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Inside Stalin’s Empire

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Abstract

Shortly before the d’Herelles left New Haven in 1933, Felix received a well-timed invitation from a distant land. It came from his old friend and protégé Georgi Eliava, a dashing bacteriologist from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, who wanted to enlist d’Herelle’s help in establishing a bacteriophage institute in its capital, Tbilisi.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Stalin: Great Lives Observed (Prentice-Hall, NJ) 1966, editor: T. H. Rigby, pg. 47.

  2. 2.

    Felix d’Herelle, Perigrinations, 485, cited in Summers.

  3. 3.

    Felix d’Herelle, Perigrinations, 485, cited in Summers.

  4. 4.

    Ibid.

  5. 5.

    Georgadze, pg. 18 cites a paper called “Viruses Against Microbes,” by A. S. Kriviskii, MEDGIZ, 1962, which states, “In 1917, a young talented Georgian microbiologist G.G. Eliava, analyzing water from the Kura river for the presence of cholera, also confirmed this [d’Herelle’s] result.”

  6. 6.

    Summers, 63.

  7. 7.

    Author interview with Natasha Maliyeva, Tbilisi. Nov. 3, 2002e.

  8. 8.

    Maliyeva.

  9. 9.

    Edouard Pozerski, Souvenirs d’un demi-siecle a l’Institut Pasteur. Pasteur Museum, 46.

  10. 10.

    Georgia Medical Journal, March–April 1992.

  11. 11.

    Article: “The Tbilisi Scientific Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, Ministry of Public Health, USSR, Over the Last 50 Years,” by N.A. Georgadze, From the book: “Theoretical and Practical Questions of Bacteriophagy,” Eds, N.A. Georgadze, et al. Tbilisi, The Tbilisi Scientific-Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, 1974, pgs. 9 and 10.

  12. 12.

    Letter signed by Assistant Minister T. Karsivadze, Georgian National Historic Archive, file #625, roll 92, box 28, cited in “Returned Names,” Medical Journal of Georgia, March–April 1992.

  13. 13.

    Certificate signed by N. Eliava of the Central Committee of the League of Cities of the Republic of Georgia, Sept. 31, 1919, cited in “Returned Names,” Medical Journal of Georgia, March–April 1992.

  14. 14.

    Article: “The Tbilisi Scientific Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, Ministry of Public Health, USSR, Over the Last 50 Years,” by N.A. Georgadze, From the book: “Theoretical and Practical Questions of Bacteriophagy,” Eds, N.A. Georgadze, et al. Tbilisi, The Tbilisi Scientific-Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, 1974, pg. 10.

  15. 15.

    Weissman, Neil B., “Origins of Soviet Health Administration,” in the book Health and Society in Revolutionary Russia, Susan Gross Solomon and John F. Hutchinson, eds., Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, pg. 102.

  16. 16.

    Field, Mark G., “Soviet Socialized Medicine: An Introduction.” The Free Press, New York, pgs. 51–52.

  17. 17.

    Georgadze pg. 13; Summers, pg. 162.

  18. 18.

    Who Was Who in the USSR, eds. Dr. Hienrich E. Schulz, Paul K. Urban, Andrew I. Lebed, the Scarecrow Press, Inc. Metuchen, NJ 1972, 155.

  19. 19.

    D. P. Shrayer, “Felix D’Herelle in Russia,” Bull. Inst. Pasteur, 1996, vol. 94, pg. 92 and 93.

  20. 20.

    Service, Robert. Stalin: A Biography. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 2005. 265–275.

  21. 21.

    Ibid. Nov. 8, 1934.

  22. 22.

    Ibid. Nov. 28, 1934.

  23. 23.

    Georgadze, pg. 22.

  24. 24.

    Georgadze, pg. 23.

  25. 25.

    I. Georgadze, personal communication to David Shrayer, 1977, cited in Shrayer, Felix D’Herelle in Russia, 95.

  26. 26.

    The d’Herelles’ diary gives the date of December, 1934. Georgadze dates the meeting to January–February 1935.

  27. 27.

    Georgadze, I. A. (1974) Fifty years’ sum of Tbilisi Research Institute of Vaccines and Serums, in Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Bacteriophage (pg. 21). Tbilisi, (Russ.).

  28. 28.

    Summers, pg. 165.

  29. 29.

    Diary of Marie and Felix d’Herelle, Nov. 13.

  30. 30.

    Conquest, 152–155.

  31. 31.

    Service, 344.

  32. 32.

    Suryan Gazaryan, 1989, Eto ne dolzhno povtoritsa [This should not happen again]. Zvezda 1, 3 (1989), Leningrad (Russ.).

  33. 33.

    Service, 347–348.

  34. 34.

    Razveiat’ vprak vragov sotsializma,” Pravda, 19 August 1936, cited in Knight, Amy. “Beria: Stalin’s First Lieutenant.” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), pg. 72.

  35. 35.

    Shrayer, 94.

  36. 36.

    Service, 431. “When she [Svetlana] wanted to stay overnight at the Berias’ dacha, where she was a frequent visitor, he ordered her to return home immediately: “I don’t trust Beria!” Stalin was aware of Lavrenti Beria’s proclivities toward young women.”

  37. 37.

    E. Tsereteli, personal communication to David Shrayer, cited in Shrayer, 94.

  38. 38.

    This is the date firmly recalled by Eliava’s family. Official documents give it as Jan. 20, 1937.

  39. 39.

    Infanta is a Spanish word that in Russian is used to mean a princess who is heir to the throne.

  40. 40.

    “wrecking” is the formal translation for a term meaning anti-party activity.

  41. 41.

     Kommunisti No. 157 (4958), cited in forthcoming book of Avtandil Kurkhuli.

  42. 42.

    Author interview with Revaz Adamia, Georgian Ambassador to the United Nations, August 22, 2003.

  43. 43.

    Edouard Pozerski, Souvenirs d’un demi-siecle a l’Institut Pasteur. Pasteur Museum, 47. Eliava’s granddaughter says the story is probably fictitious.

  44. 44.

    I. Georgadze, personal communication, 1977, cited in Shrayer, 95.

  45. 45.

    Summers, 165.

  46. 46.

    Summers, 178–180.

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Correspondence to Anna Kuchment .

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Kuchment, A. (2012). Inside Stalin’s Empire. In: The Forgotten Cure. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0251-0_2

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