Red Kalinka Forum

We are going to know the story of a man born in Russia to whom most of us probably owe our lives. Read about this in our blog

Do you know any other Russian whose story has taken many years to be known? Or an important Russian figure who is widely unknown today?

In 1983 Stanislav Petrov, official of Soviet Air Force, that was responsible for ballistic missile warning system, received an alert of nuclear attack coming from U.S. with ten ballistic nuclear missiles. He was supposed to report this supposed attack to High Command in Moscow, he had only ten minutes to take a decision considering the time involved to a counter attack, but he decided to wait. His attitude was wise because later they realize that the attack was not real, was only a mistake generated by a problem on the satellite system, that was caused by an alignment between the sun and the atmosphere. This affected his career because demonstrated a failure on a expensive system, so the Soviet leaders could not reward him because would admit the failure. This story was only known in 1998, and only last year, 2013, he was awarded by his attitude and received appropriate recognition. He is one man who really saved the Humankind.

Smorodintsev Anatoly Aleksandrovich developed and implemented (togather with Mikhail Petrovich Chumakov) polio vaccine. Its vaccine has been used worldwide and in USA too. He created the flu vaccine, as well as encephalitis, measles, mumps vaccines.