Valentin Feliksovich VOINO-YASENETSKY - Archbishop, professor-surgeon. To the 145th of birthday
Authors: Andreev Alexander Alekseevich , Ostroushko Anton Petrovich 
Published: July 2022

Valentin Feliksovich was born on April 27, 1877 in the eastern part of the Crimea, in one of the oldest cities in the world, at a unique resort located on two seas at once Kerch. His father, Felix Stanislavovich, was a pharmacist and worked as a manager of a private pharmacy of D.I. Kundin, whose daughter, Maria Dmitrievna, was his mother. Valentin Feliksovich was born into a family belonging to an ancient family of impoverished Polish nobles. Of his 14 sisters and brothers, only five survived to adulthood.In 1880, the family of Valentin Feliksovich left Kerch for Kherson, then to Chisinau, in 1889 to Kiev. In 1896, Valentin Feliksovich graduated from the gymnasium and art school of Nikolai Ivanovich Murashko.Then Valentin Feliksovich studied for a year at the Faculty of Law, at the private art school of Knirr in Munich, but in 1898, deciding to become a doctor, he entered the medical faculty of Kiev University.Valentin Feliksovich, having received a doctor's degree, worked at the Red Cross hospital in Kiev, during the Russian-Japanese war he headed the surgical department of the Chita hospital as part of the Red Cross medical detachment, later worked as a surgeon in Ardatov, Simbirsk province, in the village of Verkhny Lyubazh and Fatezh, Kursk region. During this period, he married the daughter of the estate manager, sister of mercy Anna Vasilyevna Lanskaya. In 1909, Valentin Feliksovich entered the Moscow University as an external student to Professor P.I. Dyakonov.In 1915 he published the monograph "Regional Anesthesia" and in 1916 defended it as a dissertation with the award of the degree of Doctor of Medicine. By this time, Valentin Feliksovich had mastered operations on the heart, brain, organs of vision, gastrointestinal tract, including stomach, intestines, bile ducts, kidneys, spine and joints. Until 1917, Valentin Feliksovich worked as a doctor in hospitals in central Russia, later as the chief physician of a hospital in Tashkent, professor at the Central Asian State University. Moving to Tashkent is associated with the progression of his wife's tuberculosis, which required her to stay in a warmer climate, but in 1919, the wife of V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky died, leaving him to take care of four children. In February 1921, he was ordained a deacon, a week later a priest, on May 31, 1923, he was tonsured a monk and consecrated a bishop with the name Luke, and a week later he was arrested.At the beginning of 1926, Valentin Feliksovich returned to Tashkent. But on May 6, 1930, he was detained and transferred to Arkhangelsk. In the autumn of 1933, from exile, Valentin Feliksovich wrote a letter to the People's Commissar of Health about the need to organize an institute of surgical infection in the country and, having received no response, went to Moscow at the first opportunity for a personal meeting, at which he rejected the offer to renounce holy orders and instead accept the post of director of the institute.In the autumn of 1934, Valentin Feliksovich published a widely known monograph, including abroad: "Essays on purulent surgery". For several years, Professor Voino-Yasenetsky headed the main operating room of the Tashkent Institute of Emergency Care, but on July 24, 1937, he was arrested again, for the third time. Since March 1940, he has been working as a surgeon a hundred kilometers from Krasnoyarsk in the Bolshaya Murta of the Yelovskaya volost.After the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War, Valentin Feliksovich sends a telegram to M.I. Kalinin, in which he asks to be sent as a surgeon to the hospital, expressing his readiness to continue exile after the Victory.In September 1941, the chief surgeon of the region took V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky by plane to Krasnoyarsk to work as the chief surgeon of the evacuation hospital No. 1515, which was later recognized as the best of the 17 hospitals of the region.Since October 1941, Valentin Feliksovich has been a consultant to hospitals in the Krasnoyarsk Territory and chief surgeon of the evacuation hospital. In the autumn of 1942, he was elevated to the rank of archbishop and appointed to the Krasnoyarsk department. In 1944, Valentin Feliksovich published his monographs: "On the course of chronic empyema and chondrates", "Late resections of infected gunshot wounds of joints". Since February 1944, Archbishop Luke has been the head of the Tambov Department, and is a consultant surgeon at Tambov hospitals. In February 1945, Valentin Feliksovich was awarded by Patriarch Alexy I the right to wear a diamond cross. He is writing the book "Spirit, Soul and Body". Since May 1946, he has headed the Crimean Department in Simferopol and in the same year was awarded the Stalin Prize for the monograph "Essays on purulent Surgery", 130 out of 150 thousand of which he gives to the needs of wartime orphans.In 1955, Valentin Feliksovich completely went blind, but continuing to work and in 1957 dictated his memoirs. V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky died on June 11, 1961 in the rank of Archbishop of Crimea and Simferopol on the Day of All Saints who shone in the Russian land.Valentin Feliksovich is the author of 55 scientific works on medicine, ten volumes of sermons. He was elected an honorary member of the Moscow Theological Academy in Zagorsk. He was awarded the Chojnatski Prize from the University of Warsaw (1916), the Diamond Cross (1944), the medal "For Valiant Labor in the Great Patriotic War" (1945).In 1995, Valentin Feliksovich was canonized as a locally venerated saint in the Crimean diocese, in 2000 he was glorified as a confessor (saint) in the host of New martyrs and confessors of Russia. His relics are installed for worship in the Cathedral of Simferopol.On July 14, 2008, V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky posthumously became an Honorary Citizen of Pereslavl-Zalessky. On June 19, 2020, by Decree of the President of the Russian Federation, the Medal of Luke Krymsky was established, awarded for merits in healthcare.In memory of V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky, over 69 churches of St. Luke were opened, including in Russia (Moscow, Balashikha, Voronezh, Yevpatoria, Yeysk, Yekaterinburg, Donetsk, Zheleznogorsk, Kerch, Kovrov, Krasnoyarsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Novy Svet, Obninsk, Olginka, Orenburg, Perm, Petrozavodsk, Saki, Saratov, Simferopol, Stavropol, Ulyanovsk, Chelyabinsk, Chita, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk), in Ukraine (Kiev, Sumy, Odessa, Vinnytsia, Dnipro), Greece and other countries. Monuments and busts were installed only in Russia in the years Moscow, Yeysk, Krasnoyarsk, Lipetsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Simferopol, Tambov and other cities. The name of Professor V.F. Voino-Yasenetsky was given to the Krasnoyarsk State Medical University, St. Petersburg Clinical Hospital, and the Society of Orthodox Doctors of St. Petersburg.