It is hard to imagine a person born in the USSR who would not know who Yuri Senkevich is. Traveler, public figure, journalist, candidate of medical sciences, host of the beloved television program "Travelers' Club". During his life, this man managed to do a lot. An expedition to the Indian Ocean, a trip to the North Pole, the conquest of Everest - all this is just a small part of his interesting life, causing true delight among contemporaries.
Yuri Senkevich: biography and ancestral roots
The future traveler-researcher was born on March 4, 1937 in the Mongolian People's Republic in the city of Cholbalsan, where his father worked as an aviation doctor. The Senkevich family has very deep roots. It is known that Yuri Senkevich on his father's side comes from the clergy. Yury Alexandrovich's grandfather is a we althy man who had a family estate in the Poltava region in the pre-revolutionary period.
Immediately after the October Revolution of 1917, the Senkevich family moved to Izmail, where Osip Georgievich, Yury's grandfather, also had his parish. Bymaternal line knows that grandfather Yu. A. Senkevich, Kupriyan Alekseevich Machulsky, was associated with the St. Petersburg Military Medical Academy.
Exhibit of the Abkhaz Museum
Yuri Senkevich has been an inquisitive boy since childhood. While on vacation with his parents in the city of Sukhumi, he found an unusual rectangular object on the Black Sea coast. Upon closer examination, an incomprehensible inscription was found on the white stone.
As it turned out later, this find of the boy was a fragment of an antique marble stele, which was of great historical and archaeological value. Today, the find of the young archaeologist can be seen among many other exhibits in the Abkhaz State Museum in Sukhumi.
Dream of space
After graduating from high school in 1954, Yuri Senkevich entered the Military Medical Academy. From the second year of high school, he began to be actively interested in science. The subject of his scientific research was biology and colloid chemistry. In 1960, a graduate of the Military Medical Academy was offered a job in the city of Bologoye, Tver Region, where he went as the head of the medical center of one of the military units. On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin made the world's first space flight. This fact stirred the minds of all mankind.
At that time there was not a single person in the Soviet Union who would not dream of following the example of the first cosmonaut. Yuri Senkevich was no exception, who, after long bureaucraticdelays in 1962 seeks his transfer to the newly established Moscow Institute of Aviation and Space Medicine.
In the future, after moving to the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the USSR Ministry of He alth in 1964, Yuri Senkevich is engaged in the preparation and medical support of space flights with animals on board. All this time, he does not lose hope in space and is being trained as a medical researcher at the Cosmonaut Training Center. However, the dream is not destined to come true, Senkevich never flew into space.
Arctic station "Vostok"
Yuri Senkevich's first travels begin in January 1967. At the suggestion of the head of the institute, V. V. Parin, an experiment was conducted on survival in extreme conditions. A group of scientists, including Yuri Alexandrovich Senkevich, was invited to land at the Vostok Arctic station for research experiments.
Besides this, the editor-in-chief of the magazine "Friendship of Peoples" suggested that Yu. Senkevich keep a travel diary in which he was supposed to cover all the events related to the expedition's stay in the Arctic. So Sienkiewicz becomes a special correspondent.
The readers of the magazine followed with great interest the course of the Arctic experiment, described by the special correspondent of "Friendship of Peoples". Upon returning to Moscow, Yu. A. Senkevich defends his dissertation and becomes a candidate of medical sciences.
Invitation from Thor Heyerdahl
In 1969, Mstislav Keldysh,President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, received a letter from the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, where he offered one of the Soviet scientists to go on an expedition with him on the boat "Ra" across the Atlantic Ocean, made of papyrus.
The main condition was that it was a doctor with knowledge of English, experience in expeditions, good he alth and a sense of humor. Yuri Senkevich turned out to be such a candidate, meeting all the requirements of the Norwegian.
Yuri Senkevich: statements about the ocean aboard the "Ra"
There were seven sailors and the monkey Safi on board the boat "Ra", which started off the coast of Norway on May 25, 1969.
It was not a very successful experiment. In his diaries, Y. Senkevich wrote: “The ropes that bind the papyrus are constantly torn… The board threatens to break away from the ship, everything is shaking… A suitcase with medicines in the water… Boxes and bed splashing on the water…”
On July 16, the expedition was picked up by the Shenondoah yacht. Thus ended the first expedition, the purpose of which was to establish transatlantic links between Mesopotamia, Egypt and the countries of the Mediterranean with the Indus River valleys, Africa and America.
Exactly one year later, Thor Heyerdahl, who gathered the crew of the first expedition for the second time on board the Ra-2, finally realized his dream. The researchers reached the shores of Barbados, and the hypothesis of the Norwegian scientist about the ancient transoceanic passages in the Atlantic was confirmed.
TV host
After the death in 1973 of documentary filmmaker VladimirShneiderov, the author and ideological inspirer of the television program about travelling, was the question of replacing the TV presenter. Yuri Senkevich agreed to combine research work at the institute and conduct a popular TV show. The "Club of Travelers", to which Yuri Alexandrovich devoted the rest of his life, he led for about 30 years. For the entire time the program went on the air, viewers managed to visit all corners of the planet, thanks to the talent of the storyteller and irrepressible traveler Yuri Senkevich. The film crew of the Travelers Club climbed Everest, languished in the heat in the sands of Africa, froze at the North Pole, visited the most beautiful places on our planet, dragging viewers with them.
It is no coincidence that the program of the Central Television of the Soviet Union was entered in the Guinness Book of Records as a travel record holder, and its permanent host became an honorary academician of the television academy of the Russian Federation. In addition, the program "Club of Travelers" in 1997 received the highest award of Russian television "TEFI".
Other expeditions of Yu. A. Senkevich
Tour Heyerdahl's new goal was to prove the possible long-distance voyage along the Indian Ocean of the ancient Sumerians. To this end, the Norwegian in 1977 gathers like-minded people around him, among whom is Yuri Senkevich. The reed ship "Tigris" sets off for new adventures.
However, the sailors failed, and they were forced to issue an SOS signal. The ship hurried to help unsuccessful researchers"Slavsk", which delivered travelers to the shores of Bahrain. Only six months after the repair of the ship, the Tigris reached the coast of Africa.
1979 - polar expedition of the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. Participants skied to the North Pole.
Summing up
This man devoted his whole life to traveling. The author of more than 60 publications on medicine, space research in the field of psychology and physiology, human behavior in extreme conditions is Yuri Senkevich. "A Lifelong Journey", "To "Ra" across the Atlantic", "The Horizon Called Them" - these memoirs, written by the author after regular travels, have become a textbook for future conquerors of unexplored corners of our planet.
Yuri Alexandrovich's first heart attack happened after the news of the death of his closest friend Thor Heyerdahl. An excellent person with whom, according to Yu. A. Senkevich, they sank together and floated together, shared the last drops of fresh water, got out of difficult situations that presented oceans.
The TV presenter had a second heart attack at his workplace. Doctors started Yury Senkevich's heart five times, but they failed to save him.
September 25, 2003 Yuri Alexandrovich died. At the Novodevichy cemetery, where Yu. A. Senkevich is buried, there are always fresh flowers.
In memory of Senkevich, the Aeroflot airline named the A-319 aircraft after him, and the Sovcomflot shipping company named an ocean tanker.
