This paper is aimed at provoking the imagination of its readers rather than at giving any final settlement to a topos explored already in numerous Cyrillo-Methodian studies. The problems discussed here are related to the Byzantine Balkan policy as a background to Constantine’s mission to the Khazars. It seems to me that the Moravian mission of SS Cyril and Methodius came as an outgrowth of Constantine’s mission to the steppes. Moravia, Bulgaria and the Pontic steppes seem in many respects different parts of the one domain of the Byzantine ‘Northern policy’