#ARCTIC. #SIBERIA. THIS IS TAIMYR. In 1970 photographs, the 72-year-old chief surgeon of the city hospital, Victor Kuznetsov, is performing an operation. According to the recollections of his student, the honorary citizen of Norilsk, the head physician department of the same hospital, Evgeny Klimov, there was nobody in surgery in the entire Krasnoyarsk region like Kuznetsov, and in some operations – even in the whole country.
The repressed doctor gained experience in the Central Hospital of the camp, where after his discharge in 1945 he was the chief surgeon. Kuznetsov moved to the hospital town from the Old Town after the merger of two city hospitals in 1960. There the honored doctor of the RSFSR, candidate of medical sciences operated until his death.
Evgeny Klimov recalled that Victor Alekseyevich always came to work at exactly 8.00:
“It was possible to synchronize watch using his punctuality. Changing quickly, striding widely across two steps, he took off to the fourth floor. From there he began medical inspection, going down from floor to floor, examining each severe and diagnostically unclear patient. He had known everything by the time he went to the doctor’s appointment. And then one day, on March 2, 1972, at 8 o’clock, Victor Alekseyevich did not come to work. This had never happened before. Everyone felt anxious. The fears were not in vain”.
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Text: Varvara Sosnovskaya, Photo: Nornickel Polar Division archive
