Ekaterina Bakunina was born on August 31, 1810 in St. Petersburg into an aristocratic family. Her father was the governor of St. Petersburg and a senator, and her mother was a close relative of the commander Mikhail Kutuzov. The anarchist philosopher Mikhail Bakunin was Catherine's cousin.

Bakunina received a versatile education. She was interested in music, painting, drama. For a long time, Catherine led the usual life for a young aristocrat of her era - she participated in balls and traveled a lot.

"In the crown of Christ's glory"

At the beginning of the second half of the 19th century, during the Crimean War, for reasons that were not fully clarified by biographers, Ekaterina Bakunina decided to dramatically change her life.

On March 27, 1854, Great Britain and France supported Turkey in another conflict with Russia and declared war on the official St. Petersburg. In September of the same year, the Allied Expeditionary Force landed in the Crimea.

Against the background of the outbreak of hostilities on September 27, 1854, the Holy Cross Community of Sisters of Mercy was founded in Russia. Its creation was initiated by Nikolai Pirogov, a professor at the Medical and Surgical Academy, and the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. A few weeks later, Emperor Nicholas I approved the charter of the community, and a solemn ceremony of consecration of the first sisters of mercy was held in the church of the Mikhailovsky Palace.

Later, Pirogov expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that world public opinion considers the Englishwoman Florence Nightingale to be the founder of nursing.

“We Russians should not allow anyone to alter historical truth to such an extent. We have a duty to claim the palm in a matter so blessed, wholesome and now accepted by all ... In October 1854, the Exaltation of the Cross community received the highest permission, and in November of the same year it was already at the theater of war in full activity. We first heard about Miss Neitingel and her “high soul ladies” only at the beginning of 1855, ”wrote the great surgeon.

Despite all the attempts of her relatives to dissuade her, Ekaterina Bakunina also joined the group of representatives of the Exaltation of the Cross community that accompanied Pirogov.

Under enemy fire, the sisters of mercy in Sevastopol looked after the wounded, delivered them food and changed clothes, and also assisted during surgical operations.

“Thousands of cannonballs and bombs have shown their destructive power over the human body. It was necessary to act without the slightest delay in order to preserve the life, which was carried away by the rapid flow of blood. A terrible shock of the entire nervous system in very many cases made the use of chloroform useless, even harmful. Surgical care was delivered almost continuously on the surgical tables, with the assistance of the nurses. The large dance hall of the Noble Assembly ... was filled with hundreds of people who had undergone operations and ... was cleaned again to make room for new sufferers, "Nikolai Pirogov described what was happening.

  • Nikolay Pirogov
  • © Wikimedia Commons

The great surgeon noted the work of Ekaterina Bakunina especially. Until recently, an aristocrat who lived in the world of secular entertainment performed the most difficult tasks of those that were assigned to the sisters of mercy.

“Two sisters of mercy ... were preparing tools, bandages, lint and water. One of them, Bakunina, looked at her surroundings completely calmly, the other was somewhat agitated, but she braced herself ... The operator bends over the wounded man and in two steps exposes the bone, separating the meat. Blood flows in a stream from the bandaged arteries into the copper basin that Bakunina has framed; another doctor and a paramedic press down on the arteries and the blood stops. The operator quickly saws the bone, ”Pirogov described the working days of a representative of an aristocratic family.

There was a case when Bakunina did not leave the operating table for about a day and a half, assisting with about fifty amputations in a row.

In the last weeks of the defense of Sevastopol, Yekaterina Bakunina provided assistance to the wounded right in the fort "Nikolaev Battery". Once a bomb exploded next to her in the operating room. The sister of mercy was miraculously unharmed.

  • The battle on the Malakhov Kurgan in Sevastopol in 1855
  • © Wikimedia Commons

On September 8, 1855, French troops broke into one of the most important positions of the Russian units in Sevastopol - Malakhov Kurgan. Due to significant losses, the command decided to leave the southern part of the city. Crossing the bay over a bridge of rafts, the Russian military retreated to the north of the city. Together with the wounded, the last of the sisters of mercy, Ekaterina Bakunina left Sevastopol.

Later, the poet Fyodor Glinka dedicated the following lines to her:

“And here one, having passed that bloody path,
Appeared to us in the crown of Christ's glory
And, having spent a stay at a fiery feast,
From the world of storms came to the world to the capital.
Let's greet Bakunin's sister
And greet her sister in mercy! "

"An example of serving a higher cause"

In the fall of 1855, Nikolai Pirogov initiated the creation of a transport and evacuation department for nurses to transport the wounded during the hostilities in the Crimea to Perekop. It was headed by Ekaterina Bakunina, who was in the army for about a year. Then it was she, by the joint decision of Nikolai Pirogov and the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, who was entrusted with the task of leading the Exaltation of the Cross community.

After a while, Bakunina had contradictions with the Grand Duchess. Elena Pavlovna insisted on developing nursing in Russia according to European canons. Bakunina, having visited Western medical institutions, was not satisfied with what she saw. She did not like the cold, rational attitude of the European sisters of mercy towards the sick.

“The Exaltation of the Cross community is the product of a patriotic feeling, striving to participate in a common cause, experiencing strong sympathy for so much suffering and a willingness to share common danger and work,” she stressed.

In 1860, Bakunina stopped working in the community and left for the Tver province, to her estate, Pryamukhino. At that time, the population of the county, which was about 136 thousand people, was served by only one doctor. Because of this, epidemics constantly arose, in the county there was a high mortality rate.

Bakunina, at her own expense, opened a hospital on the estate, maintained a doctor and personally received patients. The peasants were at first wary of her undertaking, but soon they were imbued with confidence in Bakunina's undertaking. The hospital received several thousand patients a year.

In 1877, a new Russian-Turkish war began. Bakunin, who by this time was already 66 years old, was invited to take part in the organization of military medical service. She became the head of the activities of all nurses in the Caucasian theater of hostilities and steadfastly endured all the difficulties of wartime, showing care and attention to patients.

Ekaterina Bakunina died in 1894. The peasants who followed her coffin were crying. She was buried in the family crypt. In tribute to the memory of the pioneer of nursing, streets, medical and educational institutions in various cities of Russia were named after Ekaterina Bakunina.

  • Capture of the Grivitsky redoubt near Plevna (1885)
  • © Wikimedia Commons

"Ekaterina Bakunina is a special person, one of the first sisters of mercy in Russia and the world, a noblewoman who was not afraid to go to the very heat of the Crimean War, to Sevastopol, to save human lives," said museum curator Ekaterina Bakunina, a teacher school # 26 of the city of Sevastopol Natalya Kurdyukova.

According to her, during the Crimean War, many residents could not bear the hardships of living in a defending city. In addition to enemy shells, people were mowed down by cholera and typhus. But Bakunina, not paying attention to anything, did her duty.

In turn, the director of the Sister of Mercy Foundation named after Yekaterina Bakunina, priest Roman Manilov, stressed that before the Crimean War in Russia there was no such profession as a sister of mercy. Accordingly, there was no training system that would teach sisters to help the sick and wounded.

“The surgeon Nikolai Pirogov has accomplished a real civil feat, having managed to successfully place those who could previously perform the functions of nurses to the operating tables. And Bakunina turned out to be the leader in this matter. In fact, she, together with Pirogov, created the profession of a nurse in its modern form. Now we are celebrating the professional holiday of nurses on the birthday of the Englishwoman Florence Nightingale, who participated in the war on the side of the enemy, having forgotten her own founders of nursing, and this is unfair, "the source said.

According to him, Bakunina deliberately devoted her life to serving the suffering.

“Her life is an example of serving a higher cause. A lot of work remains to be done throughout Russia to adequately perpetuate the memory of Ekaterina Bakunina and the rest of the first sisters of mercy, ”concluded Manilov.