Russian Atlantology was quite unknown to the general reader in the West until the fall of communism. This was mainly due to a combination of the strictures of the communist regime and the language barrier.
It is accepted that Russian Atlantology began in the 18th century with brief references in a number of technical and poetic works. However it was not until the 19th century that Avraam Norov attempted the first serious scientific attempt to locate Atlantis. Following a study of Greek and Arabic sources Norov was convinced that Plato’s lost civilisation had been situated in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Later in the same century a new element was introduced to the subject with the ‘revelations’ of Elena Blavatsky and the creation of Theosophy. To this day her esoteric waffle is quoted and accepted unthinkingly by many otherwise rational beings.
In 1912, Vladimir Bogachev, a noted geologist published a short work on the geology of Atlantis entitled Atlantida. Bogachev lectured at the University of Dorpat in Estonia and is often labelled ‘the father of Russian Atlantology’. A few years later,
the poet and historian, Valery Bryusov, wrote of Atlantis flourishing at the
end of the last Ice Age. In 1923 the geographer, Boris Bobrynin, identified the
Guanches of the Canaries as the descendants of the Atlanteans.
The doyen of Russian atlantologists in the latter half of the 20th century was undoubtedly Nikolai Zhirov whose studies over many years were published in English in 1970 and republished in 2001[458]. It is a work of great erudition although it is a little dated as most of the material was originally published in Russian in the 1950’s. Zhirov uncompromisingly determined to promote the Atlantic as the original location of Atlantis.
More recently Viatcheslav Koudriavtsev published his thesis regarding the location of Atlantis on the Internet(a). He is convinced that it was located on the Celtic Shelf near the Scilly Isles. Vladimir Pakhomov is another supporter of the Atlantis in Atlantic school of thought and also promotes his views on the Internet(b).
In 1994 Vlaceslav Jurikov proposed that Atlantis had been located near the Lipari Islands and its refugees fled to the Ukraine resulting in the modern symbol of the Ukraine being the trident of Poseidon. Coincidentally, the Ukrainian connection has also received support from non-Russians, the exotic sounding Flying Eagle and Whispering Wind[138](c) and the Schoppes(d).
Alexander Voronin is the president of the Russian Society on Studying of the Problem of Atlantis, which has held three congresses on the subject. At the last congress, Alexander Gorodnitsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke controversially of the existence of highly advanced civilisations in the distant past. Voronin is also the chief editor of Atlantis: Problems, Searches, Hypothesesand President of Russian Society for Studying of the Problems of Atlantis (ROIPA).
(b) http://www.pakhomov.com/cryptogram.html
(c) http://www.atlantis-motherland.com/home.html
(d) http://www.atlantis-schoppe.de/
