Blokhin, Nikolay Nikolaevich (1912–1993) — Hero of Socialist Labor, Director General of the All-Union Oncology Center, full member of the Academy of Medical Sciences (1960), member of the Polish and New York academies, chairman of the USSR–USA Society, chairman of the committee for the international Lenin Prizes "For the Strengthening of Peace Among Peoples." From 1977 to 1987, he served as President of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences. He was elected a deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
Biography
Outstanding theorist and practitioner of medicine, full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences and, for eighteen years, President of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, Nikolay Nikolaevich Blokhin was born on 4 May 1912 in the city of Lukoyanov, Nizhny Novgorod Governorate, into the family of a zemstvo pediatrician. Throughout his life, Academician Blokhin retained a deep respect for rank-and-file medical professionals — those now called general practitioners. Once, delivering a lecture to students at Nizhny Novgorod State Medical Academy, he advised them: "Learn from professors, but get your treatment from country doctors. And follow their example in how to communicate with those who are waiting for your help."
At seventeen, Nikolay Nikolaevich enrolled as a student in the medical faculty of Lobachevsky University. After six years of study, he went on to postgraduate work in the surgery department and defended his candidate's dissertation. Blokhin's extraordinary gift as a healer came to the fore during the Great Patriotic War, when Nikolay Nikolaevich effectively became the founder of an entire branch of medicine — reconstructive surgery. He served as chief surgeon of Evacuation Hospital No. 2816, a facility with a thousand beds. The hospital was located on Lyadov Street in City of Gorky; hundreds of wounded soldiers from all fronts were brought there after initial operations at front-line medical battalions. Surgery had to be performed at any hour of the day or night. Even nighttime bombing raids, enemy air attacks, and the wail of air-raid sirens could not interrupt the difficult and painstaking work of the surgeons. Nikolay Nikolaevich recalled those days and nights many times afterward. In conversations with journalists, he noted that roughly 70 percent of the wounded were cured of their injuries and returned to active duty, thanks to the small daily feats of heroism performed by doctors hour after hour. Blokhin's sister, Irina Nikolaevna — herself a full member of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences — recalled in a broadcast on Gorky Television how in 1942 her brother had developed "night blindness": he could barely see in the dark due to a deficiency of vitamin A caused by extreme physical exhaustion. Nikolay Nikolaevich needed a guide to lead him home through the darkened evening or nighttime streets. By a decree of the USSR Government in August 1945, the Gorky Scientific Research Institute of Reconstructive Surgery, Traumatology, and Orthopedics was established on the basis of Blokhin's theoretical research and the treatment methods he had applied in practice. Nikolay Nikolaevich himself was appointed its director and academic head. Alongside Blokhin, such outstanding surgeons and Nizhny Novgorod residents as Boris Korolev, Boris Parin, Mikhail Kolokol'tsev, Veniamin Durmashkin, Mikhail Grigoryev, Boris Paterson, and Nikolay Trapeznikov — who at present serves as President of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences and heads the Russian Oncology Center named after Academician Blokhin — studied and worked. In 1951, Nikolay Nikolaevich Blokhin — a master of reconstructive surgery, traumatologist, and orthopedist who had by then achieved all-Union recognition — was summoned to the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and tasked with organizing a new oncological research institute. To all the objections raised by the thirty-nine-year-old professor, his interlocutors replied that the matter was not open for discussion, as the decision had been made by Stalin himself. Nikolay Nikolaevich was obliged to master and develop a branch of medicine that was new to him. He successfully accomplished the difficult task entrusted to him — he created the Oncology Center of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, now known throughout the world, which bears the name of its founder and first Director General. Soviet medicine owes a great deal of its success in treating oncological diseases to Academician Blokhin, who developed the technology and methodology for the prevention and treatment of this terrible illness. In his later years, having lived and worked in Moscow for many decades, Nikolay Nikolaevich continued to consider himself a true Nizhny Novgorod residents. As he himself admitted in an interview with fellow countrymen in television: "…because my best years were spent here. This is my home city. This is where I grew up. There is no escaping that. This is my homeland."
Achievements
Awarded the Order of Lenin and various medals.
The title of "Honorary Citizen of the City of Gorky" was conferred by a resolution of the Gorky City Soviet of People's Deputies dated 3 June 1982.