I happened to write about many wonderful people who went down in Russian history, but I personally did not know them. But he talked with Marat Knyazev, an outstanding heart surgeon, laureate of the USSR State Prize. And now I remember his youthful appearance. Of medium height, with a round beautiful face and large thoughtful eyes. The newcomer came to the smallest 9th grade of the Vorontsevichi school of the Tolochinsky district, in which I studied in the 7th. He came from Brest, where his family used to live, and his father, an officer, continued military service abroad. The neat “urban” somehow immediately joined the cheerful cheat of the “Vyaskovye Vuchnyaў”. The war interrupted our studies, and now we, overgrown, hardy and diligent, were catching up. Everyone friendly welcomed Marat, helped him get comfortable, feel the simplicity and warmth of the Belarusian hearth.

And now, after more than half a century, I have been studying a biography that would glorify any country.

Colleagues and students wrote about Knyazev: “Among the stars adorning the horizon of domestic surgery, his name occupies a worthy place as an innovative surgeon, a prominent clinician, and a talented scientist. Outstanding scientific works in one of the most difficult areas of surgery - cardiovascular, fruitful practical activity earned him deep respect of the medical community in our country and abroad. ”

Why, then, is this name absent from Belarusian encyclopedias? Whoever asked wherever he turned, everyone answered in surprise:

We don’t know about this.

Bronislava Matyushonok, a bibliographer of the National Library, came to the rescue: literally ten minutes later she submitted the rare journal Angiology and Vascular Surgery. Mean strings of a biography.

A Belarusian boy born on May 1, 1934 in the village of Kokhanovo (now Tolochinsky district), went to first grade in the Georgian city of Kutaisi. His mother, Ekaterina Parfenovna, was born in the village of Vorontsevichi into a peasant family. After the revolution, she graduated from the Orsha Pedagogical College and worked as a primary school teacher at the Kokhanovskaya High School, where the director was Dmitry Timofeevich Knyazev. They soon got married. In the 1930s, his father was called up for military service; After graduating from courses, he became an officer in the Red Army, and served in Georgia. Mother worked as a typist in a military unit. In June 1941, his father went to the front, fought, reached Berlin. After serving in the rank of colonel, he served in Germany and summoned his wife. Ekaterina Parfenovna began to pack up and said sadly to Marat:

And you, son, will go to Aunt Shura. You will study at the Belarusian school ...

That's how Marat ended up in the village of Vorontsevichi. He lived in the wooden hut of Vasily Konstantinovich Prussky, a front-line soldier, and his wife, partisan Alexandra Parfenovna, who was awarded the Order of the Red Star. The neighbor was another aunt - the mother’s sister, Marat Evdokia Parfenovna, with her husband Ivan Barkovsky, chairman of a distant collective farm. This family raised three talented children: Eduard became a military pilot, rose to lieutenant colonel, Yaroslav became an aviation colonel, candidate of technical sciences, Irina became a chemical engineer.

Irina Barkovskaya now lives in Borisov. Then she was 10 years old. Does she remember Knyazev? The answer was incredible:

Of course, I remember Marat, he studied at our Vorontsevichi school for two years. He sat with my older brother Edward at the same desk. I read a lot.

All disciplines were on Knyazev’s shoulder. He did not immediately decide what to stop at. They were told by teachers, former war veterans who know the value of medicine well.

Marat himself was thinking about a profession that would be useful to people. He wanted to help all those who suffered in a fierce war. He saw how uncle Vasily Konstantinovich needs help, who returned home wounded ...

I asked another person - Gennady Fedorovich Bursky, director of the Volkovichi eight-year school, now closed. He studied at the age of ten with Knyazev.

I remember Marat well as a beginner in our school. Nimble, sociable, inquisitive. He was capable of everything: he was in time in subjects, played the accordion and balalaika, sang in the choir. It is a pity that his further biography is not known to us.

No one wrote about him ...

Exams passed, he is a student at the medical faculty of the Minsk Medical Institute. From the first year I was in a student lecture group, taught people on a sponsored collective farm to be healthy. For participation in the research work at the Department of Hospital Surgery, he had gratitude and cash bonuses. According to teachers, he had a rare ability to analyze, professional thinking. I passed the state exams perfectly!

knyazev was distributed by a surgeon of a district hospital in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. Patients were drawn to a new doctor who could diagnose and cure. They talked about the doctor in the area. But he himself wanted to study further, and in 1959 he was accepted to graduate school at the Research Institute of Clinical and Experimental Surgery of the USSR Ministry of Health in Moscow.

In 1962, Knyazev successfully defended his thesis "Clinic, Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment of Atherosclerotic Occlusions of Aortic Bifurcation and Iliac Arteries." The supervisor of studies, Professor Boris V. Petrovsky, was pleased with the student. He liked the composure and will of Marat, his tenacious mind and surgical abilities. The friendship between them remained for life.

The candidate of medical sciences arrived in Minsk, where he was accepted as an assistant of the Department of Hospital Surgery BelGIUV (now - BelMAPO). Knyazev started briskly, but did not succeed: he was soon recalled to Moscow at the same research institute for clinical and experimental surgery, where he went all the way to the professor.

In 1964, Marat Dmitrievich was sent to New York as a doctor of the USSR diplomatic mission to the UN. Performing duties, he also trained in the clinic of the famous cardiac surgeon Michael Ellis Debeika. After returning to Moscow after 5 years, he finished and brilliantly defended his doctoral dissertation "Acute arterial obstruction of the aorta and arteries of the extremities." The supervisor of studies was the same professor B.V. Petrovsky - already an academician and laureate of the Lenin Prize. Since 1969, Marat Dmitrievich headed the department of vascular surgery in his native research institute, he was elected head of the department of vascular surgery at the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Studies.

The department developed the priority problems of surgical treatment of coronary heart disease, pathology of the thoracic and abdominal aorta. He was the first in the country in July 1970 to have performed autovenous coronary artery bypass grafting to a 39-year-old man who had two myocardial infarction. A brilliant clinical result was obtained, which is very important for the further development of surgery of blood vessels that feed the heart muscle. Knyazev performed the first trans-aortic endarterectomy from the renal artery. Subsequently, surgical treatment of patients with vasorenal hypertension became one of the main areas of the vascular department. Then they began to develop surgical treatment of chronic cerebrovascular insufficiency, to do the first operations on the extracranial sections of the brachiocephalic arteries.

A follower of B.V. Petrovsky, Knyazev described, analyzed all interventions, and thought about further reconstructive operations on the vessels. Friends and associates heartily congratulated the innovator.

I remember Marat Dmitrievich how he operated with the “Kremlin surgeon” Professor Nikolai Nikodimovich Malinovsky. The famous fellow countryman (born in the village of Zheltki in the Vileyka district) was pleased with Knyazev: the resection of a torn abdominal aortic aneurysm was complicated. But two brilliant surgeons managed. We were proud of the result and subsequently made friends.

In January 1980, Marat Dmitrievich was urgently summoned to Yugoslavia: it was necessary to evaluate the health of President Josip Broz Tito. Knyazev and Debeika advised him. The local press was worried: two prominent specialists were simply not invited, which means that the situation was serious ...

Theory and practice in the works of Marat Knyazev merged together. Scientific heritage - in books, which at one time were of great value. In the publication Reconstructive Surgery of Preinfarction Angina and Acute Myocardial Infarction, he wrote: “Coronary heart disease and, in particular, myocardial infarction is not only a medical problem, but also a social one. In economically developed countries, myocardial infarction takes the lives of hundreds of people useful to society in the prime of their creative talents and physical strength. Unfortunately, drug therapy is ineffective for many patients, and in these cases only surgery can save the patient and restore him to work. ”

Knyazev is one of the authors of the monograph Surgery of Chronic Coronary Heart Disease, which was very popular among young cardiologists and medical students. Creating a scientific basis for a heart treatment methodology is a serious and time-consuming task. There was a search process. With each operation experience was gained.

Ideas and techniques were discussed by specialists, and it became clear: emergency vascular surgery should be allocated in a separate direction. Academician B.V. Petrovsky reported on the status and tasks of specialization at the First All-Union Meeting.

Professor M. D. Knyazev also spoke. “Indications for emergency surgery for wounds and damage to blood vessels,” he said, “are currently well defined. These are ongoing bleeding, acute arterial thrombosis ... The possibility of carrying out should be determined by the condition of the patient and tissues in the area of \u200b\u200bischemia and damage. "

The first State Prize of the USSR Knyazev received in November 1975 - for reconstructive and plastic surgery of the aorta and its branches. The second in November 1988 - for the development and implementation in clinical practice of methods of surgical treatment of coronary heart disease (already posthumous).

Marat Knyazev treated patients with respect and great sympathy. His voice, manner of speaking aimed at recovery.

The flow of patients did not dry up. There are so many ideas in my head! And everything collapsed in an instant. On April 16, 1984, Marat Dmitrievich tragically died in an accident, before he reached the 50th anniversary of just two weeks.

But while a person is captured in the memory of people, he does not go into non-existence. Knyazev left the knowledge used by the next generation of doctors.

Eduard Kornilovich,

candidate of Historical Sciences, Minsk.

The first to see my dissertation were relatives: parents, brother and sister. The whole evening we dreamed that the institute and above all M.D. Knyazev and the management of the institute will accept my work. Now that the dissertation was written, it was necessary to inform M.D. Knyazev. At that time, I was a junior researcher, who was surrounded by senior researchers. The topics of their doctoral dissertations have already been identified, it remains only to approve them. Nobody knew anything about my dissertation, although everyone saw that silver prostheses were used in the clinic. Finally, I went to M.D. Knyazev and said that I need to talk with him, but not in a working environment. He agreed. At the appointed time on November 2, 1972, I arrived at his home. Knyazev felt that I would give him some kind of “surprise”.

Marat Dmitrievich! I began. - How do you feel about approving my doctoral dissertation?

They began to discuss what to include, on what material. He didn’t know anything. I tried to convince him that my work should be based on a comparative assessment of the use of conventional vascular, synthetic (Dacron, Dacron) prostheses and electrically conductive. But M.D. Kzyazev was against it. He said that only my prostheses, a new method of treating obliterating endarteritis, should be included in the work, and as for ordinary prostheses, dissertations are already protected about them. Although I argued to him that it is impossible to evaluate my prostheses without comparing with others previously used, M.D. Knyazev insisted on his own.

I left him in a depressed mood, I did not know what to do. The material is ready, the thesis is reprinted and bound. It is practically impossible to remake anything, but nobody knows anything at the institute. And I decided to take a risky and dangerous step. I had a good relationship with the deputy director of the institute, Professor E.N. Vantsyan and other professors. Therefore, it was necessary to put the faculty and B.V. Petrovsky to fame. I was afraid that M.D. Knyazev will do everything possible so that no one finds out about my work.

One of Fridays, when E.N. All the department heads gathered for Vantsyan, I came in advance and asked:

Eduard Nikitich, can I come to you when everyone gathers?

He agreed, suspecting nothing. When everyone gathered in the office, after the meeting I walked in with a briefcase where a doctoral dissertation on "Alloplasty in vascular reconstructive surgery" lay.

Well, show me what you brought? - said E.N. Wangqiang, attracting the attention of all those present.

I went to his desk, opened my briefcase, pulled out a dissertation, bound in a red cover, and solemnly said:

Here, Eduard Nikitich, my doctoral dissertation, ready and bound!

All managers eyes rolled out in surprise. The questioning began: yes how, but when? We need to see when the topic was approved. E.N. Vantsyan took the thesis, put it in front of him, and looked through it, leafing through to the end.

Yes, you wrote a solid job, you won’t say anything!

He was right. The dissertation was printed on 454 typescript pages, illustrated with 141 photographs, and also provided with a bibliographic index containing 621 sources of domestic and foreign literature.

The first doctoral dissertation G.A. Stepanova "Alloplasty in reconstructive vascular surgery." 1972

Then E.N. Vanqiang asked:

And what does Knyazev say about this?

Seeing that Knyazev gained weight at the institute, no one wanted to quarrel with him, and Vantsyan too. I replied that I had not yet shown a dissertation to him, but there was already a conversation with him. Professor Knyazev was unhappy. Vantsyan advised me, along with Knyazev, to show the work to the boss.

B.V. Petrovsky was also surprised, but he did not begin to read it, but gave it to M.D. Knyazev. Then I realized that my affairs are unimportant. Knyazev began to read his dissertation, but he did it slowly, redoing everything in his own way. I asked him to help approve the topic of the dissertation at the Academic Council. But E.N. Vantsyan and M.D. Knyazev recommended preliminary testing at the Academic Council of a topic in the form of a report on electrically conductive prostheses, and if I can convince the members of the advisability and prospects of their use, then the topic of the dissertation can be approved.

On December 6, 1972, the Scientific Council of the Institute was held, where the first question was my report on "A new method for the surgical treatment of obliterating endarteritis of the lower extremities." The main thing that I drew the attention of the members of the Scientific Council is the need not only to replace any part of a blood vessel affected by atherosclerosis or arteritis, but also to create a prosthesis that will prevent further progression of the disease, will stop the process at least in some degrees.

In the debate, the professors said bluntly that the work is good, the dissertation is an experienced vascular surgeon, for many years he has been dealing with the problem of vascular prostheses. But he is too young! Professor Knyazev asked the question: where is Dr. Stepanov going to work after defending his dissertation? After such presentations, the Scientific Council decided that in the dissertation a lot of obscure and collected material is not enough. As a result, the topic was not approved. And it doesn’t matter that the prosthesis proposed by Stepanov has already been used in 120 patients! And the sick live! And good results were obtained.

As a result, I remained a junior research fellow.

At the end of 1972, my health problems started: there were pains behind the sternum and severe tachycardia. Driven to despair, I again turned to Knyazev:

Marat Dmitrievich, if you think that after defending my dissertation I should go somewhere, then I agree! Give me only the opportunity to defend myself!

And at the beginning of 1973 I flew to Sverdlovsk. There, all the leading surgeons knew me well after an indicative operation - prosthetics of the abdominal aorta performed in the vascular department of the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute on April 6, 1971. I was immediately offered the position of head of the vascular surgery department in the new regional hospital. But this was not destined to be fulfilled. When I returned to Moscow, Marat Dmitrievich returned my dissertation, and I hung in the air.

In early spring 1973 B.V. Petrovsky several times at the conference spoke about a new gentle method in surgery - microsurgery. At that time I did not know anything about this and did not suspect that I was waiting. But once rumors reached me that B.V. Petrovsky wants to organize a microsurgery department on the basis of some hospital, headed by Professor B.C. Krylov. In this department, the post of senior researcher was planned, which was supposed to be taken from the department of vascular surgery. One employee has already abandoned this place. And at that moment someone suggested B.V. Petrovsky my candidacy. When the academician informed me of his decision, I answered him that I would work with B.C. Krylov only as a senior researcher. He is in the presence of B.C. Krylova, E.N. Vantsyan, M.D. Knyazev and other managers said.

My countryman is my teacher

The department of vascular surgery of the hospital opened in June 1968. At that time it was the first department in the army’s medical service. The tasks were set to organize assistance to military personnel and members of their families with diseases and traumatic vascular injuries. Let me remind you that at the 27th All-Union Congress of Surgeons, held on May 28, 1960, one of the four problems addressed was conservative and surgical treatment of endarteritis. Conservative treatment was generally recommended. There were few reports of the use of replacement of arteries “affected” by atherosclerosis (Charles Rob, Rene Fontaine, M. de Baqueuil). At that time, the diagnosis was mainly based on the analysis of clinical symptoms, rheovasography, oscillography, and capillaroscopy data. Angiography, as the main diagnostic method, was only introduced in the leading clinics of the country. My acquaintance with Marat Dmitrievich happened in February 1969 during my working secondment to the NIIIKiEM.

At the invitation of Marat Dmitrievich came to the hospital to advise patients. He met with the head of the hospital, Yu.D. Glukhov and Chief Surgeon Professor A.A. Bocharov.

The first complex vascular operation - resection of aortic bifurcation, iliac and femoral arteries, endarterectomy with subsequent reimplantation, we performed on March 18, 1970, to the patient Rear Admiral I.N.M., 53 years old (IB No. 535). Operated - M.D. Knyazev, assisted - A.A. Bocharov, E.P. Cohan. Gradually, our ties grew stronger. Marat Dmitrievich shared suture material, tools. Surgeons still use one of them number 3.

Marat Dmitrievich was born on March 25 (May 1) 1934 in the village of Kokhanovo (now Tolochinsky district).

His mother, Ekaterina Parfenovna, after the revolution, graduated from the Orsha Pedagogical College and worked as a primary school teacher at the Kokhanovskaya secondary school, where the director was Dmitry Timofeevich Knyazev. They soon got married. In 1930, his father was called up for military service. In June 1941, his father went to the front, fought, reached Berlin, served in Germany and summoned his wife.

Marat was sent to relatives in the village of Vorontsevichi, Minsk region. After graduating from high school on June 30, 1952, Marat Knyazev entered the Minsk State Medical Institute.

After graduation M.D. Knyazev worked as a surgeon in a district hospital in Belovezhskaya Pushcha. He decided to study further, and in 1959 he entered graduate school at the Research Institute of Clinical and Experimental Surgery of the USSR Ministry of Health in Moscow.

In 1962, Knyazev successfully defended his thesis “Clinic, Diagnosis and Surgical Treatment of Atherosclerotic Occlusions of Aortic Bifurcation and Iliac Arteries”. The supervisor of studies was Professor Boris Vasilievich Petrovsky. Already a candidate of medical sciences, he arrived in Minsk, where he was accepted as an assistant of the Department of Hospital Surgery BelGIUV (now - BelMAPO), but was soon recalled to Moscow at the same Research Institute of Clinical and Experimental Surgery, where he went from a resident to a professor.

In 1964, Marat Dmitrievich was sent to New York as a doctor of the USSR diplomatic mission to the UN.

Performing basic duties, he also trained at the clinic of the famous cardiac surgeon Michael Ellis Debeika. After returning to Moscow after 5 years, he defended his doctoral dissertation "Acute arterial obstruction of the aorta and arteries of the extremities." The supervisor of studies was Academician B.V. Petrovsky. Since 1969, Marat Dmitrievich headed the department of vascular surgery at the research institute and was elected head of the department of vascular surgery he created at the Central Institute for Advanced Medical Studies.

The department developed priority problems for the surgical treatment of coronary heart disease, pathology of the thoracic and abdominal aorta, brachiocephalic arteries, and vasorenal hypertension.

He was the first in the country in July 1970 to perform autovenous coronary artery bypass grafting with a good result for a 39-year-old man who had two myocardial infarction. Knyazev performed the first trans-aortic endarterectomy from the renal artery.

The monograph "Acute thrombosis and embolism of bifurcation of the aorta and arteries" et al. with O.S. Belarusians. - Minsk, 1977, 159 p.

Surgery of chronic coronary heart disease et al. with B.V. Shabalkin. - M., 1978, 250 p.

His work and the introduction to the clinic of the latest methods of treating cardiovascular patients are highly appreciated by the Government.

The first State Prize of the USSR Knyazev received in November 1975 - for reconstructive and plastic surgery of the aorta and its branches.

The second - in November 1988 - for the development and implementation in clinical practice of methods for the surgical treatment of coronary heart disease (posthumous).

Wife Tatyana Aleksandrovna Knyazeva (Reshetnikova) - professor at the Institute of Balneology and Rehabilitation, daughter Anna, granddaughter Tatyana cherish the memory of their beloved dear family member.

April 16, 1984, on the birthday of his wife, Marat Dmitrievich tragically died in an accident, before he lived only 50 weeks before the 50th birthday. He was buried at Kuntsevsky cemetery.