On June 29, Alexander Mikhailovich Petrov, an employee of the Department of Economic Research of the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, passed away.

He entered the correspondence postgraduate course of the Institute of Oriental Studies in 1970, combining his studies with work in the State Committee of Prices of the Council of Ministers of the USSR. In 1976, having made a choice in favor of science, he joined the Department of general theoretical problems of socio-political development in Asia and North Africa, and since 1988 he has worked in the Department of Economic Research.

Alexander Mikhailovich was a recognized specialist who had high authority among colleagues in such a complex and complex branch of knowledge as economic history. He was distinguished by his great scientific erudition, unconventional thinking, breadth of professional interests, and ability to work out the problems under study in detail and thoroughly.

Alexander Mikhailovich was the author of several monographs and dozens of articles, including those translated abroad and made him widely known.

For many years, his efforts have created collections of works on theoretical issues of Oriental studies, accumulating the best achievements of Russian science. Alexander Mikhailovich was the compiler and responsible editor of these books, and without his creative and organizational efforts, fundamental works would not have been written and published. Almost everything that came out from under his hand was original and original.

In fact, for two decades he was an informal integrator of Oriental studies, bringing together scientists from different fields of knowledge in shock teams to create generalizing scientific works. He himself took on this difficult burden at a difficult time for all Russian science, and only thanks to his efficiency, energy and ability to establish contacts with people, Russian Oriental studies received the best examples of innovative research.

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Alexander Mikhailovich had the ability to present complex scientific issues figuratively and visually, had a gift for popularizing, which was clearly manifested when he created television films about the Great Silk Road. In his books and articles, an immaculately precise scientific apparatus was combined with imagery and clarity of wording. This allowed colleagues to follow all the details of the argument, and non-specialists to understand the complexity of scientific research.

He had his own point of view on many problems in science and an independent position in the community of orientalists, firmly defended his views, but at the same time respected the positions of colleagues, was able to help them in their work and in difficult life situations.

The death of Alexander Mikhailovich is an irreparable loss for everyone who knew him.

FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

In the polar and southern seas,
Along the curves of green swells,

Ships ' sails rustle between the basalt rocks and the pearl ones.

N. S. Gumilyov. Captains

Alexander Petrov, who conceived and prepared the book "The Great Silk Road", was a specialist in economic history. In this seemingly very prosaic science, he occupied a special place, as he occupied a special place in Russian Oriental studies. Petrov was one of the last romantics in our unadapted pragmatic world. His books should not be confused with others. They are a piece product. So no one has written about economic issues before him, and probably won't, because they won't be able to. In order to see into the depths of things and ideas, to walk the Great Silk Road, which disappeared and at the same time remained like the smile of a Cheshire cat, to show the deep economic and political differences between East and West, starting, in particular, from works of art, it was necessary to have encyclopedic knowledge, a fine sense of the word and - a huge talent.

Alexander Petrov traveled, visited different parts of the world, but it is the sea that splashes on the pages of his books. Perhaps this is reflected in the memories of his childhood spent by the sea, perhaps-a special captain's character. In any case, the history of world economic relations does not exist without sea voyages, the discovery of new lands, and caravans of ships loaded with goods. So, in the book" West-East " one of his heroes was the famous literary hero-navigator Robinson Crusoe. For the author, the analysis of Crusoe's last journey is a way to show the clash of capitalism and the associated ethics and political culture with other civilizations, and once again highlight the most important differences between them. Petrov believed that long before Karl Marx, Defoe had shown the specifics of what Marx would later call the "Asian mode of production." There are a lot of pages-and what pages! - dedicated to yet another unfulfilled empire of the seas.

The book "The Great Silk Road" refers to monsoons and ocean waves, which fundamentally facilitated international relations, while Central Asia and the adjacent eastern and western regions lost their attractiveness against this background.

And what is the story about the vicissitudes of world politics and economics, born as a commentary on the seemingly passing stanza from Byron's Don Juan? "Joao, as I said, was sent to Cadiz. The most charming town! I often went there. There spices could always be obtained by us (Until Peru suddenly decided to shake the oppression)." For us, the "colonial goods market" - the mart of the colonial trade-is traditionally associated with spices, but the author shows that we are talking about precious metals from Peru, some of which remained in Cadiz and Lisbon, and some went to Manila. From this sole Asian possession of Spain, the precious metals of her American colonies spread to the countries of the East, bringing in return spices, silk and other goods. Accordingly, it highlights the structure of world economic exchange, the interaction of Western and Eastern countries, and political economic analysis, born from a single phrase about Peru, which only a very sophisticated reader can pay attention to.

Alexander Petrov was not only an outstanding scientist. He was a surprisingly complete person, sometimes extremely inconvenient for the academic bureaucracy, and for some colleagues. He did not hide his true attitude to either talents or mediocrity, which is why-

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nim, of course, didn't like it. He could say things frankly that others, concerned with survival and unwilling to quarrel with their superiors, preferred to keep quiet about.

It is not surprising that Alexander Petrov could not receive the titles and awards he deserved. His talent was clearly underestimated, and this is almost as unfair as his tragic and untimely death.

Petrov did not "tremble before the storm", but continued to go his own way. This path was difficult and tragic. In the rough waves, under the blows of fate, love held him. He remained unbroken and undaunted, multi-faceted and unusual in the pages of his books and in our memory. He remained one of the fearless captains of Russian Oriental studies.

I. D. ZVYAGELSKAYA

IN MEMORY OF A.M. PETROV

Oriental studies, as well as the entire social science of Russia as a whole, has suffered an irreparable loss. Tragically, shockingly, Alexander Mikhailovich Petrov suddenly died. It is not true that there are no irreplaceable people. After all, we are not talking about a simple replacement of one functionary by another, but about a creative person. And when a scientist with a unique mindset, broad coverage of world events, and the ability to delve deeply into the wilds of economic history dies, the loss is irreparable.

Our acquaintance with Sasha Petrov took place in the early 1970s of the last century. At that time, I was preoccupied with the formation of my own sector of theoretical problems of national liberation movements and revolutions, and it immediately became part of the small cohesive core of the sector-a group of young scientists with great potential and quickly gaining weight in the scientific world, and most importantly, adding to our Oriental studies the quality that allowed this science to be called fundamental. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the sector was working on another research project and preparing the book "The City in the Formation development of Eastern Countries" for publication, Sasha asked me to include his paragraph on this topic in my section on the Asian method of production. (By the way, in Soviet times this topic was semi-forbidden as it did not correspond to the primitive Stalinist interpretation of the Marxist theory of formational development.) I immediately agreed, because I believed that it would only decorate the book.

Sasha had a rare quality (especially for our time) - he was aware of his considerable scientific potential, but at the same time showed a touching concern for preserving the achievements of our best Orientalists for new generations, taking care that the names of large, but sometimes extremely modest scientists were not forgotten. He spared no effort and time to publish voluminous (more than 500 pages) thematic collections with carefully selected authors. In this, of course, he relied on the support of friends. Before proceeding with the next idea, he came to discuss it, came not with a question, but with his own version for substantive discussion. A couple of times I helped with obtaining a grant from the RFBR Foundation, but it was, of course, scanty, and the main contribution to the publication of these collections belongs to M. S. Meyer.

Just a few days before his tragic death, Sasha called me on the phone, and we arranged a meeting on the subject of the next scientific project. And in this case, sometimes the usual phrase "the scientist died in the prime of his creative powers", as never before, is filled with real meaning. We lost a colleague, a friend, and just a good person (a category of people that is already an endangered species in our difficult time). His memory will be preserved in our memories and writings.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences N. A. SIMONIYA

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MAIN SCIENTIFIC WORKS OF A. M. PETROV

Asia-European Trade Balance at the turn of our Era / / Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1976. N4. pp. 68-78.

Correlation of inter-Asian and Asian-Western European trade in the I-XVII centuries / / Near and Middle East: economy, history. Moscow, 1976. pp. 56-67.

Land and sea inter-Asian foreign trade in the I-XVII centuries (On the question of correlation) // Economics, Politics and Ideology of Asian and African countries, Moscow, 1978, pp. 57-73.

Asia-West European Trade Balance in the Middle Ages / / Middle and Middle East. Commodity-money relations under feudalism, Moscow, 1980, pp. 178-192.

Material base of the state sector / / Goskapitalizm i sotsial'naya evolyutsiya stran zarubezhnogo Vostoka [State capitalism and social evolution of the countries of the Foreign East]. Moscow, 1980. pp. 20-40 (sovm. with B. V. Sinitsyn).

Foreign Trade of Ancient and Medieval Asia in Russian and Soviet Oriental Studies. M.: Nauka, 1983. 37 p. (The 31 st Intern. Congr. of Human Sciences in Asia and Africa. Tokyo, Kyoto).

The evolution of Eastern societies. (Sintez traditsionnogo i sovremennogo). Moscow, 1984. - Auth. ch.: Ekonomicheskoe soprikhozhdenie Zapada i Vostoka (Protsess i itogi k nachale XIX veka). p. 74-92; Vneshneekonomicheskoe vozdeystvie Zapada na vostochnye obshchestva v XIX - nachale XX v. p.93 - 106.

Foreign trade of ancient and medieval Asia in domestic Oriental studies (Literature review and an attempt at a new approach to the study of the problem) / / Historical factors of social reproduction in the countries of the East. Moscow, 1986. pp. 149-183.

Economy of past centuries in the works of N. M. Gurevich / / Foreign East: Issues of economic history, Moscow: Nauka, 1986. pp. 3-31.

Foreign Trade of Russia and Britain with Asia in the Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries // Modern Asian Stidies. Vol. 21. Cambridge, 1987. N 4. P. 625 - 637.

Blessed incense and coveted spices of the East/ / Asia and Africa Today. 1988. N 2. p. 55-57; N3. P. 51-53; N 6. P. 52-55; 1990. N6. p. 52-55.

Medieval Asian-European trade // Medieval East (Issues of socio-economic History), Moscow, 1988, pp. 78-98 (in Arabic).

New tasks historic science and some materials for the study of economic history of the Orient // the Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1989. N2. pp. 66-79.

Search for a new approach to the problem of the Asian mode of production (thesis statement of the question) / / Problems of the economic history of capitalism, Moscow, 1989. pp. 30-51.

Gorod i sotsial'no-ekonomicheskaya struktura aziatskogo sposoboda proizvodstva [City and socio - economic structure of the Asian mode of production]. Gorod v formatsionnom razvitii stran Vostoka (70-80-ies), Moscow, 1990, pp. 147-171.

Ancient international communication and the geographical factor in the Works of E. M. Medvedev// Peoples of Asia and Africa. 1990. N 5. pp. 87-95.

The phenomenon of the city in the history of socio-economic structures in Eastern societies (the question of the formation process) // Foreign East: economic history of the city. M.: Nauka, 1990. S. 93 - 143.

Gosobstvennost', goskapitalizm, privatizatsiya: uroki istorii i sovremennost ' [State property, State Capitalism, privatization: lessons of History and Modernity]. Moscow, 1991. - Auth.: Preface. pp. 5-10; Gosudarstvo i istoricheskaia kul'tura rynka. pp. 68-75.

Historical and economic reading of Robinson Crusoe's journey across Asia. Historical and Economic Readings in memory of V. I. Pavlov, Moscow, 1993, pp. 173-204.

Russia-East: historical experience of interaction of economic interests / / Russia in Foreign Economic Relations. Uroki istorii i sovremennost ' [History Lessons and Modernity], Moscow, 1993, pp. 29-45.

The Great Silk Road: about the simplest, but little known / RAS. Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow: Vostochny lit., 1995, 128 p.

West-East: from the history of ideas and things (essays) / RAS. Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow: Vostochny lit., 1996, 223 p.

The Unfulfilled Empire of the Seas // Moscow Oriental Studies. Essays, research, and developments. In memory of N. A. Ivanov, Moscow: East Lit., 1997, pp. 237-254.

Indyskiy okean: Mezhdunarodnoe obshchestvo v drevnosti [The Indian Ocean: International Communication in Ancient Times].

On the nature of Indo-European trade before industrial revolutions in the West / / India and the World, Moscow, 2000, pp. 42-48.

The Russian Empire and Foreign Trade of Foreign Asia / / Foreign East (Issues of the history of trade with Russia), Moscow, 2000, pp. 5 - 62.

A few pages in defense of Cleopatra. Historical source and literary information-

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justice / / East-West-Russia, Moscow, 2001, pp. 383-390.

Russian Oriental Studies in memory of M. S. Kapitsa. Ocherki, issledovaniya, razrabotki [Essays, Research, Development], Moscow, 2001, p. 7 (Ed. by Ed. and comp. 704 s).

Neoliberal globalization and the social characteristics of developing countries // Neoliberal Globalization and catch-up Development, Moscow, 2003, pp. 29-31.

Asian method of production and the XXI century // The economy of developing countries. Collection of articles in memory of V. A. Yashkin / RAS. Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow: Gumanitarii, 2004, pp. 257-274.

The East as a subject of economic research: essays, articles, developments / RAS. Institute of Oriental Studies; ISAA MSU Moscow, 2008. - Auth.: Preface. p. 3; Adam Smith, Abbot Raynal and Alexander von Humboldt as sources for the commentary to the fifth stanza of the second canto of Byron's "Don Juan". pp. 577-596 (Ed., comp. 600 s).

The history of Western Economic impact on Eastern Societies: the problem of multicompleteness of the source base // Vostok (Oriens), Moscow, 2008, No. 3, pp. 39-46.

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