

After the death of Olga, Svyatoslav returned to Pereyaslavets, who had to fight off the Bulgarians with a fight. According to the annals, he was there during the war with Byzantium . The chronicle does not mention other cities in Bulgaria.

• Byzantine sources list different cities in connection with the Russo-Byzantine war. If we compare the events described in the ancient Russian chronicles and more detailed Byzantine sources, then Dorostol , the Bulgarian fortress on the Danube, could claim the role of Pereyaslavts. It was Dorostol Svyatoslav who beat the Bulgarians during the 2nd campaign to Bulgaria, and the main battles with the Byzantine army unfolded there. ^[2]

• Often in publications Pereyaslavets on the Danube is identified with the capital of the Bulgarian kingdom Preslav the Great , justifying the discrepancy with the annals of the ignorance of the ancient Russian chronicler in Bulgarian geography. According to Byzantine sources, Svyatoslav captured Preslav , but did not make it his residence. Pereyaslavets remained the residence of the Bulgarian Tsar Boris II , and the Russian garrison also stood in it. In addition, Preslav was quite far from the Danube. Perhaps, in the understanding of the chronicler, the capital of Preslav was mixed with the insignificant (in the 10th century) town Preslav Maly, which was really on the Danube and gained fame after the Russo-Byzantine war of 970–971 .

• Some historians tend to see in Pereyaslavts the Bulgarian city of Preslav Maly (or Preslavets), recorded in Byzantine sources as Μικρᾶ Πρεσθλάβα. ^{[3] The} Bulgarian historian Vasil N. Zlatarski located Pereyaslavts on the Danube in Dobrudja , downstream of the Romanian city of Cernavoda. ^{[4] The} commercial river port of Preslavets gained fame and significance as a shopping center only in the XI century , the time of the creation of the first Russian chronicles. The 12th-century Arab geographer Al-Idrisi called Pereyaslavets ( Barasklafisa ) the city where trade routes between Galician Rus and Byzantium converged.

• In the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron, Pereyaslavets is identified with Preslav Maly, but is identified with Marcianopolis (founded by the Roman emperor Trajan ), whose ruins are not far from the Bulgarian Varna (far from the Danube).

• Academician F. I. Uspensky , who wrote fundamental works on the history of Byzantium, believed that Pereyaslavets was "the ancient capital of the Bulgarian khans " ^[5] and was located near sovr. the Romanian city of Isakcha near the mouth of the Danube.

• In Bulgaria, in the district of Silistra, there is the village of Mal'k Preslavets (Maly Preslavets), which got its name in modern times.

• In Romania, in Dobrudja, on the tributary of the Danube, there is a village Nufăru , which until 1968 was called Prislav . It is assumed that in this place there could be a chronicle Pereyaslavets.