Eric Naumovich Komarov is one of the leading Russian researchers of the history and modern political development of India, as well as general problems and patterns of democratization. Born on July 19, 1927 in Moscow. In 1950 he graduated from the Indian Department of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies (MIV), and in 1953 he completed postgraduate studies at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and defended his PhD thesis. 1954-1959-Junior researcher of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1959-1962 E. N. Komarov was a senior assistant at the Representative Office of the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies (SSDS) in India. In 1962-1963-Senior researcher, in 1963-1987-Head of the section of the History Department, from 1987 to the present-Leading Researcher of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

E. N. Komarov's teachers, I. M. Reisner (1898-1958), A. M. Dyakov (1896-1974), N. M. Goldberg (1891-1961), and A. M. Osipova (1897-1969), as well as their deceased teachers, greatly influenced the formation of his scientific and ideological views. students-colleagues and friends of E. N. Komarov - V. I. Pavlov, A. I. Levkovsky, G. G. Kotovsky, K. Z. Ashrafyan, L. R. Gordon-Polonskaya, A. I. Chicherov, G. K. Shirokov, L. I. Reisner.

E. N. Komarov is the author of four monographs and more than 100 scientific articles; two of his monographs and more than 20 research articles have been published abroad - in India, the USA, England, Germany, France, the Czech Republic and Hungary. He also wrote several dozen journalistic articles, published mainly in India, and some in the main national newspapers and in the magazine "Asia and Africa Today". He has written about 50 analytical and informational notes (some jointly with other authors).

In 1970, E. N. Komarov taught a course on general history (Modern Times) at the Department of History at the Peoples 'Friendship University, in 1978-a course on" Political Development of the Liberated Countries "at the Institute of Social Sciences (Moscow); in 1992-two courses on" Political development in the Soviet Union and the Post-Soviet space " and "Politics in Developing Countries" at the Department of Political Science, Northwestern University (Evanston, USA). He has given numerous public lectures in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Under the scientific supervision of E. N. Komarov, 10 PhD theses were prepared and defended, three of them by citizens of India. He was an opponent of five Ph. D. dissertations (History, Political Science) from the University of Calcutta and the University of Kerala. More than 20 monographs and collections of works by Russian and foreign authors have been published under the editorship of E. N. Komarov. Two monographs published under his editorship were defended as doctoral dissertations.

E. N. Komarov is a participant of a number of international scientific forums. Among them is the regular European Conference on Contemporary South Asian Studies, and since 1998 he has been the head of its section "Political Development and Democratization Processes in South Asia". He has participated in the world congresses of the International Political Science Association, international conferences on economic history, the conference of the Northwestern Political Science Association (USA), ICANAS conferences, and a number of others, mainly in India, but also in our country and in European countries. He participated in the 2nd and 3rd All-Russian Congresses of Political Scientists (Moscow, 2000, 2003), where he made a report on the political development of modern Russia in a comparative perspective. He organized a Political science seminar at the Institute of Political Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences (since 1993, 39 meetings of this seminar have been held).

The scope of E. N. Komarov's research is very wide. It includes the study of late medieval India, the history of this country in Modern times (the colonial period) and the political development of independent India in a comparative perspective, which prompted the author to study, in particular, the political development of modern Russia. E. N. Komarov also has some literary works.

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In the study of late medieval India, E. N. Komarov focused on the analysis of the socio-economic organization of agricultural and craft production, as well as ideology - religious and reformist creeds and movements of the XV-XVII centuries. These studies and the works of other Russian historians, students of I. M. Reisner - L. B. Alaev, as well as the late K. Z. Ashrafyan, V. I. Pavlov, and A. I. Chicherov, which soon followed them in the 1960s and 1970s, put an end to the idea that was largely established in Russian, and not only in Russian, Indian studies. about a certain total, ubiquitous predominance of subsistence farming in pre-colonial India. However, according to the author at present, he and other students of I. M. Reisner exaggerated the scale and significance of the emergence of the rudiments of capitalist relations already in pre-colonial India. E. N. Komarov's study of religious reform creeds and movements from the 15th-17th centuries. Showing an important shift in the ideology of late Medieval India, it revealed some similarities with the Western European Reformation, but also significant differences from the latter, first of all, the limited extent of their distribution and transformative role in the conditions of then India.

At the same time, further research by E. N. Komarov on the history of Modern India has shown that the relatively significant (by medieval standards) development of commodity production in pre-colonial times, the presence of a very developed merchant class and medieval banking capital, the emergence in the XVI century of a kind of middle ("middle") class, in whose environment religious and reformist creeds and movements emerged and played a significant role in the social development of India already in colonial conditions, which determined its specific features.

Studying the history of India during the colonial period, E. N. Komarov paid special attention to the relatively poorly studied evolution of agrarian relations that took place under the influence of the land and tax policy of the colonial authorities in the XIX-early XX centuries, which made it possible to identify the unity of this evolution, despite the differences in land and tax systems in different regions of and anti-colonial peasant demonstrations.

A special place in the works of E. N. Komarov on the modern history of India is occupied by studying the peculiarities of the formation and situation of industrial workers in colonial conditions and their strike struggle, which played an important role in the rise of the mass national liberation movement. Following V. I. Pavlov, E. N. Komarov studied the formation of the Indian bourgeoisie. He drew attention to the emergence of the middle strata, primarily from the point of view of the formation and development of the national movement and the formation of its political leadership.

As a generalized interpretation of the historical process in Modern India, E. N. Komarov proposed the concept of "elite modernization" as a form and result of social development in India under colonial conditions. Its essence lies in the fact that certain strata and groups of merchants and middle strata inherited from pre-colonial times, mainly those who came from more or less high class and caste communities, relatively early, back in the XIX century, mastered modern (at the level of industrial capitalism) forms of organizing production and commercial activities (factories, joint-stock companies banks), modern education (secondary and higher education), ideology (enlightenment, liberalism, and later democracy), the national press, and socio-political organizations (national associations). Meanwhile, the masses of the people, even the industrial workers, remained essentially a medieval people for a long time, mainly until the 1920s, or even later, and the rural and largely urban poor remained until the 60s of the XX century, i.e., until the 1920s. Already in independent India, the first signs of the awakening of the masses, especially the industrial workers, and their involvement in the organized national liberation movement appeared only at the beginning of the twentieth century. This situation largely determined the features of the formation and development of the national liberation movement and influenced the formation of its leadership and socio-political views of such national leaders as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru and their predecessors, in particular the first Indian enlightener Ram Mohan Rai (1772 or 1774-1833). The views and historical role of Indian national leaders and thinkers, mainly in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, are considered in a number of works by E. N. Komarov. In Gandhi's teaching on nonviolence and its corresponding political practice, the author sees the application of the then European practice in Indian conditions

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mass democratic protest actions. Gandhi developed his methods of mass protest campaigns, giving the demand for nonviolence the meaning of a religious commandment.

In the works of E. N. Komarov devoted to the political development of independent India, the main attention is paid to the processes of democratization and the identification of its regularities. First of all, we are talking about the formation of a competitive multi-party system. In this regard, the initial pattern of democratization is described as the predominance (in terms of mass influence) of the reform party Indian National Congress (INC) over the opposition parties in an essentially democratic political system. This was one of the manifestations of a combination of democratic and authoritarian principles in the early stage of democratization in independent India. The processes of transition from the one-party predominance of the INC to a competitive multi-party system, which took about 40 years, reflected certain patterns of democratization that operated more or less simultaneously. This is, in particular, a reduction in the differences between the platforms of a number of opposition parties and the INC party on the main issues of socio-political development of the country, or, in other words, a transition from confrontation to political competition (such a transition has not yet been completely completed). Further, the identification of relatively large opposition parties capable of presenting an alternative to the INC party, usually in coalition with other, smaller parties, initially only in selected states of multi-national India, and accordingly the development of coalition policy. Finally, the formation at the pan-Indian level of two main rival and alternating coalitions in power, one led by the INC Party and the other by a major alternative party from among the former opposition parties. The author calls such a multiparty system a system of alternative parties, which is both similar and different from the two-party system primarily as a result of the special role of coalition politics.

In studies of the formation and development of a competitive multi - party system at the state level and in India as a whole, mathematical statistics methods are used-factor analysis of election results and methods of content analysis of election manifestos of political parties. The experience of political development in other South Asian countries, as well as in Germany, Italy and Japan, and especially in Russia, is used for cross-country comparisons. E. N. Komarov devoted 10 research articles to the political development of Russia, some of them published abroad.

A number of works by E. N. Komarov are devoted to the impact of revolutionary Russia on the national liberation movement in India, Soviet-Indian cooperation, and the attitude of Indian national leaders M. Gandhi and J. R. R. Tolkien. Nehru, as well as R. Tagore to the Soviet Union, which was friendly, but far from unambiguous.

The introductory articles, afterwords and commentaries written by E. N. Komarov to the works of the great Indian poet R. Tagore, as well as the classics of Bengali prose Bonkimiondro Chottopadhyay, Shorothiondro Chottopadhyay, contain an ideological, artistic and socio-historical analysis of their work against the background of public life and ideological searches in India at the end of the XIX-first half of the XX century.

Currently, E. N. Komarov is working on compiling in a monograph the research presented in his articles on the Indian late Middle Ages, the history of India in Modern times and its political development under the conditions of independence. This work also includes some additional research.

COLLEAGUES AND FRIENDS

MAIN SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF E. N. KOMAROV*

Factors for a Parliamentary Democracy in India. Some Specific Features of Modernisation in Colonial Period and Political Development after Independence. Moscow, 1988, 29 p.

Jawaharlal Nehru: Socio-political conditions, Worldview and historical role // Jawaharlal Nehru. Memories. Research. M., 1989. p. 30. The same in English. yaz. New Delhi, 1989. p. 27-76.

Some conceptual problems of socio-political development of India // Economic and political development of India. 1947-1957. Moscow, 1989. pp. 75-112.

Evolution of the Party system and upcoming parliamentary elections in India

* For a list of E. N. Komarov's scientific works for 1948-1987, see: Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1987. N 6. pp. 140-142.

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and modernity. Scientific and Informational Bulletin, Moscow, 1989, No. 3 (53), pp. 79-88.

Development of political science and problems of developing countries. To the results of the XIV World Congress of the International Association of Political Sciences / / Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1989. N 4. pp. 131-137.

Factors for Parliamentary Democracy. Specificities of Generation and Concentration of Power Resources // Democracy in the Modern World. Tampere, 1989. P. 247 - 278.

Political Development in a Multiethnic Country: Evolution of Party System of India at National and Regional Levels // Archiv Orientalni. Quarterly Journal of African, Asian and Latin American Studies. Prague, 1990. Vol. 98. N 1. P. 1 - 19.

The Emergence of a Multiparty System in Russia // Strategies of Democration. Washington, 1992. P. 56 - 76.

Specificities of Emergence of Modem Social Classes // Changing Identities. The Transformation of Asian and African Societies. Berlin, 1994. P. 149 - 165.

Elections in Russia and Muslims / / Russia and the Muslim world, 1996. N 5.

Elite modernization as a form and result of social development in India during the colonial period. Comparative perspective / / Russia and the surrounding world: contours of development, Moscow, 1996, pp. 167-198.

Democratization in Comparative Perspective: the Cases of India, Russia and the Central Asian States of the CIS // A Paper Presented at the Regional Conference of the Research Committee. N 13. International Political Science Association. 1996, University of Chandigart, India.

Revolution through Elections. Electoral Countenance of the Rise of Political Democracy in Russia. A Paper Presented at the XVIIth World Congress of International Political Science Association. Seoul, 1997.

What could have hindered the development of India in the pre-colonial period? (Traditional Indian village and the problem of private property) / / Private property in the East, Moscow, 1998, pp. 321-363.

In Russia and India. From the memoirs and observations of an indologist, Moscow, 1998, 192 p.

Rabindranath Tagore - poet of the Indian Renaissance / / Rabindranath Tagore. Selected works, Moscow, 1999, pp. 463-480.

Democratization in a Comparative Perspective. India, Russia, Central Asian States of the CIS // Handbook of Global Political Policy. N. Y., 2000. P. 13 - 18.

The main characteristics of the formation of the modern middle class. Socioestvennaya istoriya [Socio-natural History], Issue XVI, Moscow, 2000, pp. 49-79.

Uchitel ' [Teacher] / / Pages of History and historiography of India and Afghanistan. To the centenary of I. M. Reisner's birth, Moscow, 2000, pp. 80-88.

Salient Features of Political Development in India: As Regularities of Democratization // Socialist Perspective. A Quarterly Journal of Social Sciences. Calcutta, 2000. Vol. 28. N 1 - 2. p. 77 - 109.

Traditional Social Structure of Indian Village. Rural Bengal in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries // Indian History. A Russian View Point. Indian Council of Historical Research. Delhi, 2003. P. 102 - 122.

Unity of a multinational country / / Russia-India. Interaction. Vladivostok, 2002, pp. 32-40.

Akbar. Religious universalism, religious tolerance and society / / India: society, reforms. In memory of G. G. Kotovsky, Moscow, 2003, pp. 76-98.

Political development of independent India. Main forms, stages, and patterns // India in the context of Global Politics, Moscow, 2003, pp. 187-228.

Reformatory beliefs and movements in Late Medieval India / / Oriental Studies at the Turn of the Ages. To the seventieth anniversary of the birth of L. B. Alaev, Moscow, 2004, pp. 287-334.

India - Russia: Problems of Democratic Development // Russia - India. Vladivostok, 2004. pp. 83-89.

India - Russia on the path of democratic development // Russia - India. Vladivostok, 2004. pp. 83-90.

Civilizational features as historical prerequisites for political democracy in India / / Indian civilization in the globalizing world, Moscow, 2005, pp. 107-119.

Political Development in South Asia: its Stages, Main Forms and Regularities of Democratization // Россия - Индия. Vladivostok, 2005, pp. 29-40.

Historical Pre-conditions and Regularities of Democratization in South Asia. A Comparative Perspective / / Russia-India. Vladivostok, 2006, pp. 77-100.

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