«...The archaeological map can never be considered finished»: the 1945 candidate’s dissertation of I. V. Fabritsius

In April of 1945 I. V. Fabritsius successfully defended her dissertation on the Archaeological Map of the Black Sea Maritime Coast in the Ukrainian SSR in the Institute for the History of Material Culture (IIMK), USSR Academy of Sciences, in Moscow. For a long time the information about this event was not readily available, and, therefore, it was controversial. The paper analyzes a set of earlier unknown archival documents, i.e. the variant of the Map prepared by I. V Fabritsius in the Ukrainian language for the defense of her dissertation; reviews of her dissertation by T. S. Passek and M. V Voevodskiy, who were her official opponents; information from the protocols of the IIMK Scientific Council. It took I. V. Fabritsius a long period of eleven years to prepare the Archaeological Map which became her dissertation for publication. At the defense of the dissertation the scholars noted a great scientific value of this paper, recognizing it as an important contribution to science. Presently, different copies of the Map are kept in several archives, including the Map of 1945 which is the earliest variant. Its unpublished part contains data on more than 480 sites. Today this piece of work by I. V. Fabritsius remains relevant as an irreplaceable source of information on the sites that have disappeared. The complete variant of the Map prepared by I. V. Fabritsius needs to be published as soon as possible.