Mendeleva, Julia Aronovna

Born in a poor, large Jewish family. Father, Aron Moiseevich Mendelev ^[2] ( 1855 - June 8, 1928 , Leningrad), according to unconfirmed reports, was a blacksmith, later an agent of the Starodub branch of the Russian Life Insurance Society ^[3] . Mother, Rebekah Ionovna Mendeleva ( 1855 - 1920 , Smolensk ) was engaged in raising children. In 1891 , at the age of ten, Yoheved (this name was Julia Aronovna until 1911 ) was a witness and, in part, suffered from the Jewish pogrom, perpetrated by the Old Believers in Starodub ^[4] . Then the property of her father was partially destroyed.

She received her primary education at the local Alexandrovsky Women's Parish School, after which she went to Novozybkov in 1896 , where in 1900 she graduated from the only female gymnasium in the city with a gold medal ^[5] .

By the age of 18, Yu. A. Mendelev was in St. Petersburg, where she immediately entered obstetric courses. Exactly a year later, she received a diploma of a midwife of the 1st category and in September 1901 was accepted to the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Higher Women's Bestuzhev Courses . After studying for 2 years, in 1903 Yulia Aronovna transferred to the Women's Medical Institute (ZHMI), but because of her acquaintance with E. D. Stasova and the rapid revolutionary activity that began after this, she had to be interrupted several times.

The first time Yu. A. Mendeleva was arrested in 1904 in Vilna . She was briefly held in a transit prison, but she was never charged. Having been released, already in 1905, Julia Aronovna joined the ranks of the RSDLP (b) . In 1907, the Northwestern Conference of the RSDLP (b) organizations elected it a member of the St. Petersburg Military Committee and at the same time a member of the editorial board of the illegal social-democratic newspaper Kazarma ^[6] . Such an active activity of Yu. A. Mendeleva did not go unnoticed by the authorities. In September 1907, she was expelled from the institute, and two months later arrested. After being detained for several months in the house of preliminary detention, Yulia Aronovna was asked to leave the capital.

Until the fall of 1909, she lived in exile in France. Returning to St. Petersburg, Yu. A. Mendeleva decided to continue her education and was restored to the PMI. At that time, she studied with Vera Pavlovna Livandova-Lebedeva - a member of the RSDLP and the well-known healthcare organizer, the first head of the Department of Maternal and Infant Protection of the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR ^[7] and the creator of the eponymous scientific institute in Moscow. In December 1911 , having passed the final exams, Julia Aronovna received the long-awaited diploma of the successful completion of the institute with the assignment of the title of doctor.

At first, she worked briefly as an external doctor in the St. Petersburg Obukhov hospital , then moved to Smolensk , where in the same position until May 1912 she served in the Zemsky hospital. The choice was not random. In Smolensk, her elder sister Feiga Aronovna Mendeleva-Vysotskaya (b. 1878) worked for several years as a zemstvo doctor, and her parents also moved here.

Obviously, the arrests and imprisonment (albeit brief) were not in vain. In the summer of 1912, due to the development of tuberculosis, work had to be interrupted for two years. For treatment, Julia Aronovna traveled to Italy ( Merano , San Remo ). The return to work coincided with the beginning of the First World War . Until December 1916, for more than two years, Yu. A. Mendeleva treated the wounded and sick in the Smolensk military infirmary of the All-Russian Union of Cities ^[8] .

In the first half of 1917, in connection with the exacerbation of tuberculosis, Yu.A. Mendeleva again spent in a hospital bed, after which, until the autumn of 1918, she improved her health and worked as a doctor in a tuberculosis sanatorium located in Abastumani ( Georgia ).

In January 1919, Yulia Aronovna was appointed head of the sub-department of the Protection of motherhood and infancy of the Smolensk City Health Department. Having worked in this position for only 2.5 years, Yu. A. Mendeleva managed to organize 42 children's institutions and a tuberculosis sanatorium in the province, which she herself headed. There were very few doctors in the city, so at the same time Yu. A. Mendeleva served as senior doctor of the Telegraph and Telephone Division and the Special Purpose Unit . In addition, she was elected a member of the board of the Insurance Fund, the city Zhenotdel and the College of Sobestrud.

This number of duties was not in vain. In the fall of 1921, another exacerbation of the disease followed, requiring prolonged treatment. A year later, in November 1922, Yu. A. Mendelev was sent to Berlin to the university clinic of the famous German pediatric doctor, Professor for scientific improvement in the field of pediatrics.

At the head of the Institute for the Protection of Maternity and Infancy

The return of Yulia Aronovna to her homeland was preceded by a number of important events. In 1924, it was decided to organize in Leningrad the scientific and practical Institute for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy (Institute "MatMlada" or NPI OMM). The idea of ​​its creation back in 1921 was expressed by well-known Petrograd doctors Z. O. Michnik , A. N. Antonov and professor V. O. Mochan . At first, in 1922, a similar scientific institute for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy was already created in Moscow under the leadership of V.P. Livandova-Lebedeva, and now, after 2 years, it was supposed to be opened in Leningrad.

At the initiative of V.P. Livandova-Lebedeva, a pediatrician, a Bolshevik with 20 years of experience, Yu. A. Mendelev, was to head the new institute in Leningrad.

The MatMlada Institute was opened on January 22, 1925 in the territory of the Vyborg Infectious Diseases for Children (the former City Children's Hospital “In Memory of the Holy Coronation of Their Imperial Majesties” ^[9] ). The opening date of the institute was dedicated to the anniversary of the death (January 21, 1924 ) of the leader of the world proletariat Vladimir Ilyich Lenin . The name of Lenin, and not Klara Zetkin , under which he became widely known, bore the institute in the first years of its existence. Information about this event could be read in two issues of Krasnaya Gazeta.

Since Julia Aronovna was still in Germany at that time, Professor V.O. Mochan was temporarily appointed as the first director. Only at the end of March 1925 she arrived in Leningrad and on April 1 she took up her duties as director of the institute. From that moment on, the fate of Yulia Aronovna was inextricably linked with the institute, to which she gave all herself without a trace. Together with her brother Grigory Aronovich Mendelev ( 1886 - 1956 ), senior inspector of the GubFO (Provincial Finance Department), she even settled in a small office apartment on the institute’s premises and only 10 years later moved to Tchaikovsky Street, 10 ^[10] .

The main stake of Yu. A. Mendelev was made by the leading Russian professors of the old regime A. N. Antonov, P. I. Lublinsky, M. S. Maslov , V. O. Mochan, L. L. Okinchits ^[11] , A. V Popova, D. A. Soloduho, L. I. Erlikh ^[12] . A little later, famous scientists K.K. Skrobansky ^[13] , R.R. Vreden , D.D. Lokhov ^[14] , E.S. London , M.G. Danilevich , A.F. Tur , were invited to the institute O. O. Gartokh , V. M. Karasik and others. She made her head of the Department of Children's Diseases of the Military Medical Academy , Professor Mikhail Stepanovich Maslov , her deputy in science, giving him complete freedom both in the selection of personnel and in the formation of the scientific plans of the institute. D. S. Tumarkin became the deputy on medical part. ^[15]

With the name of Yu. A. Mendeleva, the formation and development of the institute is associated. Together with M. S. Maslov, Yulia Aronovna in 1928 achieved a change in the status of MatMlad. From scientific and practical, it was reformed into a research one. Obviously, it was at this time that the institute began to be called “them. Klara Zetkin. " This meant the possibility of organizing professorships and assistant professors. Analogues of such an institution in the USSR did not yet exist. The rapid process of developing new organizational forms and methods of work of health care institutions for women and children began, the causes of child mortality and morbidity were investigated and measures to combat them were determined, the physiology and pathology of children was studied. Yulia Aronovna herself, remaining the director of the institute, in 1928 founded and headed the department of social hygiene of women and children ^[16] . In those same years (1928-1942), she edited the journal “Questions of pediatrics, pedology and the protection of motherhood and childhood” ^[17] (since 1936 - “Questions of pediatrics and the protection of motherhood and childhood”) ^[18] .

Using the unlimited trust of the communist authorities on the one hand and the staff of her institute on the other, Yulia Aronovna turned out to be that successful connecting element between the new government and the old-regime, for the most part, professorial staff, which was often lacking in other sectors. Moreover, a convinced Bolshevik , in 1925, when this was not encouraged by the authorities, and could even be personally dangerous, Yu.A. Mendeleva took a job at NPI OMM and entrusted the leadership of one of the key clinics to her ideological opponent who had recently returned from exile, the former monarchist and activist of the cadet party Yu. N. Sadykova . Fifteen years later, during the years of great terror, she similarly hired the recently released Bundist A. M. Abezgauz , who later grew up to be a professor in the department of hospital pediatrics.

At the origins of pediatric education in Soviet Russia

In the USSR, as well as throughout the world, pediatricians trained exclusively in the framework of postgraduate education. Having appreciated the thought of M. S. Maslov about the advisability of training pediatricians from the student bench, Yu. A. Mendeleva, since the 1930s, has led the struggle for the embodiment of the idea of ​​primary pediatric education. In 1931, a pediatric faculty at the First Medical Institute (1st LMI) was created for a short time, and the teaching of pediatrics at the faculty since March 1932 was organized at the medical school at the Institute for the Protection of Motherhood and Infancy.

Finally, the efforts of Yulia Aronovna and M. S. Maslov were successful, and on February 15, 1935, the world's first higher educational institution, designed to train children's doctors, was opened at the Research Institute for the Protection of Mothers and Infants. Yu.A. Mendeleva was appointed Rector of the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute , approved by decision of the Higher Qualification Commission of May 27, 1935 to the degree of Doctor of Medical Sciences with the assignment of the title of professor. At first, two institutes (research institutes and academic) existed simultaneously on common areas and under the same leadership. Soon, the Research Institute "MatMlada" completely merged with the educational pediatric institute. Thanks to the energy of Yu. A. Mendeleva and M. S. Maslov, in a short time, programs for teaching all subjects were created taking into account the profile of the institute.

The department of social hygiene of women and children has become one of the leading departments of the university. Under the leadership of Yu. A. Mendeleva, her employees developed statistical research methods in the field of maternal and child health, new organizational forms of activity of medical institutions for women and children. The department studied the state of health of women and children in connection with socio-hygienic factors, developed the social and legal protection of mother and child, the organization of pedagogical work with young children.

One of the most important areas of the department’s work on the initiative of Yu. A. Mendeleva since 1928 was the study of the effectiveness of the prevention of tuberculosis in children using vaccination according to Calmette. Since 1934, she was appointed People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR as the head of BCG vaccination in Leningrad.

During the siege of Leningrad

From the first days of World War II , the Institute began a mass mobilization of employees in the army: 129 doctors and 150 nurses went to the front. A little later, several dozen employees voluntarily joined the 5th division of the national militia ^[19] . Under these conditions, Yu. A. Mendeleva made every effort to ensure that the sudden shortage of personnel did not affect the work of the clinics. With great difficulty, she succeeded, and all 900 days of the blockade, the Leningrad Pediatric Medical Institute continued to accept sick and wounded children, without refusing anyone. Moreover, the institute was the only higher educational institution of the besieged city that continued to accept and teach students ^[20] . Only for a short time, in the winter of 1941 - 1942, the learning process was interrupted. To facilitate the lives of teachers and students, medical nutrition centers, special hospitals for patients were organized in the LMI, rooms of several departments were converted into dormitories ^[21] . In total, over the years of World War II, 947 doctors were released.

The administration of the institute, headed by Julia Aronovna Mendeleva, took all measures to save the lives of employees and students. One of the main tasks of the blockade period was the nutrition of children ^[22] . With the aim of rational use of food products, since June 1942, a nutrition council was created at the Lenghozdravotdel (the chairpersons of the children's section are professors Julia Aronovna Mendeleva and Alexander Fedorovich Tur) ^[23] . The scientists of the institute developed special nutritional regimes for children, the recipe of dishes from various substitutes and substances that were not previously used for baby food (from soybean, reconstituted vegetable oil from drying oil, pine needles, yeast soup and others) ^[24] . First of all, these recommendations were implemented in the clinics of the institute itself. The result was quite satisfactory. It is enough to say that on the territory of the institute, despite the famine and numerous shelling, not a single employee or patient died, except for those children who died from diseases incompatible with life ^[25] . For the needs of the institute and sick children, Yulia Aronovna organized a subsidiary farm, where teachers and students worked, replacing each other. During the period from 1941 to 1943, this farm produced 918 tons of vegetables. Moreover, the efforts of Yu. A. Mendeleva even organized a dairy farm in 1942 , which produced 812 liters of milk by the end of the year, and 12,000 liters the next year.

When in the spring of 1942 the question arose about the possible evacuation of the institute, most of its doctors, teachers and professors began to seek permission to stay in the besieged city. As a result, the topic of evacuation was removed from the agenda. Only a small part of the staff (Professor M. G. Danilevich , Professor V. L. Styrikovich , Professor V. M. Karasik , Associate Professor Z. O. Michnik , Professor P. O. Efrussi and some others) were sent to Kislovodsk for staff reinforcement a branch of the 1st Leningrad Medical Institute that is being opened there. About these days, Julia Aronovna wrote:

“We were happy when the issue of evacuation was resolved negatively. In wartime, the existence of the institute was absolutely necessary, since it was necessary to train personnel for doctors and nurses. ”

In 1941 - 1945, the department, headed by Yu. A. Mendeleva, continued its educational and research work. For the first time in the war years, Yulia Aronovna together with N. G. Sinyakovskaya developed the “single pediatrician” system, which was the most optimal for that time. Special courses were opened at the department for retraining pediatric doctors. In 1942 - 1944, Yu. A. Mendeleva was elected Chairman of the Board of the Society of Pediatric Doctors of Leningrad ^[26] . Yulia Aronovna told about the work of the Pediatric Institute during the blockade in 1944 on the July pages of the newspaper Leningradskaya Pravda.

Yu.A. Mendeleva herself suffered severe dystrophy during the years of the blockade. In the winter of 1941-1942. in her house on the street Tchaikovsky hit the bomb. Julia Aronovna did not suffer, because she did not leave her workplace for many days and was rarely at home, but her apartment with all the property was completely destroyed. Until 1946, she temporarily resided in Mitavsky Lane , d. 2, but then returned to her old address.

Victim of the campaign against cosmopolitanism

In the postwar years, the efforts of Yulia Aronovna were aimed at restoring the institute, which was significantly damaged by shelling, and replenishing the staff of departments and clinics. Gradually, peaceful life was getting better, however, on August 30, 1949, during the campaign against cosmopolitanism, Yu. A. Mendelev was arrested and soon convicted in the so-called “ Leningrad case ”. For seven years she was in the camps and was released, and then rehabilitated only in 1957 (after the XX Congress of the CPSU ). In the year of returning to Leningrad, Yulia Aronovna turned 74 years old, and she no longer had the strength to continue her professional activities.

The professor, in fact the first rector of the LPMI, Yulia Aronovna Mendeleva, died in her personal summer residence in Zelenogorsk on September 18, 1959 in the arms of the granddaughter of her niece Kira Ludwigovna Mendeleva and her husband, writer Vasily Aksyonov . She did not live to her 76th birthday in just 11 days. Julia Aronovna was buried at the Preobrazhensky Jewish cemetery in Leningrad.

Yu. A. Mendeleva never had her own family. There is a version that for a short time she was married to a certain Hoffmann, however, there is no information in her personal file about this.

• All her life, Julia Aronovna took care of her younger brother Grigory Aronovich Mendelev (April 17, 1886 - June 6, 1956 , Leningrad), with whom she lived for many years under the same roof, as well as the granddaughter of her older brother Iona Aronovich Mendelev ( 1874 - 1928 , Leningrad) - Kira Lyudvigovna Mendeleva (December 18, 1934 - 2013 ), who became the first wife of the writer Vasily Pavlovich Aksenov ( 1932 , Kazan - 2009 , Moscow);
• Two sisters of Yulia Aronovna: Fanya Aronovna Mendeleva (Feiga Aronovna Mendeleva-Vysotskaya, 1878 - February 20, 1954 , Leningrad) and Rakhil Aronovna Mendeleva (September 20, 1882 - January 20, 1950 , Leningrad) were doctors.
• Cousin: Yakov Ilyich Mendelev ( 1895 , Starodub - June 20, 1938 , Moscow, executed by shooting) ^[27] , deputy head of the Glavtsvetmetobrabotki People’s Commissariat of Heavy Industry of the USSR.

In numerous biographical essays devoted to Yu. A. Mendeleva, as well as to the popular commissar of the Civil War and the author of the famous novel “ Chapaev ” D. A. Furmanov , the legendary Hungarian revolutionary and Comintern leader L. M. Gavro and the famous writer Vasily Aksenov , the erroneous is repeated the assertion that Julia Aronovna was the mother of the wife of D. A. Furmanov - Anna Nikitichna Steshenko (according to legend, A. N. Steshenko served as the prototype of the machine gunner for the Vasilyev brothers in the film " Chapaev "). At the same time, he was convinced that A. N. Steshenko, who was in her second marriage married to L. M. Gavro, was the mother of the wife of Vasily Aksyonov - Kira Lyudvigovna Mendeleva (Gavro).

Obviously, the first mistake is related to the fact that Vasily Aksyonov himself in his letters to his mother E. S. Ginzburg called Yu. A. Mendelev the grandmother of his wife ^[28] . On the other hand, there is no doubt that Kira Lyudvigovna Mendeleva was indeed the daughter of L. Gavro. She was born in December 1934 , when L. Gavro was officially married to A. N. Steshenko. This fact, apparently, served as the basis for mistakenly believing A. N. Steshenko as the mother of Kira Mendeleva, and therefore the daughter of Yulia Aronovna.

The authors of such a bright pedigree did not take into account the fact that A.N. Steshenko was born in 1897 in the Kuban , when Yulia Mendeleva was no more than 14 years old, and she still studied at the gymnasium far in Chernihiv (she graduated in 1900 ). The fact that less than six months before the birth of Kira Mendeleva, on March 1, 1934, a son was born in the family of L. Gavro and A. N. Steshenko (in memory of the first husband and with the consent of L. Gavro A. N Furmanova gave him her last name as a result of the boy was named Dmitry Ludwigovich Furmanov, in honor of Dmitry Andrevich Furmanov, who died 8 years before ^[29] ). Finally, the letters of Vasily Aksyonov and his other works repeatedly mention the name of the real mother of his wife ^[30] - Berta (Leibina) Ionovna Mendeleva (born January 21, 1909 ), the daughter of her older brother Yu. A. Mendeleva, Iona Aronovich. This fact also went unnoticed. By the way, B.I. Mendeleva was the only female tanker in the USSR, a graduate of the Academy of Armored Forces . She went through the entire Great Patriotic War and ended it with the rank of colonel ^[31] .

It turns out that A. N. Steshenko could not be either the mother of Kira Mendeleva, or the daughter of Yulia Aronovna. The wife of Vasily Aksyonova, Kira Ludwigovna, was in fact the illegitimate daughter of Ludwig Gavro and Berta Ionovna Mendeleva, and, consequently, the granddaughter of Julia Aronovna. There is a legend according to which Berta Ionovna was on friendly terms with the first secretary of the Leningrad regional committee of the CPSU (b) S. M. Kirov . Sergei Mironovich was killed on December 1, 1934 , and in memory of him, the daughter of B.I. Mendelev , who was born 18 days later, was named Kira.

• Member of the St. Petersburg Military Committee of the RSDLP;
• Member of the editorial board of the illegal social-democratic newspaper "Barracks";
• Member of the Board of the Insurance Fund 1919-1921 (Smolensk);
• Member of the City Zhenotdel 1919-1921. (Smolensk);
• Member of the College of Sobestrud 1919-1921 (Smolensk);
• Member of the Central Executive Committee of the Karelian ASSR in 1934;
• Member of the party asset of the Vyborgsky district;
• Member of the party organization NII OMM, then LPMI since 1926;
• Member of the Vyborg District Committee of the CPSU (B.) Since 1945;
• Member of the Leningrad City Council of Deputies of Workers' Convocations of 1927, 1934, 1939, 1947;
• Member of the Councils of the Ministries of Health of the RSFSR and the USSR by personnel (member of the commission for higher medical education and scientific personnel of this council);
• Member of the Councils of the Ministries of Health of the RSFSR and the USSR on therapeutic and preventive care for children;
• Member of the Board of the All-Union Society of Pediatric Doctors;
• Deputy Chairman and Chairman (during the blockade) of the Society of Pediatric Doctors of Leningrad;
• Editor of the journal “Issues of Pediatrics and the Protection of Motherhood and Childhood”;
• Member of all congresses of children's doctors of the USSR until 1949;
• Participant in a number of international congresses and conferences of pediatricians;
• Member of the Executive Committee of the Union of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Society since 1946
• Member of the Board of Trustees over orphanages in the Vyborg district of Leningrad since 1944

• Order of the Red Star
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• Order of the Red Banner of Labor
• Medal "For the Defense of Leningrad"
• Medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."
• Badge "Excellent Health" (USSR)

Here you can see the awards of Yu. A. Mendeleva in the exposition of the State Memorial Museum of Defense and the Siege of Leningrad

• Yu. A. Mendelev and D.S. Tumarkin (photo)
• Awards Yu. A. Mendeleva at the State Memorial Museum of Defense and Siege of Leningrad

St. Petersburg branch of the Union of Pediatricians of Russia

• To the 75th anniversary of the St. Petersburg State Pediatric Medical Academy. 1925-2000. Biographies. - SPb. , 2000 .-- 400 s.
• Children's doctors of besieged Leningrad
• Service to medical science (on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Yu. A. Mendeleva). - “Soviet pediatrician” (large-circulation newspaper LPMI) - December 1983.
• Personal file of Yu. A. Mendeleva / Archive of LPMI.