Sometimes they were killed. But they killed their own people, selectively, during a showdown within the government. However, there was neither a trial nor a nationwide reprisal against them. Even verbal condemnation is only sluggish and ambiguous. So on a global scale - communism (Marxism) is not condemned as a criminal doctrine. Half the world was covered in blood - and nothing.
Colonel Solomon Rafailovich Milshtein, after the eviction of the Moldovans and the liquidation of the Romanian (Moldovan) character of Moldova, received the rank of major general and command of one of the special formations of the state security forces.
Original taken from sergey_v_fomin
in TARKOVSKY: SACRIFICE (part 165)
Interrogation at the Chisinau department of the MGB. A fragment of the exhibition of the “Museum of Soviet Occupation”, opened in Chisinau on March 26, 2016.
Test by the world (continuation)
“The worst thing is the constant change of authorities, charging an increasingly bloody price for the frequent change of delusions.”
Ernst JUNGER.
Lieutenant General S.R. Milstein was arrested on June 30, 1953, immediately following the arrest of L.P. Beria, which occurred on June 26.
The circumstances surrounding this are described differently.
The son of Lavrenty Pavlovich, Sergo Beria, states in his memoirs: “...They couldn’t take him alive. When Milstein saw that they wanted to arrest him, he warned that he would not allow this. In the shootout, as I was told, he shot eight people. Such an end..."
But veteran of the Foreign Intelligence of the KGB of the USSR Georgy Zakharovich Sannikov writes differently, referring to those who were directly involved in the detention:
“This was told by the chiefs of staff of two motorized mechanized divisions in the fight against the armed OUN underground, two lieutenant colonels, both Muscovites who served in Western Ukraine. It was they, these officers, who were instructed and entrusted to arrest Minister Meshik and his deputy Milstein. Employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine were not involved in this action. They were afraid to trust. […]
Milstein […] accepted the fact of the arrest in his office without surprise. He was in military uniform - lieutenant general. The expression on his face was calm. It was as if he was waiting to be arrested. As soon as we boarded the plane, he immediately asked for food. On the plane, in addition to Milstein himself, there were three officers and several soldiers, located in the rear section behind a curtain, who after takeoff began to eat buckwheat porridge with pork stew. There is a delicious smell throughout the plane.
The officers who were transporting Milstein and had not eaten since the morning did not feel like eating, and Milstein, either from nervous stress or from something else, suddenly unexpectedly asked to feed him. I had to turn to the soldiers. They put Milstein an almost full soldier's pot, which the general, with amazing calm and with the greed of a hungry man, completely ate and fell asleep, settling down on a long metal bench running along the side. The plane was a military transport..."
The same memoirist recalled how new minister Internal Affairs of the Ukrainian SSR, Lieutenant General T.A. Strokach gathered the entire operational staff in the assembly hall and “informed those gathered in detail about the criminal activities of the Beria gang.”
“The criminal will of Beria,” said Timofey Amvrosievich, “was willingly carried out by his friends and assistants, who with the help of Beria made their way into the state security organs, Kobulov, Merkulov, Goglidze, Meshik... Beria’s criminal accomplice Milstein personally tortured the loyal son of the party, Comrade Eikhe, in the basements of the NKVD, touching electrical wire to the exposed spinal cord..."
All state security generals close to Beria were shot almost immediately, only Milstein was delayed for some reason.
But it was his turn. On October 30, 1954, a meeting of the Military Collegium was held Supreme Court USSR, in which Milstein was sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on January 14, 1955.
Lieutenant General S.R. Milshtein.
This is how Zvi Karem, who has already been quoted by us more than once, described what happened, who heard and knew something when he was in Chisinau, but - due to the secrecy of these people and events - inevitably mythologizing (however, like the much more informed son of Beria) real events :
“When Stalin died in 1953 and well-known events related to the struggle for power in the Kremlin took place in Moscow, a dramatic denouement came for the Milstein-Mordovets camarilla.
General Milstein, as they said in very knowledgeable circles, tried to move his formation to help Beria, but it was too late. Beria was shot (either Marshal Zhukov or General Malinovsky, who was Malinescu’s father). Mass liquidation of everyone associated with Beria followed.
Of course, as is customary in that menagerie, Mordovets did not fail to whisper to anyone about the rebellion of General (Jew!) Milstein. It goes without saying who - Khrushchev. Milstein was suddenly called to Moscow, and in the basements of the Lubyanka he received a bullet in the back of the head.
They didn’t forget the attractive Madame Milstein, who suspiciously often visited Moscow at the same address. These trips turned out to be sufficient elements of a crime punishable by the famous “nakenshus” (a term coined by Hitler’s specialists regarding shots to the back of the head).
Well, General Mordovets received thirty pieces of silver, remained the Minister of State Security of Moldova until his retirement, and even until the recent past, he majestically carried his huge bulk through the shady streets of Chisinau (he once weighed 118 kilograms), leaning on a thin metal stack...”
And now it’s time to move on to the second anti-hero - the head of the main punitive body of the republic, Major General I.L. Mordovets (1899-1976).
Joseph Lavrentievich began working in 1912 at one of the mines in the Ekaterinoslav province. During civil war joined the Red Army. Returning home, he worked in the village council. In 1929 he joined the party, and in 1930 he was hired by the state security agencies.
In 1940, Mordovets was appointed Deputy People's Commissar of Security of the Moldavian SSR. Then there was a war, and in 1944 he was again sent to Chisinau, this time to the post of People's Commissar of State Security of the republic.
In this place, which changed its names more than once, he served until 1955, receiving the rank of major general (1945), twice receiving the highest government award - the Order of Lenin and two Orders of the Red Banner.
It was he who carried out the post-war mass deportations of the local population and persecuted the local intelligentsia. By the way, he noticed and nominated Semyon Kuzmich Tsvigun, who at the end of his career became Deputy Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, to the position of his deputy.
This is how General I.L. describes the activities. Mordovian in his brief overview leaders of the Moldovan special services, modern historian Ruslan Shevchenko:
“...He was a supporter of strict discipline and order. […] During his period of leadership of the Moldovan special services, Mordovets proved himself to be a professional of the highest class, able to as soon as possible in conditions of a destroyed economy, chaos and panic in the minds, restore a powerful and effective apparatus of state security agencies.
Taking advantage of the atmosphere of general suspicion that reigned after the war, Mordovets managed to create a department around his department (in 1946 it changed its name - from the NKGB to the MGB; it was located in 1944-1952 in houses 36 and 38 on the current street Vlayku Pirkelab - the former June 28) such an atmosphere that even the secretaries of the Central Committee often did not risk interfering in his affairs unless absolutely necessary.
District committee secretaries, reporting “to the top” about the arbitrariness of employees of local regional departments of the MGB, sought to eliminate the perpetrators only in very rare cases - Mordovets knew how to defend his own. He often scolded his subordinates; his word was always the last in resolving personnel (and other) issues. But he also tried not to wash dirty linen in public.
Opponents of Mordovets argued that he was a person close to Beria, and that was the only reason why he held his post for so long. Mordovets publicly denied this accusation at the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moscow on July 13, 1953, saying that he knew that Beria was preparing to remove him from office.
The Mordovian was repeatedly indignant at the situation of “laxity and chaos,” which, in his opinion, began to develop in the republic after the death of Stalin. He blamed this on Dmitry Gladky, Leonid Brezhnev’s successor as first secretary of the Communist Party of Moscow Central Committee (1952-1954), a man who “simply did not know how to work.”
Despite the wide scope that the activities of the MSSR MGB assumed under Mordovets, he was never able to cope with the “nationalist” and anti-Soviet groups that were reborn from the ashes like a Phoenix bird. Joseph Lavrentievich himself later called this failure the main one in his life.
The omnipotence of the state security agencies caused constant headaches and fear for their future among party officials. […] Critics of the “consequences of the cult of personality” accused Mordovets of illegal arrests and repressions. The leadership of the republic, led by the new first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moscow, Zinoviy Serdyuk (1954-1961), sought to quickly get rid of the figure who had stained himself by participating in mass repressions.
In 1955, Mordovets was “pushed out” into honorable retirement. For several years after this, Joseph Lavrentievich worked as head of the personnel department of the Ministry of Public Utilities, while still remaining a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Moscow, and then retired. The former minister considered the repressions he carried out justified. “That was the time. It was impossible to do otherwise,” he said gloomily, indignant at the beginning weakening of the role of the special services. “There are plenty of spies even now, how can you not notice them...”
Major General I.L. Mordovets.
While retired, the general continued to live in Chisinau (he died in 1976 and was buried in the Armenian cemetery), communicating with different people. One of the interlocutors of the old security officer was the famous original - Lubomir Iorga (1932-2014), whom I had to meet when I was in Moldova.
He started in 1949 as a dancer in the famous ensemble “Zhok”. At the competition of the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow in 1957, he was awarded a gold medal.
However, the main business of his life was folk musical instruments. Having entered the music workshop at the Ministry of Culture of the Republic in 1964, he not only made traditional fluers, chimpoi and ocarinas, but, having studied the history of folk music, restored the telinkas, kavalas and drymbas that had gone into oblivion.
Yorga created and played instruments. In general, his passion was extracting sounds from everything that came to his hand: leaves, fish scales, wine corks...
It is not for nothing that in the cult Moldovan film “Lautari” by Emil Loteanu, which tells about the fate of folk musicians, Lubomir Iorga played one of them.
The film Lautars (1971), which was an international success (especially in Italy, where it won several prizes), is filled with folk music. After watching it, you will not only hear magical music, but you will be able to appreciate the virtuoso playing of the masters of the 1970s, get acquainted with actors and musicians who have already departed to another world, and among the latter, Lubomir Yorga.
I return, however, to the time when I had to see Lubomir Yorga. This happened in the summer of 1976. My wife at that time was studying at the acting department of the Chisinau Institute of Arts. Stage speech was taught there by Ninel Karanfil, an artist of the Luchaferul Theater.
And then the news: “Ninela,” as the students called her, is marrying Lyubomir Yorga. Two large originals (and Karanfil was also one of them) are connected.
And then the news arrived: Yorga began to walk around Chisinau with a white sheep.
There was something to see! White, in small rings, “mioritsa” with a ribbon around the neck, on which a silver bell tinkled...
That story with the sheep, they say, even formed the basis of a feature short film shot by a Moldovan film director.
Lubomir Yorga in his workshop.
But it’s time to know the honor: we return to the story of Lyubomir Yorga about his meeting with General I.L. Mordovian, which occurred in 1967.
“We were invited by a woman,” recalled Lubomir Yorga, “who [...] taught at the conservatory, so that we could tune her piano. ... An old grandfather came out of the room, very old, with eyebrows almost drawn down over his eyes, over 80 years old, maybe over 90, and called us into the kitchen and said that since we had done such a job, we should drink a hundred grams of cognac. […]
Word by word, the general said that he miraculously survived, because he should have been shot after the execution of Beria. “They should have shot me too, along with Merkulov, Sudoplatov and others.” The general said that he was saved in the Rybnitsa hospital, where he hid for three months. “They sent for me, a special team arrived, everyone asked where I was; they were told that I had shot myself.” […]
And I ask him, why shoot you? And he told me: “We didn’t do good things, we carried out orders coming from above. They shot people. The Ministry of Internal Affairs has two large basements, reaching almost to Sadovaya [now Mateevich Street], up.”
There were two places where people were shot: where the prosecutor’s office is, the general himself told me: where “Buchumul” is now, and here, at the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
“They shot people and put the bodies in baths with acid, left them until the morning, and in the morning they turned into jelly; they poured it into the sewer, and from there everything ended up in the Byk [river].”
It turns out that they took into account the experience of the Germans and their own when they “inherited” it, including in Moldova, leaving terrible evidence in the hands of the enemy:
http://sergey-v-fomin.livejournal.com/163248.html
““Secret cemeteries”, a word from modern etymology,” Ernst Junger wrote in his Paris diary in March 1943. - The corpses are hidden so that a competitor does not dig them up and photograph them. Such scams, worthy of lemurs, indicate a monstrously increased evil.”
But let’s continue Lyubomir Yorga’s story about those terrible basements:
“I was there and saw them. They are there and you should definitely see them. The press doesn’t take them off, they definitely need to be taken down. I worked at the Ministry of Internal Affairs as an artistic director in their club when Nikolai Bradulov was the minister. They didn't have the money to pay me as the artistic director, so they paid me as the armory manager. This warehouse is located near the cellars that Mordovets spoke about. When you enter the Ministry from Stefan cel Mare Avenue, you have to go forward, go down the stairs, more than one floor. These cellars are very large, about eight meters wide.”
http://enews.md/news/view/4666/
Lyubomir Yorga with his brainchild - the Yorgofon.
A few words need to be said about how things turned out further fate Yorgi.
In the end he came up with a new one musical instrument, which looked like a chimpoy (bagpipe), but instead of leather fur there was a dry hollowed out gourd. He named it by analogy with the saxophone invented by the master Sax - the yorgofon.
During the visit of Moldovan President Mircea Snegur to the United States, Yorga happened to play this instrument in the White House in front of Bill Clinton. In the end, he gave the yorgofon to the American president, who was once fond of playing the saxophone.
Bill Clinton with a Yorgophone.
In recent years, especially after the death of his wife (no longer Ninel Karanfil, who became the Deputy Minister of Culture of Moldova and is still alive), Lubomir Iorga was lonely.
From time to time, the “Honored Artist of Moldova”, holder of the “Order of the Republic”, went to the city center (usually to the park near the former Moldova Hotel) and sold his products, earning a living and for materials for new products.
The sale was usually accompanied by an impromptu concert, which brought together people of all ages and nationalities who were interested in music and communication.
Lately the master had not gone anywhere, he sat in the yard and was mostly silent. He did not enter into conversation himself, only answered if anyone addressed him.
The maestro's life was cut short on November 7, 2014, at the age of 83.
The body of Lyubomir Yorga was found in the yard by neighbors.
“He lived alone, and there was no one to help him,” the district police officer said in response to questions from journalists.
An Easter gift to the master from those “who have not forgotten.”
And finally, one more twist on the topic.
We know the rulers and generals responsible for what was happening in the country. Well, who were the performers who carried out what was conceived and planned in high offices?
One of these was the father of the famous theater and film actress, People's Artist of the RSFSR Svetlana Kryuchkova.
She was born in 1950 in Chisinau.
All her official biographies say that she was born “in the family of a military man.” This is what she herself said in numerous interviews: “My dad was a stern military man, we had strict military discipline in our family. This is where my commanding voice comes from, this is where I don’t like unnecessary conversations, I don’t like to repeat myself twice, I write everything down.”
Only in last years, when TV series about Smershevites, saboteurs and security officers came into fashion, journalists learned more from her: “Father, Nikolai Kryuchkov, [...] was an aggressive and tough person - his profession obliged. He went through the Finnish War, worked as an NKVD investigator, during the Great Patriotic War he was a major in the SMERSH detachment, and left service only during the period of the exposure of the Stalin cult.”
http://www.uznayvse.ru/znamenitosti/biografiya-svetlana-kryuchkova.html
Parents of Svetlana Kryuchkova.
In one of her last conversations with journalists, Svetlana Nikolaevna spoke about her family in a little more detail.
According to her, her father, a SMERSH major, immediately after the war was sent to Chisinau to the local department of the MGB, where he was an investigator.
His daughter went to departmental kindergarten, lived in the house with her father’s colleagues. Most of the residents, she said, were Jews. Almost all of her friends at court, including Russians and Ukrainians, eventually ended up (apparently after entering into their respective marriages) in Israel.
http://www.sovsekretno.ru/articles/id/5555/
The same courtyard in Chisinau. Little Svetlana Kryuchkova (with a bouquet of flowers in her hands) and her childhood friends. 1950s
Svetlana Kryuchkova, who visited them more than once, says that some of the Russian-speaking repatriates there are called “chekists.” According to her, from the letter combination “ChK” (“Chernivtsi-Chisinau”).
It was childhood observations of life in the Chisinau courtyard that helped Svetlana Kryuchkova subsequently play the role of Odessa’s “Aunt Dog” so colorfully in Sergei Ursulyak’s serial film “Liquidation” (2007).
As for the joke about the Cheka, it seems to have a double bottom. There is probably another meaning in this name. Suffice it to remember that the children of some high-ranking state security officials in socialist Romania - after the 1989 coup - just as amicably went “to the homeland of their ancestors.” (But more on that next time.)
Burdenko Nikolai Nilovich (1876-1946), doctor, one of the founders of Russian neurosurgery.
Born on June 3, 1876 in the village of Kamenka, Nizhnelomovsky district, Penza province in poor family. In 1904, at the height of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), he volunteered for a medical brigade, carrying the wounded from the battlefield under fire. Participated in suppressing outbreaks of typhus, smallpox, and scarlet fever.
In 1906, the medical faculty of Yuryev (Tartu) University awarded Burdenko the diploma of “doctor with honors.”
Like many students, Burdenko shared the revolutionary sentiments of the time and participated in meetings and demonstrations. In 1909 he defended his dissertation and in 1910 he took the position of private assistant professor in the department of surgery at his university. Since 1917, Burdenko has been an ordinary professor at the faculty surgical clinic.
At the beginning of the First World War, he worked as a consultant surgeon on various fronts of the active army, participated in the creation of field hospitals and dressing and evacuation points, and operated on the wounded.
Burdenko compiled the first Regulations on the military-sanitary service of the Red Army; was busy with the necessary medicines and equipment for military doctors. In 1924, he became director of the surgical clinic of Moscow State University, in 1929 - director of the neurosurgical clinic at the X-ray Institute, on the basis of which the Central Neurosurgical Institute was established in 1934 (now the N. N. Burdenko Institute of Neurosurgery in Moscow).
In the first days of the Great Patriotic War Burdenko was appointed to the post of chief surgeon of the Red Army and personally inspected hospitals. Collected material formed the basis of his doctrine of combat wounds. At the head of a team of doctors, he tested and introduced new drugs for widespread use in front-line hospitals: streptocide, sulfidine, penicillin.
In 1939, Burdenko became an academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In 1941, while crossing the Neva, Burdenko came under bombardment and was shell-shocked. Upon returning from the war, he continued to work, but due to concussion he suffered two cerebral hemorrhages one after another, and in the summer of 1946 a third.
To date, Russia's total losses reach 5,000,000 soldiers. Of these, approximately 3,000,000 are wounded - thus, Russian military doctors have to solve much larger problems than their colleagues from other countries participating in the current war. About 70% - or more than 2,000,000 - of the victims, the Russians say, returned to the front or non-combatant units after treatment.
These facts are outlined in a comprehensive report on the activities of the Red Army medical service, distributed this week. public organization Russian War Relief, Inc.; To date, she has purchased medicines to be sent to Russia and medical equipment for $4,000,000.
The Russians also claim that the mortality rate among the wounded is no more than 1.5%. If this information is accurate, their doctors managed to achieve an unprecedented result, surpassing even the achievements of American military doctors, who managed to save 96% of the wounded during the attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1914, when there were only 24,000 doctors in the entire country, the Russian military medical service was inferior to similar structures of all other major warring states. However, over the past 15 years, the Russians have created not only a large army, but also a developed healthcare system. The number of medical universities increased from 13 in 1914 to 72 in 1939. Today there are already more than 160,000 doctors in Russia - this is seven times more than in 1914, but still 20,000 less than in the USA (even though that its population exceeds America by 25%).
New wars - new injuries
As Russian statistics show, the mechanization of combat operations has also changed the nature of the problems faced by military doctors. Chief Surgeon of the Red Army Nikolai N. Burdenko notes: "The percentage of bullet wounds is relatively small; most casualties today are caused by aerial bombardment, mortar fire and grenade explosions." During the First World War, 50% of wounds were caused by shrapnel or shell fragments; today their number has increased to 96% (in in this case each wound is counted separately - the same person often receives several at once). After wounds to the arms and legs, the largest number of severe injuries occur due to traumatic brain injuries.
During the last war, the mortality rate from traumatic brain injuries in the Russian army was 35%; it has now dropped to about 5%. According to Deputy People's Commissar of Health S. Milovidov, mortality from wounds to the abdomen decreased by 33%, from wounds to the head, jaw and chest cavity - by 50%, from injuries to the spine - by 80%.
"Front-line girlfriends"
The most serious threat to a wounded person is not so much the injury itself, but the triple hazard of shock, infection, and transportation delays: at one time, more people died from each of these causes than from the deadly lead. In Russia, as in other countries, the effects of shock are mitigated by plasma transfusions - shock is essentially a circulatory disorder, since body tissues appear to absorb the plasma produced in the blood naturally. With the advent of sulfa drugs and antitetanus serum, the risk of infection also decreased. In developing antitoxins for gas gangrene, a bacterial infection that causes gas to form in a wound, the Russians claim to be far ahead of other countries. The famous Boston surgeon Hugh Cabot recently stated: "We don't know yet whether we can get a vaccine for gas gangrene... but [the Russians] already have it, and it has reduced the mortality rate to one and a half percent, as opposed to about 50 percent." % during the last war."
Dr. Efim I. Smirnov, head of the Main Military Sanitary Directorate of the Red Army, notes: “During the First World War, orderlies typically picked up the wounded after the end of active hostilities, usually at night. As a result, many wounded died after lying on the battlefield for six years. eight hours without medical care- died not from wounds, but from loss of blood or the rapid spread of infection... From the first day of the war, a strict rule has been in effect in the Red Army: the wounded are taken out of the battlefield immediately, even under enemy fire...”
Today you won't see people with stretchers on the battlefield. The orderlies act alone, crawling across the field while the battle is still going on and carrying out the wounded on their backs. Almost all of them are girls: in Russia women are distinguished by their physical strength. The soldiers call them front-line girlfriends.
“We have large losses among junior medical personnel,” admits Dr. Smirnov, “but the number of soldiers’ lives saved is enormous.” The girl who carries 40 wounded from the battlefield is awarded the Order of the Red Banner - if at the same time she also delivers their rifles or machine guns to her friends. The nurse who saved 80 soldiers along with their weapons receives the Order of Lenin. One twenty-three-year-old girl carried 100 wounded to the rear in one day, either by dragging or on her shoulders. “It was scary,” she said. “And I felt tired only later.”
"Flying Coffins"
From dressing stations on the front line, the wounded are usually transported to evacuation hospitals by air (the US Army plans to introduce the same system). Most pilots are women, and they fly mostly older aircraft. The wounded are placed not only inside the fuselage, but also in coffin-like boxes mounted on the wings. As a result, an old two-seater airplane can transport a dozen wounded at a time. This is a huge step forward compared to the ambulance trains of the First World War, in which soldiers often shook for days, and their wounds developed infection during this time.
New methods
During wars, doctors always develop new treatment methods. Here are some recent achievements of the Russians:
- surgeon A.S. Vishnevsky developed a technique for transplanting nerves taken from dead people to patients.
- Extensive wounds are treated by covering them with a bandage made from specially treated peritoneum - the inner lining abdominal cavity- animals. This extraordinary “bandage”, developed by Professor W. Krause, “sticks” to damaged tissues, providing them reliable protection; After using it, only a small scar remains.
— In Moscow, doctor E.I. Kudryashov established large-scale production of thrombin, a whitish liquid that promotes blood clotting and stops bleeding. He explains: “This enzyme [thrombin] was first obtained in 1912... American scientists managed to isolate thrombin, but they obtain it in extremely small volumes. Not long ago I found a way to obtain thrombin in thousands of liters, and today it is used in many hospitals in our country."
- Nurses in the Red Army always carry with them 200 grams (about 6½ ounces) of blood of the "universal" type in a special ampoule - named after its inventor, Dr. S. Seltsovsky [ so in the text. It's about about P.L. Seltsovsky - approx. translation.] from Kyiv - equipped with a sterile rubber tube, needle and filter. Thus, a blood transfusion can be given to a wounded person even before he is removed from the battlefield.
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("Time", USA)
("Time", USA)
("Time", USA)
("Time", USA)
InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.
PREFACE
M. Mirsky's book is dedicated to one of the most prominent representatives of Russian surgery - the chief surgeon of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War, Academician N. N. Burdenko.
In this book the author is good literary language tells about the life path of Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, shows how the son of a village clerk became an academician, the first president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, and the chief surgeon of the Red Army.
Noting the organizational talent, extraordinary abilities and originality of N. N. Burdenko, the author emphasizes that behind all this was work, work throughout his life.
Despite the biographical nature of the book, it pays a lot of attention to Nikolai Nilovich’s views on various issues of military field surgery - such as triage, evacuation, uniform methods of treating wounds - as well as on the problems of neurosurgery and other branches of medicine.
The book clearly shows how much effort N.N. Burdenko devoted to organizing the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and turning it into a scientific center for the development of the most important issues in medicine.
The life of Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, entirely devoted to the service of medicine, can serve a shining example for the younger generation. Therefore, the appearance of M. Mirsky’s book should be welcomed in every possible way: it is very useful and timely.
I am sure that the book “Chief Surgeon N. N. Burdenko” will be read with interest and benefit by a wide range of readers.
Colonel General of the Medical Service, Academician of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences
A. A. VISHNEVSKY
“I spent my whole life among fighters... I am bloodily connected with the Red Army. I give all my strength to the Red Army and am proud to belong to it.”
N. N. BURDENKO
HIGH REWARD
On May 20, 1943, a lively, upbeat atmosphere reigned in the Sverdlovsk Hall of the Kremlin. Prominent organizers of the military medical service, its illustrious generals, chief specialists, major figures in Soviet healthcare and medical science - those who personified the experience, power and creative force of advanced Soviet medicine - gathered here.
All of them gathered in the Kremlin in connection with a special, significant event: the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, was presented with high government awards - the Order of Lenin, the gold medal “Hammer and Sickle” and a certificate of conferment of the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
The Great Patriotic War had been going on for almost two years. The mortal battle with German fascism, which the Soviet country waged one on one, attracted the attention of the whole world.
In severe trials, the skill of Soviet soldiers grew, their will was tempered, and their confidence in complete and final victory over the enemy strengthened.
During the war years, along with the Red Army, its medical service grew and matured. Military doctors who protected the life and health of Soviet soldiers fulfilled their duties with honor.
In the first, most difficult year of the war, Soviet medicine returned 70 percent to the front. wounded - doctors saved them and made them combat-ready again. In other words, millions of seasoned, experienced fighters returned to duty: the front received, as it were, “additional” combat units - regiments,
divisions, armies. This was an indisputable victory for Soviet medicine, all types of its “weapons” - military field surgery and therapy, epidemiology and hygiene.
But the main link in the medical service in the troops is military field surgery, because according to catchphrase The great Russian surgeon N.I. Pirogov: war is a traumatic epidemic. The first victims of battles are victims of combat trauma, gunshot wounds. That is why the most important among doctors during the Great Patriotic War were surgeons and organizers of military field surgical service. And at the head of this entire service from the first days of the Great Patriotic War was a veteran of four wars, a prominent scientist, the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko.
His homeland highly appreciated his services. By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of May 8, 1943 for outstanding scientific achievements in the field of Soviet medicine and selfless, fruitful work in organizing surgical care for soldiers and commanders of the Red Army wounded in battles with the Nazis, N. N. Burdenko, the first Soviet physician, was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
The high government award was presented to Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko by the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin.
A modest person not prone to external effects, Burdenko accepted the award, bowing his head low before the All-Union Elder. But his excitement required an outlet, he wanted to express his feelings, and he asked to speak.
“I am a surgeon,” said Burdenko, “and as a surgeon I am used to being responsible for my affairs. This sense of responsibility runs through my entire working life. The fact that the Bolshevik Party awarded me great honor and trust by accepting me into its ranks further raises this sense of responsibility and multiplies my strength and energy. We, doctors, in the conditions of the present Patriotic War, are determined to apply all our knowledge and strength to see our dear Motherland in the aura of victory. We are all unshakably confident in the triumph of the noble ideals for which our party, government, and Red Army are fighting...
After these excited words from Burdenko, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin, gave a speech.
The awarding of Comrade Burdenko, he said, is of great political significance. This award means that medical service Our Red Army stands on a par with aviation and artillery services, that medical workers in the ranks of the army are just as necessary as fighters and commanders.
The awarding of Comrade Burdenko, continued M.I. Kalinin, also has a huge public importance: it is a clear confirmation of the Soviet worldview, the Soviet attitude to value human life. After all, the most valuable thing we have, the main wealth of our country, is our Soviet people. Therefore, preserving people’s health and their ability to work is one of the most noble activities.
Mikhail Ivanovich Kalinin spoke in detail about the fact that the development of Soviet medicine is a natural result of the tireless struggle of the party and the Soviet government to raise the material and cultural level of the Soviet people. It was these efforts that led during the war, at the moment of the highest tension of all the forces of the people, to the fact that Soviet medicine was at the proper level.
The high award that Comrade Burdenko receives, said M.I. Kalinin in conclusion, is a reward for his talent, for his success in the field of medical science and practice. Our doctors cannot complain that past history we did not have wonderful doctors, both from a social and a medical point of view. I would like for us to have such talented people in the field of medicine there were hundreds and thousands. Let me wish that the achievements of our medical workers, who are celebrated in the person of Comrade Burdenko, that these achievements do not reassure them, but serve as a new incentive to achieve further successes in Russian medicine.
“I would like,” M.I. Kalinin concluded to thunderous applause from those gathered, “for you to be frantically infected with the thought that Russian medicine should be in the forefront of world medicine.” In terms of material situation, we are still inferior to some advanced states, but in terms of intellectual and moral state, the Soviet people now stand
(1876-1946) Russian surgeon
In 1906, the medical faculty of Yuryev (Tartu) University decided to issue Nikolai Burdenko a diploma of “doctor with honors.” By this time, the thirty-year-old student had already gone through a lot of life school. He was born into the family of a zemstvo doctor in the small village of Kamenka near Penza. While still a student, Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko went to fight epidemics, and with the beginning Russo-Japanese War achieved assignment to the active army.
There, the young doctor first began providing medical care directly on the battlefield. Following the example of his great predecessor N. Pirogov, he not only became interested in surgery, but made it a powerful factor influencing the military situation.
After graduating from university, Burdenko was left to prepare for a professorship. In 1910, just four years after graduating from university, he brilliantly defended his doctoral dissertation, in which he substantiated the principles of military field surgery as a special branch of medical science.
Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko found that during the war, most soldiers die not from the wounds themselves, but from the associated blood loss and traumatic shock. Therefore, he developed a method of providing emergency medical care, introducing small medical units that walked around the battlefield. The beginning of the First World War confirmed the correctness of the talented doctor’s conclusions.
In the very first days of the war, Nikolai Burdenko applied for leave and hurried to the front. He participated in military operations, created hospitals, taught young doctors and operated on the wounded. Soon Nikolai Nilovich was appointed chief medical inspector of the Russian army.
He constantly combined organizational activities with intensive scientific work. From the first days of the revolution, Burdenko began organizing the military-sanitary service of the Red Army. At the end of 1917, he was unanimously elected by the Council of Yuryev University to the position of head of the faculty surgical clinic. Nikolai Nilovich accepted the “Pirogov Chair”. However, he almost didn’t have to work here, since the Germans soon occupied the city and university life came to a standstill. The command of the German army invited Nikolai Burdenko to continue working at the university, but the scientist rejected this offer and in June 1918, together with other professors, he was evacuated to Voronezh, taking with him almost all the property of the Yuryev clinic. Then, in the same 1918, he moved to Moscow and began working in the clinic for nervous diseases that he organized. A new science was born here - neurosurgery, that is, surgery of the brain and nerve trunks. For the first time in the world, Burdenko began surgical treatment of brain tumors. Thanks to a special technique, he was able to cure types of tumors that were previously considered incurable, because surgeons were afraid to touch the brain. Before Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, brain operations were rarely performed, and their successful outcome throughout the world was counted in a few.
Nikolai Nilovich developed a simple and accessible technique for neurosurgical operations and thereby introduced them into mass practice. Thousands of people were saved from severe paralysis thanks to the fact that Burdenko created a technique for spinal cord surgery. For the first time in the world, he began to transplant sections of nerves and operate on the deepest and most critical areas of the spinal cord and brain.
In 1923, the talented doctor was elected professor of operative surgery at the 1st Moscow state university, and later the director of the faculty surgical clinic. He led this department and clinic until the end of his life.
In 1934, the clinic he led was transformed into a neurosurgical institute. It was the first scientific institution of this profile in the world. Soon it became a kind of Mecca for neurosurgeons in many countries. Doctors from England, the USA, Sweden and other countries came there for internships. They studied the methods developed by Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko and his employees.
In 1941 for outstanding work in surgery nervous system the government awarded him the State Prize of the first degree.
From the first days of the Great Patriotic War, he worked as the chief surgeon of the Red Army. Despite his age (65 years), he performs a lot of surgeries in various hospitals in Leningrad, Pskov, Smolensk, and works literally at the forefront. During one of the crossings, Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko came under bombardment and was shell-shocked. Only after this did he agree to leave the front-line zone and go to Moscow. The material he collected in combat conditions allowed him to develop a unified method for treating gunshot wounds.
At the end of September 1941, Burdenko suffered a stroke. Years, hard work and previous injuries have taken their toll. In critical condition, he spent about two months in the hospital and was evacuated to Kuibyshev, and then to Omsk. Since April 1942, Nikolai Burdenko has been in Moscow again.
Having learned about the discovery of antibiotics, he ensured that their production began in the USSR. It was at his insistence that drugs such as penicillin and streptocide began to be sent to military hospitals. Soon surgeons in all military hospitals learned to use these drugs. It was Burdenko who, for the first time in world medicine, proposed injecting a solution of white streptocide into the carotid artery for purulent complications after injuries to the skull and brain. This ensured the best and highest concentrations of streptocide penetration to the site of infection in the human brain. Intravenous injections practiced abroad did not give such an effect. Many thousands of wounded were saved and spared from severe injuries and complications thanks to scientific research carried out throughout the war by Colonel General Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko, appointed head of the surgical service of the Red Army.
In 1943 he was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In the same year, he was appointed chairman of the commission to investigate the mass executions of Polish officers in Katyn. Despite strong pressure from the authorities, Burdenko stated that the remains he discovered indicate that the executions were carried out by NKVD officers. Naturally, at that time such a conclusion could not be published, and official propaganda blamed the Germans for the executions. It was only in April 1991 that the findings of that long-standing commission were officially recognized by the authorities.
Due to difficult experiences, Nikolai Burdenko suffered a cerebral hemorrhage. But he continued to work tirelessly. In 1944, according to a plan developed by the famous surgeon, the Academy of Medical Sciences was created, and Burdenko was soon elected its first president. True, recognition in his native country was somewhat belated: by this time he had already been elected a member of the International Society of Surgeons and the Royal Society of London. By the way, besides him, not a single Russian doctor has been elected there yet.
In the summer of 1946, Nikolai Nilovich Burdenko suffered a third cerebral hemorrhage, and on November 11, 1946, the life of this wonderful man was cut short. The Main Military Hospital is named after the great surgeon.
