Pages: 381-408 | DOI: https://doi.org/10.55086/sp253381408

In 1939, the team of the State Hermitage headed by B. B. Piotrovsky started excavating the Karmir-blur fortress, a unique Urartian architectural site, at the ancient town of Teishebaini in the Armenian SSR. Vsevolod Sergeevich Sorokin started on an expedition to Karmir-blur in the summer 1947. After he had come from the war, he continued his studies of Caucasian archeology under B. B. Piotrovsky. This article presents Vsevolod’s three letters to his elder brother, Victor S. Sorokin , about his first expedition to Armenia and his part in the digs at the Urartian site. Later, Vsevolod Sorokin frequently came to Karmir-blur to dig and do office studies of the finds, some of which were to his credit; he worked as an artist and photographer, published a series of articles and defended a Ph.D. thesis entitled “Ancient settlements at Karmir-blur” (1955). The Sorokins’ epistolary collection is large: they were in correspondence with one another other from 1941 to 1984 (the year of death of the youngest brother, Sergei S. Sorokin, who, like his elder brother, was an archeologist and historian). The Sorokin brothers were interested in history and culture in a broad sense. They were keen on painting, music, ancient and modern architecture, history of construction. This accounts for Vsevolod Sorokin’s detailed description of the architecture of the Armenian capital. His letters share his learned deliberations about various interesting rcheological and ethnographic materials and facts.

Keywords: archaeologist Vsevolod Sorokin, Karmir-blur, Urartian culture, ancient eastern fortress, archaeological discoveries in Armenia, 1947 expedition

Information about author:

Alexander Sinitsyn (Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation). Candidate of Historical Sciences. The Dostoevsky Russian Christian Academy for the Humanities. Embankment of the Fontanka River, 15, Saint Petersburg, 191011, Russian Federation
E-mail: [email protected]
ORCID: 0000-0001-9229-0217