War time

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War according to the war-time circumstances veterinary faculty was closed, most of students and teachers of the Institute went to the front. The example was given by Gerasim Chrisanphovich Alaphinov, a director of the Institute, who went to the front having the rank of a major.

The director of the Voroshilovsky Institute of Veterinary, Gerasim Chrisanphovich Alaphinov (1938-1941)

The staff of the Institute, remained in the town, were mobilized to carry out defense works at the approaches to Stavropol. The main educational building was given to a hospital.

In the period of Stavropol occupation, which began on August 3, 1942, the main educational building suffered much from bombing of the town. Hostels were burnt, the power electric station, bathhouse, laundry, students’ canteen, apiary of educational-experimental complex were ruined, sheep and pig farms were put to the sack. A large number of educational-illustrative aids, books, tools and equipment in the departments had been irretrievably lost because of untimely evacuation of the Institute.

   

The main building of the institute, ruined during the occupation of Stavropol, 1943.

A hard destiny came to many students and teachers of the university in the period of occupation. Among them Dora Каrabut - a student of the veterinary department, who carried out intelligence work as part of the guerilla regiment in a rear of the enemy. In December 1942 she was brought to the police in the Arzgir village, tortured and shot dead in the fascist torture chambers of Budennovsk. Margarita Karlovna Crimskaya, a Cand. Sc. (Biology), a professor, a head of the Department was shot dead together with her six-year-old son.

     

On January 21, 1943 the German-fascist invaders had been driven out from the town, and on January 25 the classes resumption order was signed. In 1943-1944 academic year, the veterinary department newly opened.

   

By the order of the all-Union Higher Education Committe at the SNK of the USSR №253 dated June 19, 1944, the Voroshilovsky Institute of Veterinary was renamed into the Stavropol Institute of Agriculture. Students not only studied, but restored buildings of the institute, hostels by their own forces. Patriotic spirit was high. In the course of war years students and staff of the university had collected and sent to the front 150 parcels with warm clothes, makhorka, letters with fastest Victory wishes.

Works on reconstruction of the main educational building of the institute, 1943.