Red Army chief internist who built Soviet wartime field therapy, and the lead defendant in the Doctors' Plot
After his leg amputation, Rapoport visited. Vovsi told him: 'How can you compare my present condition to what it was then? Now I have only lost a leg but remained a human being. There, I ceased to be one.'
As chief internist of the Red Army (1941–1950), Vovsi organized therapeutic care across the armed forces during the Great Patriotic War and laid the foundations of Soviet wartime field medicine. A cousin of Solomon Mikhoels, assassinated in 1948, Vovsi was named the ringleader of the 'Doctors' Plot' in the TASS communiqué of January 1953, arrested, and tortured. Released after Stalin's death, he resumed clinical and research work at Botkin Hospital and, even after losing a leg to sarcoma, remained at the hospital to work until his death.
Career Timeline
- 1919Graduated Moscow University medical faculty; joined the Red Army
- 1919–1921Senior regimental doctor, 6th Petrograd Proletarian Division
- 1922–1935Researcher at Moscow University clinic; later senior fellow at Medical-Biological Institute
- 1935–1941Head of internal medicine, Central Institute for Doctors' Postgraduate Education; head of therapy, Botkin Hospital
- 1941–1950Chief internist, Red Army (later Soviet Army)
- 1943Promoted to major-general of medical service
- 1948Full member, USSR Academy of Medical Sciences
- 1953Arrested in the Doctors' Plot; released and reinstated after Stalin's death