Sergey Pavlovich Tolstov (russian: Сергей Павлович Толстов; 7 February 1907 – 28 December 1976) was a Russian and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

archaeologist and ethnographer. Tolstov was the organizer and the first director (between 1937 and 1969) of the Chorasmian Expedition credited with discovery and investigation of archeological monuments of Khwarezm. He is also the author of the book Old Khwarezm, the seminal work in the field. In 1953, Tolstov was elected the corresponding member of the

Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union The Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union was the highest scientific institution of the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1991, uniting the country's leading scientists, subordinated directly to the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (until 1946 ...

. Tolstov was born in Saint Petersburg, his father was a military officer. In 1930, he graduated from

Moscow State University M. V. Lomonosov Moscow State University (MSU; russian: Московский государственный университет имени М. В. Ломоносова) is a public research university in Moscow, Russia and the most prestigious ...

, where he studied at two faculties simultaneously: Physics and mathematics, and History and ethnology. Between 1929 and 1936 he was a researcher at the Museum of Peoples of the Soviet Union. In 1939, Tolstov was appointed the head of the newly created Department of Ethnography at Moscow State University, and in 1942 he became the director of the Ethnography Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union. This made him the highest ranked ethnographer in the Soviet Union.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tolstov, Sergey Pavlovich 1907 births 1976 deaths Moscow State University alumni Soviet archaeologists Soviet ethnographers Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Members of the German Academy of Sciences at Berlin Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie editors