RUSSIAN EMIGRANT DOCTORS - PARTICIPANTS IN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT IN YUGOSLAVIA

Abstract

The April War of 1941 found approximately 30,000 Russian emigrants in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. As a result of the revolutionary events of 1917 and the Civil War (1918-1922), they left Russia and came to the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (KSS) (since 1929, the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) between 1919 and 1923. After the division of Yugoslavia as a result of the invasion of Germany and Italy in April 1941 and its capitulation, most of the representatives of this community remained passive, some decided to collaborate with the Germans, but there were also those who chose active resistance to the occupiers. Russian emigrants from a wide variety of professions (engineers, artists, academics, doctors) joined the fight against the occupiers on the territory of the former Yugoslavia. According to the calculations of the leading specialist in the history of the Russian diaspora in Yugoslavia, Aleksey Borisovich Arsenyev, more than 90 Russian doctors and nurses participated in the Resistance movement. Russian doctors were specialists in various fields of medicine. Most of those about whom we have information received their education in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia itself; some joined the Resistance as students of medical faculties. Among the doctors who fought fascism were representatives of the first generation of Russian refugees, including participants in the White movement. During the years of occupation, Russian doctors who participated in the partisan movement, joined the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, ran hospitals, headed the epidemiological service, thus contributing to the fight against fascism. The article provides biographical information about only some of them