Professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Saratov University, Ekaterina Pleshakova won the Birthplace All-Russian Contest of Local History Publications.

Ekaterina Pleshakova provided materials from her family archive. During the period of self-isolation caused by the coronavirus pandemic, she wrote the memoirs about her grandmother Margarita Yakimova who lived for 95 years. Her grandmother devoted her life to health care and epidemiology and for many years worked as Chief Physician of the Sanitary and Epidemiology Agency of the Water Health Care Department in Saratov.

According to Ekaterina Pleshakova, she started writing family memoirs several years ago in order to preserve interesting facts of the genealogy for younger generations. During the self-isolation, she had time to thoughtlessly read the documents of her great-grandmother and great-grandfather.

“There is information that my great-grandmother was a student of the first SSU Faculty of Medicine. The grandmother herself graduated from Faculty of Medicine in 1943. As a child, I talked to her a lot. She told me fairy tales about germs. And in her recent years I lived with her,” Ekaterina Pleshakova explained.

The professor collected the materials and wrote a 50-page detailed life story about her grandmother. When she found out about the local history contest titled the Birthplace, she decided to participate in it. To comply with the terms of the competition, the memoirs had to be reduced to 5-6 pages. And the professor’s husband helped do it.

In the first stage, the local history publications were evaluated by means of Internet voting. In the second one, the professional jury began to study the materials, which noted the local history value, literacy, accessibility, and the uniqueness of the content.

Ekaterina Pleshakova’s work contains lots of archive photographs. A whole era is shown through Margarita Yakimova’s life, starting from the childhood of little Rita, and interesting pages of the region history are reflected. Margarita Yakimova worked in the subordinate organization of the Microbe Institute, went on business trips to the outbreak locations, fought against their spread, and took preventive measures.

“Since August 12, 1950, Margarita Yakimova took the position of Chief Physician of the Sanitary and Epidemiology Agency of the Water Health Care Department in Saratov. Subsequently, the title of her position sounded like: Chief Physician of the Linear Sanitary and Epidemiology Agency on Water Transport of the Middle Volga River Basin. Later the title changed once again and she became State Chief Sanitary Doctor of the Saratov Linear Agency of the Middle Volga River Basin,” it was written in the memoirs.

The creative publication turned out to be in tune with the time, as noted Ekaterina Pleshakova, because it was written during the COVID-19 pandemic and it was devoted to the life of grandmother who worked as an infection specialist.

In the competition memoirs, Ekaterina Pleashakova wrote about an important discovery of her grandmother, which, perhaps, saved her life: “Once in my kindergarten there was an acute outbreak of staphylococcosis. I think it was only thanks to my grandmother that I managed to survive. She quickly tested staphylococcus irritability to various antibiotics and selected a drug - a new antibiotic neomycin, which at that time had not yet been launched into mass production.

Ekaterina Pleshakova supposes that optimism, lust for life, and unchanging faith in people caused her grandmother's longevity.

It should be noted that more than 1,200 publications were submitted to the Birthplace All-Russian Contest. SSU Professor Ekaterina Pleshakova was awarded with the first place.