International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Anna Tsypkina 
Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow / 
Archive of Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russian Federation; 
[e-mail]
A History of the Russian Expedition in Trebizond in 1916-1917
In 1916, when the Russian army captured Trebizond, a group of Russian historians headed 
by the academician F. I. Uspensky was sent there for historical, topographical and archaeological 
purposes. F.I. Uspensky, byzantinist and the author of “Studies in Trebizond Empire History’’ 
unfortunately didn’t publish there all the materials he got during the Trebizond expedition. These 
materials might be of interest for history of byzantine studies in Russia and for byzantinists, arts 
critics, historians of The First World War. The reason consisted mainly in the Russian civil war and 
some other private reasons of the participants.
Besides this, Uspensky was able to publish some scientific reports/articles about Trebizond 
expedition results. Some reports were presented to the Moscow Archaeological Society and the 
Russian Archaeological Society by the participants of the expedition. There were some occasional 
participants whose investigations weren’t published in Proceedings of the Russian Academy of 
Sciences (Известия (до 1917 г. – Императорской, потом Российской) Академии Наук), for 
example, F.M. Morozov, a representative of the Russian Red Cross, who spent a lot of time around 
monuments taking photos or telling the military and the administration’s members how to treat the 
monuments. His photos included wall paintings in the palace chapel of St. Anna, grottos’ paintings, 
rare photos of churches all around Trebizond, also have a scientific importance.
Some archival collections contain photos of the buildings which were later destroyed, for 
example, photos of the palace chapel. Due to some notes it was possible to put forward the proposal 
that a palace church was sanctified in honor of Saint Eugene. Moreover, we can reconstruct the 
palace church paintings due to unpublished photographs and notes in the Uspensky’s pocketbook.
Russian Academy of Science (or, at that time, Academy of Science of Saint-Petersburg) sent an 
expedition to Trebizond in cooperation with archaeological societies of Moscow and St. Petersburg, 
so it was much sponsored by the Russian Archaeological Society (Saint-Petersburg) and Moscow 
Archaeological Society headed by the first Russian woman-archeologist countess P.S. Uvarova and 
organized partially on her own means. People of different professions were participating in this 

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expedition: the architects and artists were also involved to make drawings and take photos. Some 
architectural measuring taken under the direction of Uspensky by a war engineer M. E. Kern haven’t 
been published yet and some drawings of N.B. Baklanov were found in 2015 in a private collection.
Although the Trebizond historical expedition was focused on monuments’ safety and 
investigation, its participants have made a considerable contribution to the Trebizond’s exploration in 
the XX century all over the world. Some excavations were carried out. The detailed process of research 
may be observed in Uspensky’s journal date by date. Moreover, recent archival investigations reveal his 
future plans of investigations in Trebizond and work conditions in Trebizond during the First World 
War. It is not yet clear how many materials have survived but the archival research of the last few years 
gave us a hope to find them and to discover further details of Trebizond’s art and architecture. 
The study was supported by RSF (The Russian Science Foundation/РНФ), research project № 
14–28–00213.