A. I. SHINGAREV — THE TRAGIC FATE OF A RUSSIAN DOCTOR
Abstract
The article is devoted to medical and political activities of A. I. Shynharyev. After graduating the medical faculty of Moscow University in 1894, Andrei Ivanovich had been working as a free physician for more than three years in the village of Bolshoi Vereyka of the Voronezh province, after which he became a zemstvo doctor, and in 1903 — the head of the sanitary department of the Voronezh province. A. I. Shingarev was repeatedly elected to district and provincial Zemstvo administrative bodies, he was also editor of the newspaper «The Voronezh Word», was often published in «The Medical Interview», «Medical Chronicle of the Voronezh Province», etc. Shingarev’s book «The Dying Village» gained wide popularity: the sanitary and economic study conducted by the author led to the conclusion that the main factors of the high mortality of the Russian peasantry are «landlessness» and «low cultural level of the population». His conviction that the improvement of the rural population’s general health without political reforms was impossible, led Andrei Ivanovich into the ranks of the Cadet Party. He was elected deputy of the II, III, IV State Duma. After the February Revolution of 1917, A. I. Shingarev joined the Provisional Government in the rank of Minister of Agriculture, later became Minister of Finance. On November 28, 1917, when the Council of People’s Commissars approved the decree proclaiming the Cadets as a party of «enemies of the people», A. I. Shingarev and F. F. Kokoshkin were arrested. The stay in the cold, crude casemate of the Trubetskoi bastion of the Peter and Paul’s Fortress had a bad effect on the health of the arrested, the relatives succeeded on their transfer to the Mariinsky hospital. Here on the night of January 6 to 7, 1918, A. I. Shingarev and F. F. Kokoshkin were shooted by sailors-anarchists. The article describes in detail the circumstances of this foul murder and the investigation, explores the reasons why the perpetrators were not punished.
