Ural State Medical University

The Sverdlovsk Medical Institute was opened on March 1, 1931 on the basis of a special resolution of the SNK of the RSFSR of July 10, 1930. One medical and preventive faculty was opened in it, where 100 students studied. The first director of the institute was Peter Spiridonovich Kataev.

In 1953, the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute, like other medical universities of the USSR, suffered immediately from two repressive campaigns of all-Union significance, "Doctors' Plot" and the fight against Zionism. The university was looking for pest doctors and. Thus, the Higher Attestation Commission of the USSR rejected the dissertation of the assistant to the ear, throat and nose department of the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute, RB Pinus, on the topic “Maxillary sinus cysts,” indicating in her conclusion: “There is no cancer under socialism”[1]. In 1953, a number of Jewish doctors were dismissed at the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute (as well as from medical institutions in the city)[2]. Attempts by some Jewish employees to replace surnames and Russian names were thwarted. So, M.E. Rutberg, an employee of the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute in 1953, received a reprimand with an entry on the card for replacing the name Merra with Meri in her passport in 1948 (the name remains the same in the party ticket)[3].

According to the historian A. S. Kimmerling, the party organs tried in 1953 to organize the “doctors' plot” at the Department of Hospital Surgery of the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute[4]. The head of this department, Professor A. G. Lidsky, made excuses on the fact that the work of the “killer doctor” A. I. Feldman was included in the list of recommended literature[5]. A commission was created to study the situation at the departments of hospital surgery and nervous diseases of the Sverdlovsk Medical Institute, but it worked slowly and did not have time to complete its activities before the end of the campaign against the "killer doctors"[6]. In April 1953, the "doctors' case" was discontinued at the all-Union level, which led to the curtailment of campaigns against doctors on the ground.

In 1979, the Institute was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labour for its contribution to the development of medical science and the training of medical personnel.

In 1995, the institute was renamed the Ural State Medical Academy (UGMA). In 2013, the Academy was granted university status with renaming to the Ural State Medical University (USMU).[7].