Mikhail Artamonov

Mikhail Illarionovich Artamonov (; in the village of Vygolovo, Tver Governorate, now Molokovsky District, Tver Oblast - July 31, 1972 in Leningrad) was a Soviet and Russian historian and archeologist, who came to be recognized as the founding father of modern Khazar studies. Biography Artamonov was born into a peasant family in Tver Governorate. He moved to Saint Petersburg when he was nine years old to pursue secondary education, including studying painting under Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and art history under Nikolai Sychov, as well as archaeology. He was an active participant in the Russian Revolution. Artamonov's scholarly career was centered on Leningrad University, where he taught from 1928, was a professor from 1935 and the head of the department of archaeology from 1949. He researched Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements by the Don River, in the North Caucasus and in the Ukraine. He excavated a great number of Scythian and Khazar kurgans and settlements (most famously, the Khazar fortress of Sarkel, which he discovered during the first excavation he arranged in 1929), and published a hefty monograph (Istoriya Khazar) on the Khazars in 1962. Early editions of this work (1937, 1939), which emphasized the enormous influence of the Khazars on the development of the early Rus' and other peoples, were denounced by Soviet authorities, compelling him to add a conclusion to his work stating essentially that they had in fact had no lasting influence.