Vasilenko, Vladimir Kharitonovich

Born May 25 (June 6), 1897, in Kiev. Soviet therapeutist; academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1957). Hero of Socialist Labor (1967).

In 1922, Vasilenko graduated from Kiev Medical Institute; he worked under the guidance of A. A. Bogomolets, N. D. Strazhesko, and F. G. Ianovskii. From 1935 he was head of a subdepartment at the Kiev Institute of Advanced Training of Physicians; during the Great Patriotic War he was chief therapeutist of the Northern Caucasus and First Ukrainian fronts. Since 1948 he has been head of the subdepartment of propaedeutics of internal diseases of the first Moscow Medical Institute and simultaneously (since 1967) director of the Moscow All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Gastroenterology of the Ministry of Public Health of the USSR. His principal works are devoted to the study of disturbances in metabolism with chronic circulatory insufficiency, kidney pathology, respiratory pathology, and digestive pathology. In collaboration with N. D. Strazhesko he proposed a new classification of insufficiency of the cardiovascular system. He created an important school of therapeutists. He is chairman of the All-Union Society of Gastroenterologists, editor of the journal Klinicheskaia meditsina, and editor in chief of the Malaia meditsinskaia entsiklopediia. He has been awarded two Orders of Lenin and four other orders.