BOGOMOLOV SERGEY ALEXANDROVICH

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War is the concentration of losses from hunger, cold, wounds not only among soldiers, but also among the civilian population. In a critical situation, every citizen acquires many new social roles, including becoming the one who, despite the whistling bullets over his head, risking his life, rescues wounded compatriots from explosions. Often such a fate overtakes very young young people who have just come out of school. But there are those who made their choice before they got into the war zone and remained true to their choice until the last days of their lives. Such a person turned out to be Bogomolov Sergey Alexandrovich.
He was born on October 12, 1925 in the Kostroma region. At the time of the German invasion of Poland in 1939, he was a sixth-grader, but in 1943, at the age of seventeen, he joined the Red Army of the USSR. Before his conscription, he studied at the paramedic-obstetric school, where he entered at the end of the 7th grade. However, it turned out to be impossible for a thoughtful and responsible student to complete a full training program – the war began.
In the first months after the draft, Bogomolov urgently completed training as a military paramedic in the Nizhny Novgorod region, after which he began serving, receiving his first officer rank.
The first test for Sergei Bogomolov fell already in July 1943, when in a village near the city of Vyazma, a young military paramedic was forced to provide medical assistance to wounded soldiers and help them hide from enemy shelling – to carry comrades on themselves. And in August of the same year, he was awarded the Order of the Red Star for saving more than fifty of his colleagues from the battlefield.
The situation was complicated by the fact that the weapons assigned to each soldier had to be taken from the battlefield. The clear attitude of the commanders-in-chief left no doubt: the weapons left to the enemy were regarded as betrayal. The fighting was fierce, there were many wounded, and paramedics and doctors worked with the last of their strength. Bogomolov himself was no exception.
In the last months of 1943, merciless battles were fought for every meter of the Vitebsk region, and when in February 1944 the infantry of the Red Army crossed the river and captured the site on the opposite bank, the enemy gave a particularly bloody battle. Of Bogomolov's group, which was also supposed to give German soldiers a rebuff in this territory, only five people survived. In addition to the fact that a group of fighters had to give battle, they were obliged to take out the bodies of the wounded from the battlefield and provide all possible urgent assistance. Not once did Bogomolov deviate from his tasks, both helping the wounded and freeing the territory of the Vitebsk region from occupation by destroying opponents.
In June 1944, Bogomolov was awarded another award – the Order of the Golden Star, and a year later he met the end of the war in Berlin, being part of the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front. In the same year, he was awarded the highest degree of distinction, which was awarded to an extremely small number of people in the USSR – Hero of the Soviet Union.
But neither his officer's nor his medical path ended there. Having entered the Military Medical Academy named after S.M. Kirov in 1946, he proved himself a talented student in the field of surgery and anesthesiology. His further path was connected with this. The officer spent the next three years under the leadership of Lieutenant General S. S. Girgolava, and in 1954 he was invited to serve in Moscow, at the N. N. Burdenko Main Military Hospital, where some time later he received the position of head of the anesthesiology department. By the end of his life, Bogomolov became the author of more than 50 scientific papers on anesthesiology, as well as the creator of the country's first anesthesiological service. In particular, this was facilitated by the experience and knowledge of wartime, which became an inexhaustible source of information for many years.
Only in 1982 he retired with the rank of colonel of the medical service, but the exact date of the end of his work as an anesthesiologist is unknown.
In Kostroma, a medical college was named after him, and in Riga, the capital of Latvia, a memorial is dedicated to him.

About the authors

Anna Vladimirovna Ermakova

Voronezh State Medical University named after N.N. Burdenko

Author for correspondence.
Email: AnnaErmakovaa2021@gmail.com
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-7350-6120
SPIN-code: 9384-8355
Russian Federation, 394036, Россия, Воронеж, ул. Студенческая, 10

Michael Vitalievich Laptev

Voronezh State Medical University named after N.N.Burdenko

Email: laptev.mic7e@mail.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-3034-5953
SPIN-code: 3143-9353
Russian Federation, 394036, Россия, Воронеж, ул. Студенческая, 10

Tatiyana Valerievna Zhibrova

Voronezh State Medical University named after N. N. Burdenko

Email: tashazhibrova@rambler.ru
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-1261-4435
Russian Federation, 394036, Russia, Voronezh, Studentskaya St, 10

References