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Crimean Goths were those Gothic tribes who remained in the lands around the Black Sea, especially in Crimea. They were the least-powerful, least-known, and paradoxically longest-lived of the Gothic communities.

A Gothic principality around the stronghold of Doros (modern Mangup) continued to exist through various periods of vassalage to the Byzantines, Khazars, Kipchaks, Mongols, Genoese and other empires until well into the 1500’s, when it was finally incorporated by the Khanate of Crimea and the Ottoman Empire. They were the remnants of the Ostrogoths who once had a huge kingdom north of the Black Sea. These Ostrogoths under Ermanaric (or Hermanric; i.e. "king of noble men") were overwhelmed by the Huns when the Huns migrated to the Russian steppe. The Ostrogoths became vassals of the Huns until the death of Attila when they revolted and regained independence. But like the Huns, these Goths in the Crimea never regained their lost glory.

While initially Arian Christians like other Gothic peoples, by the 500's the Crimean Goths were fully Orthodox. In the eighth century John of Gothia, an Orthodox bishop, led an unsuccessful revolt against Khazar overlordship.

Many Crimean Goths were Greek speakers and many non-Gothic Byzantine citizens settled in the region called "Gothia" by the government in Constantinople. Nonetheless, Crimean Gothic language texts from this region exist as late as the late 1500’s and Gothic communities appear to have survived intact until the late 1700’s, when many were deported by Catherine the Great. Their language vanished by the 1800’s.

The so-called Volga Germans, who could be found in southern Russia as late as World War II, were not Goths. They were a later population who spoke a German dialect, i.e. a West Germanic language, as opposed to the East Germanic Gothic language.

• Gothiscandza
• Gutasaga
• Ostrogoths
• Scandza
• Visigoths
• Wielbark culture

• Vasiliev, Aleksandr A. The Goths in the Crimea. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1936.