Sysin, Aleksey Nikolayevich

SYSIN, Aleksey Nikolayevich (born in 1879), professor of hygiene, Merited Scientist; graduated from the Medical Faculty of Moscow University in 1908. During his student years, he was several times subjected to administrative exile and arrest for participating in student unrest (1899, 1901). In 1902, he was arrested in connection with the Nizhny Novgorod Social Democratic organization; after a year of imprisonment, he was exiled to the Yakutsk Region; he spent three years in exile and was returned under the amnesty of 1905. Subsequently, he worked in the Social Democratic organization (Bolshevik faction) of Nizhny Novgorod and Kharkov. From 1909 to 1913, he worked as a district and sanitary physician in the Saratov, Yekaterinoslav, Vologda, and Nizhny Novgorod provinces. In the latter, from 1911 to 1913, he was the head of the provincial sanitary bureau. In 1913, he was elected as a sanitary physician for the city of Moscow. During the period of his Zemstvo and municipal activities before the war, Sysin wrote and published a number of works on issues of rural water supply, housing supervision, and urban improvement. In 1915–1918, he worked in the Main Committee of the All-Russian Union of Cities, participating in and then heading the sanitary bureau of the Main Committee; simultaneously, in 1914–1917, he directed the military-sanitary service of the Moscow city administration. In 1918, Sysin took the position of head

of the Sanitary-Epidemiological Department of the People's Commissariat of Health (NKZdr) of the RSFSR (until 1931). All sanitary legislation of this period, the development and implementation of relevant sanitary and anti-epidemic measures, as well as the expansion of the country's sanitary organs, are linked to Sysin's activities as an active worker of the People's Commissariat of Health in these fields. With Sysin's participation, a number of All-Russian and All-Union congresses of bacteriologists, epidemiologists, and sanitary physicians were organized during these years, where he usually served on the organizing bureaus and presidiums of the congresses, acting as the editor of the subsequently published "Proceedings of the Congresses." Simultaneously, on Sysin's initiative and with his participation, numerous courses were organized for the training and advanced study of sanitary physicians of various specialties. Since 1922, Sysin has been a participant and delegate of the USSR in international conferences on sanitary issues (the Russian-Polish Sanitary Conference and the European Sanitary Conference in Warsaw, 1922) and since 1926 has been the permanent representative of the USSR in the International Office of Public Hygiene (Paris). Among Sysin's works from these years, it is necessary to note a series of articles in various journals on organizational issues of sanitary affairs, participation in editing collections on sanitary legislation, a series of brochures titled "Issues of Improvement of Populated Places," as well as a number of essays on epidemiology, disinfection, and the sanitary state of the USSR. Sysin's educational and pedagogical activity began in 1913 as a lecturer in university courses for sanitary physicians in Moscow, and then in 1915–1917 as a supernumerary assistant at the Department of Hygiene of the Moscow Medical Faculty (under Prof. Orlov). Since 1922, Sysin was invited as an assistant in the Department of Social Hygiene at the 1st Moscow State University (under Prof. N. A. Semashko); from 1924, he was elected professor of the Department of Experimental Hygiene at the same university. Since 1931, Sysin has been a professor of general and communal hygiene at the Central Institute for the Advanced Training of Physicians (Moscow). Currently, Sysin also serves as the director of the Scientific Research Institute of Communal Hygiene of the People's Commissariat of Health. From the first years of his work, Sysin has been an active participant in a number of sanitary-hygienic periodicals (the journal "Hygiene and Epidemiology" and others). Since the inception of the Great Medical Encyclopedia, Sysin has been editing the hygiene department and also serves as the assistant editor-in-chief. Sysin is a member of the presidium of the Academic Medical Council of the People's Commissariat of Health of the RSFSR, a member of the Academic Medical Council of the People's Commissariat of Health of Ukraine, a member of the Scientific-Technical Council of the People's Commissariat of Communal Services, and the Academy of Communal Services; a board member of the All-Union Scientific-Technical Society of Water Supply and Sanitary Engineering; in 1928–1931, Sysin was a member of the Moscow Soviet, and in recent years has worked as a section member of the Soviet; he was one of the initiators and founders of VARNITSO. The total number of Sysin's literary works exceeds 200. Among individual works, one should mention: "Sanitary Physician's Handbook," edited by Sysin (3rd ed., Moscow, 1935); "Textbook of Hygiene" (Moscow-Leningrad, 1933; 2nd ed., 1934)—a collective work edited by Sysin and with his participation as an author; "Course of Disinfection and Deratization" (3rd ed., Moscow-Leningrad, 1934, jointly with G. Chistyakov and Ya. Levinson), as well as individual chapters in the collective course "Social Hygiene" (edited by A. Molkov, Vol. I, Moscow-Leningrad, 1927).