Yuri Lvovich Nuller () (28 August 1929 – 10 November 2003 in

Saint-Petersburg Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd and later Leningrad, is the List of cities and towns in Russia by population, second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the Neva, River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland ...

) was a

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

n psychiatrist and professor. He spent many years investigating the problem of

anxiety Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner wikt:turmoil, turmoil and includes feelings of dread over Anticipation, anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response ...

Early life

Yuri's father, Lev Moiseevich Nuller, a Soviet diplomat in

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

,Lev Moiseevich Nuller
Communist Party and USSR historical directory 1898—1991 (in Russian) was recalled from abroad with his family in 1938, arrested and executed by

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

on 28 July 1941.Сталинские списки — Список 28.03.1941 (АП РФ Ф.3 оп.24 д.421)
- Lev Nuller's case from the "Stalin death lists" (in Russian)

Career

In 1950 Yuri himself was arrested under the preposterous accusation that he had been recruited by France's

secret service A secret service is a government agency, intelligence agency, or the activities of a government agency, concerned with the gathering of intelligence data. The tasks and powers of a secret service can vary greatly from one country to another. For i ...

at the age of three. He was sentenced to 10 years in camps and freed only in 1955, two years after

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

's death. Yuri went on with his studies, and in 1959 had graduated from the First Leningrad Medical Institute and started working at Svirsky mental hospital, a former

Alexander-Svirsky Monastery Alexander-Svirsky Monastery (Александро-Свирский монастырь) is a Russian Orthodox monastery situated deep in the woods of the Leningrad Oblast, just south from its border with the Republic of Karelia. The golden age o ...

and

Svirlag Svirlag, SvirLAG (Svirskiy Lager' – Svir Concentration-Camp, , also / – ) was a Soviet forced labour camp run by NKVD's GULAG Directorate. It was located on the river Svir River, Svir (hence the name Svirskiy in Russian language, Russian) in ...

concentration camp. After several months' work he became a head of the acute ward, and in two years defended a Ph.D. thesis, "A strategy for clinical trials of antidepressant drugs and its implementation in the trials of chloracizine and phenylethylhydrazine". In 1972 he upheld a thesis for a

Doktor nauk A Doctor of Sciences, abbreviated д-р наук or д. н.; ; ; ; is a higher doctoral degree in the Russian Empire, Soviet Union and many Commonwealth of Independent States countries. One of the prerequisites of receiving a Doctor of Science ...

degree, "Clinical investigations of antidepressant drugs".

Legacy

As a person, Yuri is remembered for his kindness, morality and superb intellectual qualities that put him in the ranks of Russian

intelligentsia The intelligentsia is a status class composed of the university-educated people of a society who engage in the complex mental labours by which they critique, shape, and lead in the politics, policies, and culture of their society; as such, the i ...

. He abstained from visible dissident activities, but befriended some dissidents known in the West. As a psychiatrist, Yuri Nuller was noted for his high professionalism. Novel psychotropic medications were introduced in his clinic, and he strived to create new treatment strategies, aiming primarily to relieve

. His technique was christened a "

Diazepam Diazepam, sold under the brand name Valium among others, is a medicine of the benzodiazepine family that acts as an anxiolytic. It is used to treat a range of conditions, including anxiety disorder, anxiety, seizures, alcohol withdrawal syndr ...

test": high doses of the drug were introduced acutely and the psychiatrist tried to interpret, judging on the changing anxiety level and the symptoms that became more prominent, what may have caused the disorder.The teacher
- V.A.Tochilov about Yuri Nuller. Yuri Nuller had more than 130 publications and became an author of two books. He was a thesis adviser, with two Ph.D. and five doctoral dissertations defended under his supervision. During the last 12 years of his life he was the head of a department at the St. Petersburg V. M. Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute.

Bibliography

*Нуллер Ю.Л. Депрессия и деперсонализация. ("Depression and depersonalisation") -Л., 1981 *Нуллер Ю.Л., Михаленко И.Н. Аффективные психозы. ("Affective psychoses") Л.: Медицина, 1988. * *

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nuller, Yuri 1929 births 2003 deaths Physicians from Saint Petersburg Psychiatry academics Russian psychiatrists Soviet prisoners and detainees Gulag detainees