“Sibling brothers Georgians... come from the land of the Black Sea army”: on the environment of the historian I.D. Popko

Abstract

Introduction. The history of Russia, in particular the North Caucasus, consists not only of various testimonies and facts, but also of the destinies and biographies of people. Some historical characters remain in history, others disappear into the “depths of the ages”, but there are still others about whom there are brief mentions in letters, diaries and documents. There are people who have made a significant contribution to culture and history, but the memories of them are erased from people’s memory. Two brothers, Karp and Ivan Gruzin, can also be attributed to such historical characters.
Materials and Methods. Based on documents stored in the archives of Kiev and Krasnodar, as well as printed sources of the XIX – the beginning of the XX c. an attempt is made to recreate the biography of the brothers and trace the details of their complex and difficult life path in the context of the history of the early XIX century.
Analysis. The focus was on the fate of two representatives of the Black Sea Cossacks, who managed to change their fate, graduate from the Kiev Theological Academy, become teachers of philosophy and Hebrew there, not to lose heart after being dismissed due to disagreements with Metropolitan of Kiev Yevgeny (Bolkhovitinov) and to start a new life in the capital. They conducted an extensive correspondence, of which only individual letters to Innokenty (Borisov) and K. S. Serbinovich have been preserved. There are references to them in several letters. Their circle of communication included the historian of the Cossacks, educator and bibliophile Ivan Diomidovich Popko, who visited them more than once in St. Petersburg.
Results. Thanks to such fragmentary and scarce information, it was possible to recreate the brothers’ life paths to a certain extent.