Hripsimeh Janpoladian-Piotrovskaya passed away
88
30.08.04
Aged 87, after a long and severe illness passed away Hripsimeh
Janpoladian-Piotrovskaya – the mother of the academician Mikhail Piotrovski
– the present head of the Hermitage museum and the widow of the academician
Boris Piotrovski who occupied that post for almost thirty years. A graduate
of the Yerevan University turned an outstanding archeologist-orientalist,
Hripsimeh Janpoladian-Piotrovskaya had found her destiny on the excavations
of the famous Karmir-Blur. It was on that expedition, having made way into
the manuals on Ancient history, that she met in 1941 Boris Piotrovski, then
a scientific collaborator of the Hermitage museum. The bronze statuette of
the Urartian war god (a not accidental coincidence with 1941), that
Hripsimeh Mikaelovna had found, introduced them to each other. They married
in 1944 in Yerevan where Piotrovski, dying in the Leningrad blockade from
emaciation, had been evacuated the year before. In Yerevan was born their
firstling – Mikhail. His vocation too became archeology. Still a school
student he was frequenting expeditions, and the first ever expedition salary
Mikhail spent on a small nephrite vase, a mascot-gift for his mother.
For many years, continuing her scientific work at the Archeology Institute
of the USSR Academy of Arts, Hripsimeh Piotrovskaya has been doing, maybe,
her principal life-work: keeping the family hearth warming the Piotrovski
house counter the uneasy soviet and post-soviet social-political winds. She
was also the editor of the works of the academician Boris Piotrovski
published posthumously: among them the encyclopedic `History of the
Hermitage museum,’ the diary `Travel notes’ and biographical notes `Pages
from my life.’ Being the mother of Mikhail Piotrovski and the wife of Boris
Piotrovski is a difficult pride and a joyous responsibility. She carried
them with dignity and tact. It is sorrowful to say about her – she was.