Ethnographer by the Grace of God: in Memory of Sergey Cheritsyn (July 9, 1954 — February 27, 2024)

Abstract. The essay is written in memory of the remarkable ethnographer and bright versatile person Sergei Chernitsyn, a graduate of the Historical Faculty at Rostov State University, who dedicated many years working in museums, scientific research in the field of history and ethnography of the Don Cossacks, teaching at higher educational institutions of Rostov-on-Don. The centerpiece of the essay is a story about the ethnographic expeditions of 1981–1982 in the Tarasovskiy district of the Rostov oblast, in which, according to the author, S.V. Chernitsyn’s professional and personal qualities were fully revealed: on the one hand, as an observant and extraordinarily thinking scholar and ethnographer-practitioner, skillfully proficient in the methodology of field research, on the other hand — as a person of subtle spiritual organization, considerate and sensitive, caring for someone else’s “I”, whether friends, colleagues, students or people who were the object of scientific research, his direct informants.

Keywords: Sergey V. Chernitsyn, Rostov State University, Faculty of History, ethnography, expeditions, Don Cossacks.