Tatiana Sergeevna is Head of the RUDN University course in the History of Medicine, Honored Worker of Higher School of the, Honorary Worker of Higher Professional Education of the Russian Federation, Full Member of the International Academy of Higher Education Sciences, Doctor of Medical Sciences and a UDN graduate of 1966.
In her interview, Tatiana Sorokina – one of the first UDN graduates – speaks of her student days in UDN, international student construction units, Fidel Castro’s gratitude and of how the course in the History of Medicine was founded at the University.
We, medical students, were making the most of every single day. We did our very best and soaked up knowledge like sponges. There were 17 students in my group, of which 15 were foreigners. Over six years of training, five of us never received a single mark below "excellent", and finally all the students of our group were awarded diplomas with honors! Everyone had a great thirst for knowledge, the desire to learn everything from our tutors and go beyond textbooks and curricula.
We spent a lot of time doing rounds at the University clinics. We spent there day and night, every year, and not just as part of the curriculum, but beyond it, as a calling. For us, it was a common practice to arrive for morning classes directly from the clinic after a night shift.
We lived in that amazing atmosphere when both teachers and students with equal enthusiasm were contributing together to one common cause. This cause went far beyond the idea of "creating Peoples Friendship University". Rather, it resulted from our combined effort and this natural atmosphere of unity and internationalism that that started to develop at the University from its very first steps. None of us needed any explanation of this; quite on the contrary, we explained it to others and spread this spirit outside our home – the University – outside our city, region, or state. Helping each other with learning was common and natural. There was no falling behind. Once, a student from USSR received ‘satisfactory’ in Political Economy. An emergency meeting of Komsomol Assembly was convened on this "incredible situation" and unanimously decreed that the student should learn the material and sit the exam once more!
Studying was taken very seriously and it was a great delight too both for us and for our teachers. Even such a happy day as our graduation from the University turned out to be more sad than joyful, because we parted with the whole world – our friends. We said goodbye to each of our teachers, who we respected and revered infinitely "on a par with our parents" (as stated in the medical Oath).
Our teachers’ primary and constant care was to form and develop our scientific worldview. All of them came to the University inspired by its very idea – training highly qualified specialists for the states of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Their lectures were filled with this spirit and raised a lot of questions in students, who constantly brought these questions before professors. A professor surrounded by a crowd of students after the lecture was a common picture in the classroom of that time. Specifically I recall the lectures by Sergei Vasilyevich Nechaev, Department of Epidemiology Head. Each of his lectures was followed by its “unofficial part” – for an hour or so he was answering all our questions concerning epidemiology and prevalence of diseases across countries. A man of high culture and broad erudition, he spoke enthusiastically, passionately and with deep knowledge of the matter, as for several years he worked as part of target programs of the World Health Organization in many countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and knew well (not from books, but from his own experience) the status and problems of medicine and healthcare in those countries where our graduates were to work.
In the early years of the University and the School of Medicine, our entire life was basically spent in one building – on Donskaya Street (now Ordzhonikidze St.). It was the center of our every activity of that time, equipped with simply everything – educational and scientific laboratories, lecture halls and a scientific library, a dining room and a cozy coffee shop, a leisure center and a sports facility. Everything was “at hand” – close and easy to reach. And we easily switched from classes to rehearsals, from rehearsals to scientific experiments and actively participated in all events. The leisure center buzzed like a beehive: concerts and movies, rehearsals and performances, national holidays… Its administration cared more about how to keep in check our turbulent inexhaustible enthusiasm than about how to attract us there.
Together with Dmitry Bilibin and Alik Khachaturov, we wrote scripts and staged performances that attracted full houses. We organized KVN competitions, first between the faculties and then set up a university team. KVN in our multinational University from the very beginning was very special, resembling no other. After winning the finals, we performed our international live program on Central TV. This was decades before KVN was ever revived in RUDN. Thus, wrong are those who believe that it was not until the 2000s that KVN first appeared in RUDN University – the country applauded UDN KVN Team back in the 1960s!
Each year on the stage of the House of Scientists, the UDN Interclub or in the Variety Theater, UDN Choreographic Studio led by the indefatigable Varvara Petrovna Butkina (ballet dancer of the Bolshoi Theater) held its annual concerts. The money raised with the concerts was always sent to the Peace Foundation.
Our delegation included 60 people of 35 different countries. In addition, a group of 360 students, graduates and teachers of the University accompanied us in our trip, and also took part in public and cultural events of the festival. The delegation was headed by Vladimir Mikhailovich Savin and elected Joseph Oguni (Nigeria), a graduate student of the Faculty of Physical, Mathematical and Natural Sciences as Chairman of its Council. To get to Havana one has to cross the Atlantic Ocean, which we did on the flagship of the Baltic Shipping Company, called The Baltics. Its decks became our home for 32 days. 16 days of the way to Havana were filled with pre-festival preparations – seminars, rehearsals, regional parties of solidarity and national independence, thematic amateur concerts. The 16-day trip back the delegation made with a pleasant sensation of accomplishment.
An unforgettable experience was the festival of Neptune – a traditional sea rite at each crossing of the equator.
In Havana, the residence of the delegation was the vast territory of the Ciudad Libertad campus in the municipality of Marianao. There we held numerous meetings and discussions, received representatives of Cuban youth (more than 3 thousand people) and delegations from participating countries – Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, Bahrain, Djibouti, Senegal (in total, we conducted 47 meetings with national delegations). In the Manuel Askunso Theater, accommodating more than a thousand people, an unforgettable meeting was held with 22 Cuban UDN graduates and members of their families.
The Artistic Group of the delegation, which I led, consisted of 27 students. Rehearsals began in Moscow, continued on the deck of The Baltics and culminated in daily thematic concerts. In Havana, our group gave 9 large concerts, attended by more than 20 thousand people, and participated in other daily activities of the UDN club and smaller concerts and meetings at festival venues. The UDN delegation Gala took place at the America Theater and was broadcast live on Havana television and Eurovision.
Our contribution to the XI World Festival of Youth and Students was appreciated by Fidel Castro himself. In his inspired speech at the closing ceremony of the festival, he, on behalf of the Government of the Republic of Cuba, expressed great gratitude to the four delegations – Cuba, East Germany, the USSR and UDN. An active participation of UDN delegation in political and cultural events of the festival was rewarded by dozens of Honorary Diplomas of the XI World Festival of Youth and Students Organizing Committee.
For their great contribution to the XI World Festival of Youth and Students in Havana, Komsomol Central Committee awarded its Honorary Sign to the Head of UDN delegation Vice-Rector V.M. Savin; Deputy Head of the Delegation, Head of the Student Relations Department E.A. Yushin; Student Relations Department Assistant V.U. Prokopiev; and me, Head of the Art Group of the delegation, Associate Professor of UDN Medical School T.S. Sorokina.
ISCU is a school of courage for several generations of students of our country. And today, looking back, I can assure you – my life without “Tselina-67” and “Karelia-68” would be immeasurably poorer. Our work and life in International Student Construction Units is not much spoken about – it hides somewhere deep in the soul – but when you meet someone who also worked there, you understand it at a glance.
On Tselina, we met new people, encountered life, a little different from ours, and realized that they needed us with our songs. Finally we left, and they stayed there, in Doroginka, and they sing our songs, recalling the “Youth of the Planet” from UDN.
Life turns out surprisingly broad when you do a big, real, necessary thing for people – you start moving more decisively on the earth and feel that today you are stronger and better than yesterday. We used to return from work quite exhausted. But the camp was always buzzing like a beehive. We had many friends from other SCUs, and the locals treated us with respect and love, that is almost every day we used to have visitors. There were quiet evenings after especially hard working days, and bonfires of car tires (because there is no forest there), and amateur concerts, and dances until dawn.
Upon returning to Moscow, we all participated in the Gala Performance of SCUs, which took place at the Kremlin Palace of Congresses on October 16, 1967. The atmosphere of early years of Tselina filled the entire Palace; and each of us, gathering in this huge solemn hall of the Kremlin Palace among six thousand people like us, felt that with our labor we were making our little contribution to the great common cause. The motto of the first UDN ISCU members was wonderful words: “We were the first, we took the first step. Envy us, descendants!”
Once I was summoned to the University Rector, Professor Vladimir Frantsevich Stanis. He suggested that I should create a course in the History of Medicine and said that it was impossible to reduce it to the history of Russian medicine at our international University – there was a need to create a fundamentally new course in the World History of Medicine, taking into account specific aspects of healthcare development in the countries where our students come from, that is of the whole world. He was convinced that only a UDN graduate, imbued with its spirit to the core, knowing its singularities, fluent in foreign languages and teaching methods for foreigners, can do this.
A change of specialty when everything was going well and smoothly was not an easy decision, so I asked for two weeks to think it over. There was only one decisive motive to change the career – this was necessary for the University. Two weeks later, on April 1, 1974, a Rector’s Order was signed to transfer me from the Department of Normal Physiology to a course in the History of Medicine (initially it was part of the Department of Social Hygiene, in 1988 it became an independent course). So, in April 1974, a new stage of my life began. I left behind twelve years of study and work at the Department of Normal Physiology, where my story at the Peoples' Friendship University chanced to begin.
The first lecture was to be read in February 1975. First of all, we had to work out a new teaching program. In general, over the long history of the course (since 1974), we have prepared 15 training programs. Among them are the all-Union and all-Russian programs for students and graduate students approved by the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation.
In 1978-1979 the University Printing House published the first textbooks on the History of Medicine of the Ancient World. All our publications were approved by the Ministry (either Health or Education), and recommended for students of medical schools throughout the country.
We participated and made presentations at numerous international and national scientific conferences, symposia and congresses in Russia and abroad (Australia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Brunei Darussalam, Hungary, Great Britain, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Egypt, Italy, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Nepal, Poland, Portugal, Syria, USA, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, Switzerland, Estonia).
In 2019, 45 years have passed since the course in the History of Medicine was founded at the University. Over years, it has become a leading educational and methodological center in Russia for teaching the History of Medicine. It was within the walls of our University, that the current Exemplary Program of the discipline and the textbook “History of Medicine” were written. The book has seen 13 printings (1992-2018) and together with the Program is used in all medical schools across the country.
The main objective of our course is to instill in students love for their chosen specialty, to give them systematic scientific knowledge on the World History of Medicine, expand their professional and scientific horizons, and focus on faithful service to their complex and noble cause.
In 1972, History of Medicine first appeared in the curriculum — such a discipline was absolutely necessary. To deliver one-time lectures the University was inviting a scientific consultant of the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Studies, Professor Pavel Efimovich Zabludovsky. He came 4-5 times a year, each time with a large suitcase full of rare books that he demonstrated during his lectures. Sometimes I quietly looked into the lecture hall, because we (the first students of the University) did not have the History of Medicine, and I was interested to find out what this subject was like. Pavel Efimovich spoke in a quiet voice of an old intellectual, without raising his eyes to the audience. He was a man of boundless erudition. I was listening with bated breath and was absolutely sure back then that I would never be able to master this vast and multifaceted subject.
It’s lecturing. In higher education, lectures are the utmost form of live communication and the best opportunity to transfer knowledge
To live honestly, relentlessly mastering knowledge and selflessly serving their profession.