Today, April 18, in the Military medical Museum (Vvedensky canal street, 6) opened an exhibition "your Pain in my heart, Vietnam", telling about the help of Soviet military doctors in Vietnam in the year of the war.
Vice-Governor of St. Petersburg Anna Mityanina took part in the opening ceremony on behalf of the Government of St. Petersburg. Deputy military attache of the Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam in Russia, major, comrade ha Arrived from Vietnam to open the exhibition in St. Petersburg.
Guests of the exhibition were also welcomed by the Chairman of the Committee for external relations of St. Petersburg Evgeny Grigoriev, Director of the Military medical Museum of the Ministry of defense of the Russian Federation Anatoly Budko and one of the leaders of the Vietnamese society in St. Petersburg Zyong Ti Kien.
After the official part in the format of a conversation with the audience about his service in Vietnam in the 70s told Colonel of medical service, Professor of anesthesiology and resuscitation of the Military medical Academy, doctor of medical Sciences Anatoly Ilyich Levshankov. A scientific Director of the Institute of experimental medicine, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor, major General of the medical service Heinrich Sofronov spoke about the activities of the Russian-Vietnamese Tropical research and technology center, studying the consequences of the use of chemical weapons in Vietnam during the war.
In his welcoming words there was a lot of comparisons with the great Patriotic war. The Vietnam war has not spared any family: just as in Leningrad during the siege, every family from the North to the South of the country suffered a loss. One woman lost her husband and all nine sons.
According to various estimates, 2.5 to 4.5 million people died.
The participant of those events, the military doctor Anatoly Levshankov directed to Vietnam in 1977-1978, admitted that after horrors of the great Patriotic war each his companion perceived the tragedy of Vietnam, as the personal. He spoke about the sincere friendship of Soviet and Vietnamese citizens. About how the Vietnamese shared their already insignificant military rations in gratitude for the assistance provided by the Soviet people.
Over the years of the war, as a result of not only the bombing, but also the use of chemicals that were dumped, including on agricultural fields, as well as the burning of the earth by Napalm, in Vietnam has completely changed the landscape: giant relict forests that served as protection from the tropical sun disappeared, flora and fauna changed, ecosystems on earth, in rivers and the sea were disturbed. The fertile soil has been destroyed or extremely contaminated. For example, a plate of stainless steel, lying on the ground, turned out to be eaten like a sieve, so caustic was the soil.
At the request of the Vietnamese government, a Russian-Vietnamese Tropical research and technology centre was established to study the consequences of the war and assess their impact on nature and people in the 1980s, and specialists from our country also worked and are working there. Currently, the coordinated research plan and collaboration for 5 years.
This cooperation, both in Soviet times and today, when our countries signed an agreement on strategic and comprehensive partnership, is an unshakable value.
As the representative of the Embassy of Vietnam in Russia comrade. Ha, even the younger generation of Vietnamese who have never seen the war, retain the memory that the Soviet people during the disaster that befell their country, came to the rescue, extending a hand of friendship. And friendship in Vietnam is for life.
Exhibition reference:
The exposition includes materials from the stock collections of the Military medical Museum about little-known facts for a wide audience of anti-human methods of warfare in Vietnam, as well as things from the family archives of the participants of these events.
Visitors are presented with medical supplies supplied by the USSR to Vietnam, medicines, surgical kits, first aid kits for poisoning with toxic substances, as well as items of clothing and personal belongings of Vietnamese soldiers and soldiers of the US army. The exhibition is complemented by rare photographs. A special place in the exhibition is occupied by the personal belongings of Soviet doctors who visited the country to provide assistance. One of them is a hair comb made from the wreckage of an American plane shot down in Vietnam, which was presented as a gift to Irina Levchenko – the Hero of the Soviet Union, the winner of the Florence Nightingale medal, during a visit to Vietnam in 1966. No less interesting is the report, documents, personal materials, photo album of Matvey Voitenko – the head of the group of Soviet military specialists sent by the decision of the General staff of the USSR armed forces with a special task in Hanoi in 1969.