Galina Aleksandrovna Komarova: life and fate

Abstract

Galina Aleksandrovna Komarova worked at the Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences — the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences for about 45 years, first in the Baltic and Volga region sector, then at the Center for the Study of Interethnic Relations. Starting with the study of children’s issues and the status of women in Chuvashia, then in the critical years she did a lot of studies of interethnic relations and migration processes in the republics of Russia and in the new post-­Soviet states (in the Baltic countries and the South Caucasus), after which she conducted unique pioneering studies of the ethnocultural consequences of a man-made (radiation) catastrophe in the South Urals. Having been abroad (in the USA, Japan, Israel, Austria and Finland), she became a recognized connoisseur of the culture and life of Soviet/Russian emigrants. Then she enriched domestic science with such a new direction as the anthropology of academic life. In addition, she attached great importance to interdisciplinary research. In the appendix to the article, a transcript of the defense of the doctoral dissertation by G.A. Komarova «Ethnocultural aspects of a man-made disaster (based on materials from a survey of the population of the South Urals),» held at the IEA RAS on January 14, 2003 (from the author’s personal archive).