“Overcoming Inhuman Difficulties”: I.V. Stalin Crimean State Medical Institute in the Period of the Great Patriotic War (According to Documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation)

Abstract

Introduction. The article focuses mainly on the activities of I.V. Stalin Crimean State Medical Institute during the Great Patriotic War, its main areas of work. Comprehensive scientific developments on this issue are not available in Russian historiography. Methods and materials. The research is carried out based on a variety of archival sources from the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (SARF, Moscow), which are introduced into scientific discourse for the first time. Various groups of documents are widely involved: correspondence of S.R. Tatevosov, director of the institute, with the authorities on the functioning of the university; directives, decrees of state institutions reflected in the activities of the medical institute; university reporting and planning documentation. Analysis. Employees and students of Crimean Medical Institute were forced to leave the peninsula after the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, from the moment of the threat of occupation of the Crimea. The university team had to be evacuated along the route: Armavir – Tbilisi – Krasnovodsk – Dzhambul – again Armavir – Ordzhonikidze – Baku – Krasnovodsk – Kzyl-Orda. Their wanderings lasted almost a year, however, the university did not stop its activities for a single day as the front was in dire need of medical specialists. Two turnouts graduated in Kzyl-Orda in incredibly difficult conditions. In total, from June 1941 to July 1944, the institute trained 850 doctors, wherefore the university staff was awarded with personal thanks of I.V. Stalin. Results. The heroic history of I.V. Stalin Crimean State Medical Institute during the Great Patriotic War has been restored. The activity of lecturers of the institute during the period of forced evacuation to the territory of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (the city of Kzyl-Orda) has been analyzed. The stage of resuming the work of the university after its re-evacuation to Simferopol has been recreated in detail, the measures taken to prepare for the beginning of the first academic year in the Crimea in the autumn of 1944 have been restored. In order to prepare the study, the authors have carried out a detailed historiographic analysis, and have selected the source base carefully.