A Stranger’s Visit from the ‘Iron Curtain’

3.1 The Visit

As can be seen both from his diary and the existing ticket, Kisselyoff’s voyage began on Thursday the 3rd of May 1962. The departure time was 09:25 in the morning and the Professor had seat 6a, close to the plane’s window, and could watch the landscape passing by and make some notes about it in his diary (2).

As there was no direct connection between Cyprus and the USSR at that time, the travel from Moscow to Nicosia was complex: at first S.V. Kisselyoff went to Prague, where he changed planes and departed for Zurich, where he had 7 hours to wait for a new plane to Athens. He stayed in Athens for one night at the Lido Hotel, and early in the morning took off for Nicosia, where he finally arrived at about 8:00 a.m. on Friday, the 4th of May.

As can be seen from the notes in Prof. Kisselyoff’s diary, this long journey to Cyprus, during which he could see three other foreign countries (Czechoslovakia, Switzerland and Greece) impressed him very much. In his short remarks he mentions the picturesque land and riverscape of the Vltava River in Prague, the uniform (with magendawid) of the Israel airlines stewardess, the unusual hats of men from Bayern or Tirol, the famous Türler’s watch shop, the monument to Oscar Bider in the airport of Zurich, and the sunrise over Athens in the morning (3‑4). In the airport of Athens, he copied three inscriptions which he saw: “ΑΠΑΓΟΡΕΥΕΤΑΙ Η ΕΞΟΔΟΣ”, “ΑΠΑΓΟΡΕΥΕΤΑΙ ΤΟ ΚΑΠΝΙΣΜΑ” and “ΠΥΛΗ 4” – with translations into Russian – trying in that manner to take his first steps in learning modern Greek.

The seat which the professor took on Scandinavian Airline System (SAS) aeroplane offered him the opportunity to view Cyprus from above. When they approached in from the bay of Morphou, he noted:

We are passing over a plain, which is limited from the South and from the North by rather high mountains. The villages are surrounded with gardens, the fields are bare; apparently rich in sand and clay. (4)

At the airport of Nicosia, he was warmly welcomed by a group of Cypriots from the Friendship Society, who honoured him with a bouquet of roses. Among this group there was the Russian-speaking Cypriot communist Christophoros Ioannides, who later accompanied Kisselyoff as an interpreter in his journey across Cyprus. Member of the Central Committee of the AKEL party, he had studied history and archaeology in Prague and spoke English, Czech and Russian. In the 1970s he was the permanent representative of AKEL on the editorial board of The World Marxist Review (also known as The Problems of Peace and Socialism) in Prague.¹¹

There were also two representatives of the Soviet embassy – Boris Andreyevich Morozov and Anatoly Vladimirovich Pripisnov (both the third secretaries of the Embassy of the USSR). The former is mentioned in Kisselyoff’s diary several times and his visiting card is also stored among Kisselyoff’s files. Morozov was evidently responsible for minding the professor and accompanied him during the whole visit.

Professor Kisselyoff stayed in the best and most fashionable hotel in Nicosia – the Ledra Palace – and resided in room 138, which cost £2 and 607 mils,¹² with meals and tax included. It is remarkable that among the photos taken by the professor in Cyprus, the first five frames represent different views of the hotel, and one cadre is marked: “My room is on the second [i.e. the first in Russian denomination] floor on the corner” (4).

After six hours of rest, Kisselyoff once again met the representatives of the Friendship Society, which elaborated the preliminary program of the visit for the next 9 days, taking into account that after the meeting with P. Dikaios (expected for the next day) there could have been some changes to the itinerary. The plan presumed that almost every day, from the 5th until the 13th of May, the professor would visit a different region of Cyprus and see monuments in the following order: Kyrenia, Larnaca, Paphos (2 days), Choirokoitia, Salamis, Vouni, and Soloi. Thursday the 10th of May and Saturday the 12th of May were reserved for the Cyprus Museum, where some lectures were expected (probably Kisseloyff himself gave lectures on the actual issues of Soviet archaeology, as he did during his visits to China and Hungary). As we can understand, from both the short notes in the diary and the photos, the main features of this plan were successfully realised.

After these preparations Kisselyoff went to see Nikolay Vasilyevich Aksenov, the KGB agent, who had worked in Cyprus since February 1961.¹³ “A pleasant general talk. The force of democracy. Letters. I stay to attend the report on the USSR” (5). The last phrase presumes that this meeting took place in some official or public place (probably in the Embassy of the Soviet Union in Nicosia or in the headquarters of any Soviet organisation in Cyprus). According to unwritten rules, the official position of Prof. Kisselyoff required such consultations with representatives of the Soviet intelligence service and control over him. As for the ‘letters’ mentioned in the note, it is not possible to be sure, but considering that Kisselyoff was a member of Communist Party and has already been abroad with responsible missions, it should not be excluded that the occasion of his visit has been used to transfer some delicate sealed messages either from the USSR or back home. It is noteworthy that, for all this ‘pleasant talkʼ Kisselyoff uses the expression “the power of democracy”, as Soviet official and unofficial foreign policy considered the independent Republic of Cyprus to be the result of a progressive union between the local working class, an anti-imperialistic circle of intellectuals, studying youth, and even clergy who achieved the liberation of their country from the control of the UK.

At the end of the evening the professor visited his new fellow B.A. Morozov’s place, drinking a dry white wine called ‘Aphrodite’ – this episode has been curiously summarised with a short note: “A night of torments”.¹⁴

The next morning, the 5th of May, at Ledra Palace, started with an English breakfast – a new type of meal for the Soviet voyager, and thus specially noted in the diary. By 9:00 a.m. the professor and his company went to the Department of Antiquities and met its Director, Porphyrios Dikaios. Kisselyoff characterised him as “a courteous European” and added that the books brought from Moscow as a gift had certain influence and made their communication more friendly and close. During this conversation, Vassos Karageorghis joined them and was also introduced to the foreign guest, the colleagues discussed the plan of Kisselyoff’s visit and after that they took a short tour through the Cyprus museum. Kisselyoff enjoyed the exposition very much and, despite the relatively short time at his disposal, the scholars found several topics for discussion, such as the ornament of Neolithic Combed Wares (Kisselyoff named it “spur-like ornament”), bronze daggers, the carbon dating of Choirokoitia layers, and the discoveries of Schaeffer in Ras-Shamra. Dikaios was pleased when Kisselyoff recognised the clay model of the sanctuary from Vounous, published in the French archaeological magazine Syria (Dikaios 1932). Kisselyoff also noticed that a bronze item from Enkomi was a shepherd’s crook, but not a sceptre, as attributed by Schaeffer. In discussing the disputed questions of Enkomi and Ugarit relative stratigraphy and chronology, Kisselyoff also supported Dikaios point of view against Schaeffer’s interpretation (Kisselyoff 1962, 6; Karageorghis 2007, 53‑4).

The Soviet guest was much impressed when visiting the rooms with archaic sculptures, but his note concerning terracotta figures from Agia-Irini (“Millions of terracotta statues and figurines from one tomb (Sic!)” Kisselyoff 1962, 7) demonstrates that in a flow of items, emotions and explanations he could not understand everything correctly. At the end of the tour Kisselyoff saw ‘a cryptʼ with emulations of different burials from the Neolithic to the Iron Age and found them exposed in a “very mysterious manner”. After that the first meeting with Cypriot colleagues was over and the Soviet Professor departed for Kyrenia guided by a significant escort: Ioannides as interpreter, the Soviet diplomat B.A. Morozov, a Cypriot teacher and amateur local historian, whose surname Kisselyoff spelled – evidently incorrectly – as Popriannou (Kyprianou or Papaioannou?), and the driver from the Soviet Embassy, Mikhail Ivanovich.

On their way to the North coast the group made their first stop in Bellapais, where they visited the abbey and had coffee with salted peanuts for a snack. In Kyrenia the group visited the castle, saw the harbour and a tourist liner from Yugoslavia with West German tourists aboard (the note on them is followed by a remark on the close relations between West Germany and Archbishop Makarios III (“friends of Makarios”)) (8) – the information on current political affairs evidently provided by the Professor’s companions, either from the embassy or from Cypriot ‘sympathisers’ of the USSR. After Kyrenia they went to Lampousa to see the remains of the monastery, the church of Agios Eulalios, and the remains of the ancient cemetery “excavated by Americans and looters”. Then the group turned back to Nicosia, passing by the Castle of Saint-Hilarion (erroneously named Saint-Laurent in the diary).¹⁵ Kisselyoff devoted the evening to writing letters to his wife and the preparation of a lecture.

The next day, the 6th of May, was dedicated to Larnaca. The professor and his companions began their trip rather early, at 07:30 a.m., and when they arrived in Larnaca there was an official meeting with the Mayor Georgos Christodoulides – a member of AKEL –, and other members of local municipality (9). After a short greeting event in the lobby of some hotel (incidentally, Kisselyoff noted that Christodoulides’ daughter Vera was, at that time, a student at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples’ Friendship University in Moscow) the group set out for Hala-Sultan Tekke and some representatives of the local community joined them. They visited the mosque and Kisselyoff determined the Umm Haram tomb as a sort of dolmen. After the mosque he had some time to visit the ancient settlement of the Late Bronze Age and walked back and forth across the field in the hope of finding any ceramic shred, but without great success. Kisselyoff also took a couple of photos walking in the imposing palm grove near the mosque, and then the group left for Kiti.

Being unfamiliar with local Cypriot toponymy, Kisselyoff confused the names Kiti and Kition in his diary – this was in fact about the former (10). They saw Panagia Angelloktisti church and the unique mosaic inside of it, and then returned to Larnaca, where they visited the house of the Pierides family and saw their collection. Kisselyoff met Mrs. Theodora and Mr. Demetris Pierides (who knew some greeting words in Russian), found the collection very imposing and was especially impressed by the number and quality of medieval glazed bowls and Roman and Hellenistic glass, as well as by the servant meeting them at the entrance and by huge araucarias in the garden. At the end of the visit, he took a group photo with the hosts of the house at the entrance – we can count ten persons, including Mrs. Theodora Pierides, Mr. Demetris Pierides, Ch. Ioannides and probably the activists of AKEL from Larnaka.¹⁶ The other photos represent the monument to Kimon at the seafront and Agios Lazaros church and thus indicate the other objects visited in Larnaca. The group had lunch in some restaurant to the East of the city, at the seashore and then came back to Nicosia.

The notes concerning the following days of the trip are not so rich in details. Kisselyoff left several white pages to describe them afterwards, but probably had no free time for it, so we should use the evidence of the photos, some visiting cards and postcards, plus some short notes and remarks at the end of his notebook.

The 7th and the 8th of May were envisaged for visiting Paphos, but it is more probable that on the former date Kisselyoff and his companions arrived in Limassol. At the town hall they met the Mayor of Limassol, Kostas Partasides, a significant public figure of AKEL and one of the leaders of Cypriot trade unions (80‑1).

Besides this meeting, Kisselyoff visited the Limassol Museum at Lemesos castle, observed the archaeological objects from the excavations of Sotira, Erimi, and other sites, and classified them as comparable to the items of Chalcolithic and Early-Middle Bronze Age he had examined in the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia. A short note on the “huge Mycenaean pithos from Amathus” (81) reflects his misunderstanding of the famous limestone vase from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite. Then, the professor visited the archaeological site of Kourion, the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylatis and Kolossi Castle.

The next day, the 8th of May, was evidently devoted to Paphos. The travellers drove to Petra tou Romiou and saw the birthplace of Aphrodite. Prof. Kisselyoff took three photos of a picturesque view, and on the reverse of the offprint he wrote later, in a poetic verse-like manner:

The place, where Aphrodite was born from the foam of the sea.

On behalf of a local AKEL organisation the professor was received by the second Secretary, Kostas Sophokleous, who gave him a set of colour postcards featuring views of Cyprus. The cards depicted the harbour of Paphos, its medieval fort, St. Paul’s pillar, scenes from rural life at Alakati, the view of Hala Sultan Tekke, and another Muslim minaret. On the reverse sides of the cards Kostas Sophokleous made kind and friendly dedications, unsuccessfully trying to reproduce the difficult full name of the Russian academic: instead of the correct ‘Sergey Vladimirovich Kisselyoff’ he wrote rather “Σεργέϊ Δημήτρεεβιτς Κισιλέφ” (Sergey Dmitrievich Kiselyoff, i.e., the son of Dmitry), or “Σεργίεβιτς Κισιλεφ” (Sergeevich Kisselyoff, i.e., the son of Sergey), thus confusing the first name and patronymic of his guest.

There were several locations in Paphos that were interesting to the archaeologist. First and foremost, the newly discovered mosaics in Kato-Paphos. In the rush of the visit, Prof. Kisselyoff wrongly described the mosaic scene with Icarios from the House of Dionysus as a fresco (80). Afterwards, the group visited the ‘Tombs of the Kings’ and the Paphos District Archaeological Museum (Prof. Kisselyoff mentioned “the museum in the mosque”). The visiting cards stored in the Kisselyoff’s files allow us to conclude that the professor met Georgos S. Eliades – a local Paphian intellectual, archaeologist, ethnologist and founder of the Ethnographic Museum, who also served as the honorary curator of the Paphos District Museum. It is likely that G.S. Eliades guided Kisselyoff during his visit to Paphos and perhaps to the Paphos area. Another visiting card from the file reveals that among the Paphian hosts of the Soviet scholar Dr. Nikos D. Mavronicolas – a lawyer, parliament member, and AKEL-backed representative in the Greek Chamber of Representatives.

Beyond archaeological sites and museums, Prof. Kisselyoff also visited the Gymnasium of Paphos, meeting its principal, Pavlos Pavlides, and vice-principal Savvas Koupatos (82). Their photographs, taken at the entrance of the gymnasium’s portico, includes Dr. G.S. Eliades and two dogs. It is the only image the Professor captured in Paphos with his camera. Notably, G.S. Eliades was also a teacher at the same school. S.V. Kisselyoff mentioned Pavlos Pavlides in his diary once more when noting a project to organise teacher training courses for Cypriots in the USSR. In the page margins, he emphasised: “Pavlides!” – as if he considered him as possible candidate for the project (83).

The group also visited Kouklia, where Prof. Kisselyoff examined the site and inspected the museum’s artefacts, particularly noting the significant number of syllabic inscriptions stored in three rooms. There, he realised three sketches: a head wearing the double crown (with ‘ureaeus’ on the forehead accentuated) from the Louvre, the coloured wings of the sculpted sphinx from the Marcello ‘siege mound’, and a limestone capital shaped like a lotus flower from the same assemblage.

After Kouklia, Kisselyoff and his companions travelled the northwest to see the Vouni Palace and the ancient theatre of Soloi. Surprisingly, no surviving photos or drawings documents this part of the trip, and only a few words in his notes summarise the guides’ narrative, which echoed E. Gjerstad’s interpretation of the sites:

The palace was Persian, then it became Greek… Soloi against Vouni.

The tourist brochure A Brief History and Description of the Vouni Palace, issued by the Department of Antiquities and found in Kisselyoff’s files, may partly explain this brief commentary.

The next day, the 9th of May, began with a new trip to Choirokoitia. This time, it was Porphyrios Dikaios himself, the excavator of the site, who guided his Soviet colleague and companions. He is depicted in at least three of the ten photos taken in Choirokoitia. Dikaios went down into the trench, showed and explained everything to his Soviet colleague and gave him, as a souvenir, the touristic guidebook A Brief Guide to the Neolithic Settlement of Choirokoitia with his autograph in French:

à Monsieur le Professeur Kiseliov, souvenir de sa visite à Khirokitia, 9/5/62.

In the other rare photo, we can see Kisselyoff himself standing in the trench, next to the stone foundation of one of the circular buildings, rather confusingly, left hand with his hat hidden behind his back while right hand touching his forehead. The edge of his diary can be seen in his left pocket. It was an almost unique moment of the trip, when the Professor gave his camera to someone else to get photo of his own.

The trip to the Neolithic site took only the first half of the day, while in the afternoon the professor began a thorough examination of the exhibition in the Cyprus Museum. It took him three more days (the 10th, the 13th and the 14th of May) to complete this task, and the notes and drawings made in the museum occupied 21 sheets of the diary (i.e. about 30% of all inscribed space) (14‑28). These pages are full of chronological indications, copies of ornamentation patterns, sketches of interesting objects, sometimes made with an indication of the scale, explaining remarks and the ideas born during the examination.

To supplement these notes the professor purchased a number of coloured and black-and-white postcards depicting the most prominent items in the museum: vessels of Neolithic, Early Bronze, Mycenaean and Early Iron Ages; terracotta figurines from Agia Irini; the statue of Aphrodite from Soloi; the sceptre from Kourion-Kaloridziki; a clay model of a sanctuary from Vounous; a picrolite idol; the bronze statue of Septimius Severus; several limestone statues; the reproduction of the mosaic from Kiti.

Part of the next day, the 10th of May, was dedicated to the professor’s lecture (Kisselyoff 1962, 5, 8, 80; Karageorghis 2007, 66). Unfortunately, no further details have survived, nor do we have records of the second lecture he gave on the 12th of May. The latter is marked in the diary as “common”, suggesting it was more public (likely held at the Cyprus-USSR-Friendship Society), while the first may have been addressed to the colleagues at the Department of Antiquities. Although the texts have not survived, based on Kisselyoff’s lecture drafts from Hungary in 1950, and his report to the Soviet Academy of Sciences following his first visit to China, we can infer the main topics: the success of Soviet archaeology and historical research, the wide range of studies conducted in the USSR on monuments from various epochs, the new possibilities for writing the histories of newly independent peoples free from class and colonial oppression, and the immense value of international collaboration (Kisselyoff 1950a).¹⁷ He might have spoken about his own excavations in South Siberia and Mongolia, though these were somewhat removed from his Cypriot colleagues’ interests. The work of his Institute of Archaeology colleague Tatiana Passek, who excavated Tripolye and contributed to settlement chronology, was more relevant to Mediterranean Bronze Age archaeology. As editor-in-chief of the Soviet Journal of Ancient History, he could have also discussed the study of classical antiquity in the USSR, possibly touching on Professor Solomon Lurie’s research on Linear B, conducted in parallel with M. Ventris and J. Chadwick.

Unlike his lectures in early Communist China or the Hungarian People’s Republic, Kisselyoff could not assume the role of an ‘Elder (or even Big) Brother’ in Cyprus. Cypriot archaeologists, though fewer in number, were well-educated professionals who did not require indoctrination in Marxist methodology. The confrontational rhetoric Kisselyoff had employed during the Stalinist epoch was useless in Cyprus. As he observed upon meeting Dikaios and Karageorghis, they treated him as “courteous Europeans”, which likely influenced his own manner and behaviour. This shift aligned with Soviet foreign policy goals under Nikita Khrushchev, who, six years earlier, had declared a new diplomatic approach at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party. Soviet archaeology, represented by Kisselyoff, had to offer something more concrete than just academic tomes on Soviet or World History written in Russian. Unfortunately, the details of the lecture, audience reactions, and any subsequent discussions remain unknown.

On the 11th of May, Kisselyoff and his group toured the eastern part of the island – Famagusta, Salamis and Enkomi. Photos indicate that the interactions between archaeologists became more informal and friendly. Dikaios once again hosted the group, organising a small banquet with wine on the veranda of the dig house in Enkomi, and the Soviet delegation received an authentic experience of Cypriot hospitality. Notably, Kisselyoff appeared in a photograph sitting side by side with Dikaios, both smiling. His diary, however, only contains a concise chronological and stratigraphic scheme of Enkomi as outlined by Dikaios (Kisselyoff 1962, 85).

A significant number of photos (12) were taken in Salamis, where Kisselyoff met V. Karageorghis again. Evidently, the site made a strong impression on him. The group visited the gymnasium, theatre, and royal necropolis, where Ch. Ioannides descended into the dromos of one of the tombs. They also conversed with local workers employed at the excavation. Kisselyoff showed particular interest in the use of machinery for clearing excavation debris.

On the 12th of May, Kisselyoff met with Konstantinos Spyridakis, Chairman of the Greek Cypriot Assembly and the first Minister of Education (Kisselyoff 1962, 80, 83; Karageorghis 2007, 60). The meeting was attended by Soviet diplomats N.V. Aksenov and V.V. Pushkin, highlighting its significance.

Dr. K. Spyridakis, an archaeologically and historically inclined educator, probably discussed organising teacher training courses for Cypriots in the USSR. The diary records details such as delegation sizes, payment arrangements, and visit scheduling (Kisselyoff 1962, 83).

At the top of the list of the people he met in Cyprus, Kisselyoff mentioned Andreas Papadopoulos, the Minister of Communications and Works, who was the member of the government responsible for the Department of Antiquities (79). Probably their conversation took place on the same day, and if it was not a mere protocol meeting, they could discuss the prospect of future collaboration with the Institute of Archaeology of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. However, no other traces of this discussion remain.

Next morning, the 13th of May, the Professor began with writing the report – it was probably the summary of his meetings of the previous day (29). Upon finishing this work, by 10 a.m. he went once more to the Cyprus museum, where bought postcards representing ancient items and the historical landscape of Famagusta and Kyrenia, and leaflets with description of the archaeological sites. After that, he finished the examination of the exhibition.

The cards and tourist brochures were not the only souvenirs that the professor brought home from Cyprus. After Kisselyoff’s passing, his wife and colleague, Dr. Lidya Evtykhova, transferred four ancient Cypriot vessels to the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, which could only have originated as a result of this trip: a White Painted III small juglet (Cat. no. 172), a White Painted III-IV bowl (Cat. no. 181), a Bichrome IV oinochoe (Cat. no. 259) and a krater (Cat. no. 290). It is uncertain if these vases were a donation from the Department of Antiquities or acquired through other means (Akimova et al. 2014). As the professor’s widow later sold these items to the museum, this suggests that they must be personal belongings, not a collection which was, from the very beginning, intended to be transferred to any special scientific or public storage.

Rest part of the day was devoted to the visit to Famagusta, where the professor admired the Gothic architecture and Venetian fortifications, as evident from his photographs. He also met with Mayor Andreas Pouyouros, a lawyer and politician who had led the city since 1953 (Kisselyoff 1962, 79) and was the President of the Friendship Society ‘Cyprus-USSR’. From this meeting, he likely received an envelope containing photo postcards depicting Famagusta’s newly built kindergarten, showcasing its façade, interior, and children’s activities. These images symbolised the Republic’s social progress, aligning well with Soviet Cold War visual propaganda, which emphasised peace, education, and collective well-being.

The final day of the visit, the 14th of May was also partly devoted to the Cyprus museum and then to some meetings with activists from the Friendship Society. Among them was Eugenia Paleologou-Petronda – the famous Greek writer and activist, established in Cyprus since 1960. She gave her visiting card to Prof. Kisselyoff with the wish “Bon voyage” (IA RAN Ф. 12, b. 78). Next morning, the 15th of May, he left for Athens.

S. Kisselyoff stayed in Athens for several days, visiting the Athenian Acropolis and the Daphne Monastery. He also thoroughly examined the National Archaeological Museum and paid a daily visit to Mycenae (Kisselyoff 1962, 43‑72). He spent at least four days there continuing to Vienna, where he also stayed for some time, visiting Schönbrunn Palace and other sites (76‑7), before finally returning to Moscow. If the route calculations in his diary were accurate, he arrived on May 25, not by direct flight but via Warsaw (78). Thus, the last foreign trip of his life came to an end.

3.2 Remarkable Comparisons

Although, by the time of his visit to Cyprus, the professor was a seasoned traveller who had been abroad numerous times, this trip was unique as it marked the first time he saw countries beyond the ‘Iron Curtain’.

Experiencing a foreign country under unfamiliar circumstances, Kisselyoff compared elements of this new reality to his own known world. He often drew parallels between foreign landscapes and his homeland, using his ‘mental map’ to make sense of what he observed. His diary provides valuable insight into this process.

Mountains in Switzerland are characterised as:

picturesque view, like our Urals. (3)

The mountains on the way from Nicosia to the north looked “like in Crimea” (7). The cellars of Bellapais seemed:

like the prison in the Sudak fortress, but more substantial. (8)

The mountain and seaside view in Kyrenia:

already seems to be not Crimea, but like the Caucasus shore at Ochemchir or at Poti. (8)

Kyrenian castle was like a decoration in the Soviet film Othello (issued in 1955), created using the real Genoese fortifications in Akkerman (Ukraine) and Sudak (Crimea) (8). The way from Nicosia to Larnaca:

like in Koktebel (Crimea), but longer and flanked by rows of cypress trees. (9)

Larnaca town:

fully Eastern in its appearance, looks like Old Town in Baku, but more accurate, the streets are paved and coloured with advertisements. (9)

Larnaca seafront:

looks like Sukhumi, but the palm-trees are of two-and a half-storied height. (9)

Mosaic in Panagia Angelloktisti in Kiti:

much alike the scene of Annunciation in the Agia-Sophia. (i.e. the Old Russian Cathedral of Agia Sophia in Kiev, not in Constantinople – dated to 11th century AD). (10)

Notably, Kisselyoff was most captivated by the combination of mountain landscapes and picturesque sea views in Cyprus. Having spent his life in continental Russia, where his archaeological excavations took place in regions like South Siberia, Khakassia, and Mongolia, he compared Cyprus primarily to the few warm seaside destinations accessible to Soviet citizens: Crimea, the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, and Baku, the capital of Soviet Azerbaijan, which at the time was a multiethnic and multireligious city with a significant Russian and Armenian population coexisting alongside Muslim Turks (referred to in Russian imperial terminology as ‘Caucasus Tatars’) until the tragic events of the 1980s.

The Venetian fortifications in Cyprus reminded him of a closely related architectural parallel – the Genoese fortresses and castles in the northern Black Sea region, such as Sudak (Sougdaia) and Akkerman, which he had either seen personally or in films.

Another important comparison the professor made concerned the food prices. In his diary there are two pages containing price-lists – one for Athens (86) and another for Vienna (77). He meticulously recorded the prices of goods that were scarce in the USSR at the time: various types of coffee and chocolate, wine and Martini, poultry, biscuits, honey, natural lemonade, and fruits, as well as the cost of dinner. On a separate page, he also made financial calculations regarding expenses in Cypriot pounds, including transportation costs, fuel prices, and reasonable daily wages for workers (81), suggesting that he was estimating the budget required for a potential archaeological expedition.

This tendency to draw comparisons extended to his examination of museum exhibitions, where he made professional observations, seeking visual similarities to establish cultural links and chronological synchronisations between geographically dispersed ancient civilisations.

For instance, in the Philia culture, the spur-like shell pendants reminded to of those from the Catacomb culture of the second half of the 3rd millennium BC (29). The decoration on a large Red Polished Ware bowl from Marki, adorned with terracotta figurines standing on a special ledge, resembled decorative principles from the Cucuteni-Tripolye culture – a connection he found “of exceptional interest!” (32). A Mycenaean krater from Pyla-Verghi (Karageorghis 1968b, pl. II, 1) struck him as analogous to examples from Tiryns (Kisselyoff 1962, 36).

A miner’s tools displayed in the Cyprus museum reminded him of analogues from Sukhumi, Soviet Georgia (39). On one of the Syro-Palestinian painted jugs he found some ornamental motifs close to the Hittite depictions of ornamental birds (34). An Early Bronze Age jug seemed to him very similar to ceramics from Jordan (material he knew via publications in archaeological periodicals) (29). Gold bracelets with zoomorphic protomes on the edges reminded him of the items form North Pontic tumuli and the Treasure of Oxos (41), and he mentioned that other jewellery in the exhibition were like some items from Mycenae (42).

During the visit to Enkomi, Prof. Kisselyoff noted the stratigraphy of the site and its interpretation by Dikaios, and emphasising that the date of destruction of the Stratum II (Late Bronze II) coincided with the destruction of Troy VIb (85).

The search of analogies has been continued also during the visit to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, where some tools resembled the items from Caucasus, while one bronze chisel looked like the tool from Tripolye, Stratum C2 (50).

He noted the ceramics and jewellery from Poliochni looked like items from Troy (48), and a lion-shaped pendant resembled the finds from the Maykop culture of the North Caucasus (47). Some stone vessels from Mycenae have been attributed as similar to analogues from Mochlos, and a famous crystal duck-shaped ladle from Mycenae resembled both a cosmetic spoon from Egypt and the ornithomorphic handles of wooden artefacts from the Shigir peat assemblage (Middle Ural region). The sickles from Mycenaean tombs also reminded him of analogues from Siberia: “Wholly Siberian sickles!” (56) and daggers were attributed as having “Scythe-Siberian appearance” (57). Examining zigzag-ornaments on the ceramic objects from Siros, he noted their similarities with Balkan patterns (70).

Finally, concerning one type of arrowhead found by Ch. Tsountas Mycenaean Tomb of Clytemnestra, he recorded “Like in Cyprus”, clearly referring to recent Cypriot impressions (57).

The professional point of view and special skill of finding similarities between different monuments and material culture which are revealed by Kisselyoff’s diary notes reflect his conceptual approach to the object of his research and teaching. For several decades he gave, at the Moscow State University, a fundamental course of lectures entitled The Bronze Age of the Old World and, by the beginning of the 1960s, he decided to write a sort of concluding monograph on this topic. N.Ya. Marr’s academic conceptualisation, once dominant in archaeological circles of the USSR, presumed that similar social and economic conditions provoked similar traits of material culture. It has been widely criticised (also by Kisselyoff himself) since I.V. Stalin’s article Marxism and Problems of Linguistic (1950), but in fact the latent influence of this idea continued to shape the state of minds and influenced the attempts to reveal similarities in the material culture of ancient societies, which existed synchronically or at the same phase of social development (Klein 2014, 141, 364‑71). Anyway, a special interest in the forms of different working tools and wares, decorative motifs and patterns was considered to be key aspects for writing ancient history, and a close friend and colleague of S. Kisselyoff, Prof. Artemy Artsikhovsky, proclaimed it as:

Archaeology is history armed with a spade. (144‑55)