Paul Goble
Staunton, April 11 – Leokadiya Drobizheva who at the Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology and the Institute of Sociology pioneered the development of ethno-sociology first in the Soviet Union and then in the Russian Federation died today at the age of 88, a loss that will be keenly felt by all those who want to understand ethnic relations in that part of the world.
She was perhaps the most prominent of the brilliant pleiade of scholars the late Academician Yulian Bromley assembled at the ethnography institute who helped shift that institution and many others from its traditional focus on smaller and often dying communities to modern nations.
And it is a mark of her impressive scholarship – more than 250 books and articles – her objectivity, and her opening and welcoming personality that she was praised in life by Vladimir Putin and on her death by Russia’s Muslim community (nazaccent.ru/content/35517-ushla-iz-zhizni-etnosociolog-leokadiya-drobizheva.html and dumrf.ru/pravlenie/documents/18771).
Her works on Tatarstan in the 1970s and her co-authorship of the defining textbook on ethno-sociology in 1999 opened a new world of research into what had been the highly ideologized field of “nationality problems.” Indeed, it can be said that she and her colleagues operationalized the intellectual breakthrough Bromley pioneered.
The author of these lines had the opportunity to meet and interact with Leokadiya Mikhaylovna on numerous occasions. She was always open and willing to share her knowledge and always was curious about what others were doing in related fields. Unlike some, she never hid behind any ideological wall.
I and many others will deeply miss her warm smile and keen intellect. She helped so many, and she will not be forgotten because of that.
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