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After his official release Pravdych-Neminsky moved a little to the south of Arkhangelsk. Veterinary Institute in Vologda seek for a professor of physiology. Since March 1932 Pravdych-Neminsky took the job. Shortly he was fired as member of “old bourgeois professorship”.

In September 1933 Pravdych-Neminsky joined the faculty of newly created Viatka (later renamed Kirov) Zootechnics and Veterinary Institute as Chair of Physiology. He eagerly started laboratory organization making electrophysiology instruments and equipment himself. Somehow he could achieve some time for research – there is a paper on blood phagocytosis published in local journal in 1935. On May, 25 the same year Presidium of Soviet Academy of Sciences granted Pravdych-Neminsky a new scientific grade of Doctor of Sciences without defending a thesis, only for number of published works. This was an act of recognition by Soviet establishment. But the stable period was finished soon. Letter from Vologda institute reached Ministry of Agriculture that “old anti-Soviet nobility” professor was still teaching students. Soviet officials were very strict and the same 1935 year Pravdych-Neminsky was fired and expelled from his apartment.

There is a white spot in Pravdych-Neminsky biography in 1936-1938. These were the most terrible years of repressions in Soviet Union when enlisted people disappeared by thousands and those who had “short” sentences in recent years were slaughtered first. Nemiskys’ neighbor Nepokoichytsky fate is unknown but their acquaintance Zinovyev-Ikonnikov was killed in the camp where he was then imprisoned. So it is possible that Pravdych-Neminsky lay down to survive the dangerous period.

Anyhow he managed it. Short time of lowering the political pressure in 1939 – and we find professor as a chair of physiology in Poltava Agricultural Institute. Only 250 kilometer east of his beloved Kyiv. For a year he comes back to teaching physiology. In 1940 he was given a better proposition. Newly organized Petrozavodsk State University looked for a Chair in Physiology. At last Pravdych-Neminsky can teach and organize research laboratory in a university, not an agricultural and veterinary institutes. He was 61 already.

Unfortunately, his hope for calm studies of nerve physiology was ruined by German invasion the very next year. Petrazavodsk University was closed, town itself was occupied by Finnish troops. Pravdych-Neminsky was evacuated. In the end of 1941 he appears as a professor of Saratov University. In 1944 he leaves Saratov and his further years are obscure.

At last, in 1949 Soviet authorities in search of Russia-born inventors and pioneers in every branch of science and technics (from radio inventor Popov to fabulous “world-first” pilot Mozhaysky) found Pravdych-Neminsky and generously gave him a separate laboratory of Electrocerbrography and General Physiology at Academy of Sciences of USSR. And he really deserved it, being a real pioneer in his field. His last years in Moscow he did his best to finish most important studies in EEG and electromiography, ammonia role research and so.

Pravdych-Neminsky passed in May, 17 of 1952. He was burried in Mius cemetery in Moscow.

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This page is created as a part of European History of Neuroscience Online Projects and funded by FENS History Online Project 2016 grant. Author: Oleksii Boldyriev. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.