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Gumilev is not a historian, but rather an ethnographer.
But he has some interesting works.
Personally, I believe that it was a kind of geopolitical alliance imposed on us by the Mongols, against the West, against the crusaders. But each principality had its own attitude.

The Mongols were completely unconcerned with the Western crusaders, if only because they posed no military threat to the Mongols. In general, there is a fundamental problem with nomadic peoples: they cannot build a state while remaining within the framework of their usual way of life. Central authority is simply not needed, as there is no economic need for it. And such essential attributes of a state as a capital, a royal court, and so on, imply a settled lifestyle, at least in the area around the capital. This leads to an increase in the settled population in that area, migration (voluntary or forced) of peasants and artisans there, which in a generation or two gives the typical Eastern structure of the state: a taxable agricultural population + a military elite, different from it in national composition. And the nomadic tribes continue to live their own lives, now weakly dependent on the state that they themselves created. And so it goes until the next demographic explosion in the Steppe, which generates new nomadic armies, sweeping away the softened military elite of neighboring states, their distant relatives. There is no mysticism here, just simple laws of economics and demography. It is on this process that we need to overlay the Mongol-Tatar yoke, the Golden Horde, and other proper names from that historical period. And correctly assign them characteristics - who they were and what role they played in this process. And emphasize that this process is not unique, it has occurred everywhere and repeatedly.