The book by the prominent historian of Russian diaspora Dmitry Rasovsky includes three interrelated works dedicated to the Turkic peoples who roamed the 6 Black Sea steppes in the 9th–13th centuries. The first to come here from the Volga region were the Pechenegs, then the Torks, Berendeys and several other tribes, about which, apart from their names, little is known. Later the Polovtsians appeared and drove their Turkic relatives partly to Bulgaria and Hungary, and partly to the border regions of Rus', where they were accepted into military service by the Russian princes. Under the general name of black hoods, these Turks in the 12th century played a very important role in the life of the Russian principalities and sometimes even decided who would rule in Kyiv. All this is described in the book by Dmitry Rasovsky. Dmitry Aleksandrovich Rasovsky (1902–1941) is a philosopher, ethnographer, historian and archaeologist, Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Prague. Written in the 1930s and then published in emigrant publications, his works are well known to specialists, but completely unknown to the average reader.