VELICHKINA

VELICHKINA (Bonch-Bruyevich), Vera Mikhailovna (186?-1918), physician, prominent public and revolutionary activist; after the revolution, initiator of healthcare for the younger generation in the RSFSR. Graduated from the University of Bern, medical faculty. While still a student, she joined the Social Democratic Bolsheviks. Soon after graduating, V., together with her husband, V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich, a major expert on sectarianism, departed with the Doukhobors who were being exiled from Russia to Canada due to religious persecution by the government. V. took on medical care during the journey and remained in Canada for several years following. In 1905, V. was already in Petersburg as a physician for the Yevgenievsky community of the Red Cross for children's diseases. Simultaneously, she was a prominent political worker for the Bolshevik faction, and in 1905 was elected to the Soviet of Workers' Deputies. Later, V. conducted extensive cultural and educational work among workers and published anti-religious brochures and popular books for children. 1917 found V. in Petrograd, where she worked on healthcare for school-age children, establishing a school-sanitary department under the People's Commissariat for Education, which was transferred in July 1918 to the People's Commissariat for Health. During several months of 1918, V. opened in Moscow under the People's Commissariat for Health the first experimental demonstration institutions for children's healthcare: a children's preventive outpatient clinic, a children's tuberculosis dispensary, a forest school, an Institute of Physical Culture, a children's playground, and an Institute for the Defective Child; in the fall of the same year, the first short-term courses for training physicians in children's healthcare were conducted. V. was one of the energetic supporters of the creation of the People's Commissariat for Health and became a member of its collegium from the day of its founding. With the onset of food difficulties in the fall of 1918, V. introduced and carried through the first decrees in the Council of People's Commissars on children's nutrition. At the end of 1918, V.'s premature death from the epidemic influenza cut short her life.