Sukhorukov, Vasilii

Born 1795; died Aug. 13 (25), 1841, in Novocherkassk. Russian historian.

Sukhorukov graduated from the University of Kharkov in 1815. He served in cossack military institutions and collected material on the history and way of life of the Don Cossacks. In St. Petersburg in 1824, jointly with the Decembrist A. O. Kornilovich, he published the historical almanac Russkaia starina, which contained historical and ethnographic data on the Don Cossacks of the 17th and 18th centuries. For his association with K. F. Ryleev, A. A. Bestuzhev, and other Decembrists, Sukhorukov was sent in 1827 to the Caucasus, where he fought in the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29. He served in Finland, on the Don, and in the Caucasus. In 1839 he retired. Sukhorukov’s works on the history of the cossacks are of a factual character.