Igor Mikhailovich Reisner

Born Dec. 27, 1898 (Jan. 8, 1899), in Tomsk; died Feb. 7, 1958, in Moscow. Soviet orientalist. Doctor of historical sciences (1953). Member of the CPSU from 1944.

Reisner graduated from a Gymnasium in Petrograd in 1916. After the October Revolution of 1917, he worked in the People’s Commissariat of Justice and in the Socialist Academy. From 1919 to 1926 he served in the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, working in Afghanistan from 1919 to 1921.

In 1924, Reisner graduated from the department of oriental studies at the Military Academy of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army. From 1925 to 1935 he worked in the International Agrarian Institute and taught at the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies. In 1935 he became a professor at Moscow State University, and in 1938, a research worker at the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. In 1957, Reisner became head of the Indian history section in the Indian department of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

Reisner was one of the founders of Soviet Indology and Afghan studies. He concentrated on the most important problems of the social development and the national liberation movement of the peoples of India. He was the first to study the formation of feudal relationships among the Afghans and the development of government. He initiated the study of the principal problems in the contemporary history of Afghanistan. Reisner’s research into the general patterns of the historical development of the national liberation struggle among the peoples of the East occupies an important place in his works. Reisner also acted as an author and a managing editor of many joint works on the history of the East.