Table of contents:
- Elder brother of the author of "Two Captains", employee of the typhus department and violinist of Moscow restaurants
- The taming of the plague outbreak, the first imprisonment and intervention of Maxim Gorky
- New denunciations, camps and scientific research in custody
- The intercession of the chief Red Army surgeon and the release of the scientist
Video: How the brilliant virologist who defeated the outbreak of the plague ended up in prison: Academician Lev Zilber
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Scientist Lev Zilber became the founder of Soviet medical virology and the creator of the first virus laboratory in Soviet Russia. An internationally recognized academician, laureate of the Stalin Prize and the Order of Lenin, he served three times in the prisons and camps of the USSR. In the 50s, during an X-ray of the chest of Lev Alexandrovich, a young doctor was amazed at the many broken ribs of the scientist, to which he replied that it was all the fault of a car accident. During none of the interrogations, despite the most cruel tortures, Zilber signed the confessions imputed to him and never once agreed to slander his colleagues.
Elder brother of the author of "Two Captains", employee of the typhus department and violinist of Moscow restaurants
The glorious and at the same time tragic life path of Lev Zilber began in the family of a seminarian teacher. The mother of the future scientist was a talented musician, so the boy grew up surrounded by music, perfectly playing the violin. The younger brother is the notorious Veniamin Kaverin, the creator of the novels "Two Captains" and "Open Book", where the prototype of the main character is the wife of Lev Alexandrovich, and Zilber himself is embodied in the image of a virologist named Lvov.
After successfully graduating from the gymnasium, Zilber went to study at St. Petersburg University (natural sciences), later transferring to the medical faculty at Moscow University. At the same time, in an attempt to earn a living, Zilber was on duty in the typhus ward, looked after a mentally ill old man and even played the violin in restaurants. In the First World War, he volunteered to go to the front, and upon his return he continued his university education, receiving a medical degree. In the civilian he served in the ranks of the Red Army and narrowly escaped death, being captured by the White Guards. He began his outstanding research in 1921 in Moscow, studying antiviral immunity and the variability of microorganisms.
The taming of the plague outbreak, the first imprisonment and intervention of Maxim Gorky
In 1929, Lev Zilber became the director of the Baku Institute of Microbiology of the local medical institute. The first test for scientific maturity was the plague outbreak in Gudrut, instantly taking lives. That story, in parallel with the feats of doctors in the absence of the necessary funds, was overgrown with superstitious details. The beliefs of the local population forced them to hide the sick, to perform rituals on the deceased, only spreading the plague more strongly throughout the district. The outbreak was successfully eliminated, but the vigilant NKVD expressed extreme distrust towards Zilber, which led to the first arrest.
The charge is suspicion of intent to spread the plague in Azerbaijan. Zilber was released 4 months later after the intervention of his brother-writer Kaverin and his associate Maxim Gorky. After his release, Lev Aleksandrovich headed the Department of Microbiology at the Moscow Institute, specializing in the improvement of doctors. In 1934, Lev Zilbert initiated the creation of the first virus laboratory in the USSR and opened the department of virology at the Institute of Microbiology. During the Far Eastern expedition, which the scientist led in 1937, the nature of the unexplored tick-borne encephalitis was established. Zilber and his colleagues became pioneers holding a previously unknown virus in their hands.
New denunciations, camps and scientific research in custody
After the breakthrough discovery of a strain of a deadly virus, instead of developing a vaccine, Zilber was expected to be denounced, imprisoned, tortured and starved. The scientist was sent to Pechorlag, where chance saved him from starvation. The wife started giving birth ahead of schedule. Zilber, who successfully resolved a difficult birth, was appointed head physician in the infirmary as a gratitude. During that period, prisoners died en masse from indiscriminate pellagra. Zilber, tirelessly conducting experiments in camp conditions, nevertheless developed a life-saving medicine.
The camp doctor was urgently summoned to Moscow, released and appointed head of the virology department of the Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology. But the next, in 1940, a third arrest followed. During interrogation, he was asked to develop a bacteriological weapon, to which he replied with an unequivocal refusal. Then he was sent to the "sharashka" to get cheap alcohol, where he simultaneously began to investigate the viral origin of cancerous tumors. For tobacco, prisoners supplied Zilber with rats and mice for experiments, as a result of which he came up with a fundamentally new concept of cancer. He set out his revolutionary conclusions in a microscopic text on several cigarette scraps of paper, passing them through his wife to freedom. Zinaida Ermolyeva, a well-known microbiologist in the Union, has collected the signatures of influential scientific luminaries under a petition for the release of her brilliant colleague.
The intercession of the chief Red Army surgeon and the release of the scientist
Zilber's research was so important that the chief surgeon of the Red Army, Nikolai Burdenko, stood up for him. A letter signed by him in March 1944 was sent to Joseph Stalin himself. At that time, a decisive offensive was underway on all fronts, and the appeal on behalf of the chief army surgeon was not ignored. On March 21, the very day when the envelope reached the leader's reception, Lev Zilber was released on the eve of his 50th birthday. In the same year, the scientist was listed as a full member of the Academy of Sciences and scientific director of the Institute of Virology.
Until the end of his life, Zilber continued his research on the origin and treatment of encephalitis, influenza, and antiviral immunity. The activity of his last years of life was biased towards oncovirology and attempts to create a vaccine against cancer. In November 1966, Lev Zilber showed his assistant a completed book on the viral genetic theory of the onset of cancerous tumors. And after a few minutes he died. The following year, the scientist was posthumously awarded the USSR State Prize.
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