Lenin Junior

Salem-News Correspondent Oleg Shirokov reports from Salem's sister city in the Ukraine.

Dmitriy Ulyanov during the First World War

(SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine) - It is known that Lenin was from a family with many children. His elder brother is known for having tried to kill the tsar and he was executed when he was young.

Lenin's younger brother – Dmitriy, is even less known. His fate was sealed in Simferopol.

As a young man, he decided to become a doctor and fight the cholera epidemic, which shocked Russia at the end of the 19th, and beginning of the 20th Century. In 1892, 600 thousand people suffered from cholera, half of them died.

Dmitriy began studying at Moscow University in 1893, but authorities always suspected that he was connected with revolutionaries. He was periodically arrested, but the authorities failed to find kompromata, and he was released^[1].

Before finishing his university education, Dmitriy worked as a doctor in Odessa for a few months, but he was arrested again simply for being Lenin`s brother, and he spent a few more months in jail.

Much of Dmitry's life was spent in Crimea. He arrived on a peninsula in 1911 and at first began to work as a district doctor in Feodosiya.

In 1914 the World War began and he moved to Sevastopol, where he worked as a doctor in a military hospital. After the revolution began, in 1917, he wrote to relatives: “in the battles under Bahchisaray I worked as a doctor and bandaged injured ones”.

Dmitriy Ulyanov as a high school student 1893

German troops invaded Crimea and the first crimean government was shot up. Dmitriy then moved to Evpatoriya, where nobody personally knew him and did his basic job in the Mamay quarries, near a guerrilla camp of “Red helmets” near Evpatoriya.

Monument to Ulyanov in Simferopol

By the light of the torch Dmitry again treated and rescued the people who were injured in squabbles and were the victims of the Whiteguard torture-chambers.

From April to June of 1919 — Dmitry was again in Simferopol. He was elected as the Health Protection and Public Welfare Minister.

At this time Dmitriy wrote a letter to the sister Maria: to “say to Lenin, that in Evpatoriya at the seashore I will find (an) apartment for him, for he will rest, swim and get strong during 2-3 weeks. There are all devices for therapy and it is possible to treat his hand. Especially as he never saw our Black sea”.

It is known, that Lenin never visited Crimea, and it is possible that if he did this, he would live more. (Lenin died in 1924)

The Crimean Soviet Republic lived only 45 days. A year and a half later, Dmitriy returned to Simferopol. On 24 December 1920, Dmitry received a historic telegram, “Decree of using Crimea for medical treatment of workers".

The Health Minister prepared a report, “About organization of the All-union health resort” for the Crimea government and so he became the founder of that changing period in Crimea's history.

During the first resort season, 1,921 sanatoriums were able to adopt simultaneously about 8 thousand man. This is the first time in world history that common people filled the palaces and mansions of former tsars, princes and capitalists.

They arrived on rest and medical treatment and they were simple people: injured Red army soldiers, workers from Moscow, Petersburg, poor peasants.

Dmitry prepared a lecture for them.

He said: "Glory of healthful properties of Crimea goes long ago. Poor men for which Crimea was the only treat(ment) from consumption and other illnesses arrived here. But what met them here? Great writer Chekhov wrote from Yalta: 'Patients are not adopted neither in hotels here, nor in houses, people (are) dying from the hunger or complete indifference – and this in blessed Crimea!'"

It is true that Dmitriya had the “complex of younger brother”. There was the time when Ulyanov came to a government meeting in Crimea very drunk and yelled: “I am Lenin!”

In the following years, he worked in the Health Ministry. After his death a modest monument (3 by 4 meter sculptors I. and N. Petrenko) was created in the Zhelyabova street near the palace of Catherine the Great. After perestroika, there were a lot of demands to ruin and destroy certain monuments and to rename the streets, but nobody demanded to take this one down, nobody insisted on renaming the street named for him, because Dmitriy did nothing bad for the sun peninsula, but a lot of good things^[2].

Story by Oleg Shirokov

Edited by Tim King

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References:

^[1] (Wikipedia - Kompromat (Russian: компромат, short for компрометирующий материал) is the Russian term for compromising materials about a politician or other public figure. Such materials can be used to create negative publicity, for blackmail, or for ensuring loyalty. Kompromat can be acquired from various security services, or outright forged, and then publicized by paying off a journalist.)

^[2] (Wikipedia - Perestroika (Russian: Перестройка) is the Russian term (now used in English) for the political and economic reforms introduced in June 1987 by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Its literal meaning is "restructuring", referring to the restructuring of the Soviet political and economic system.)

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Oleg Shirokov lives in the historic Russian Federation city of Simferopol, Ukraine, which is the capitol of Crimea and quite interestingly, one of Salem, Oregon's four Sister Cities. We look forward to sharing more of his reports from a very distant, artful and romantic part of the world.

Before reporting news, Oleg work as the translator for 15 years, gaining valuable experience in specialized areas such as software localization, hardware, telecommunications and technical marketing. He also worked as the programmer for 8 years, and serves clients as a translator.