Recently I translated a part of a talk by Yulia Latynina, which described the remarkable story of the eradication of polio in the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The vaccine was created by and American scientist Albert Sabin, the son of Polish Jews who emigrated from the Russian

Empire (Latynina pronounced his name as “Seybin”. which is how it was pronounced in the U.S. She also called his parents “Russian Jews”, which was true only in the sense that at the time when they emigrated Bialystok was in the Russian Empire). That post is here: https://twitter.com/threadreaderapp/status/1257024732291125249

Sabin could not get his live polio vaccine tested in the USA, because another, dead polio vaccine, created by his rival Jonas Salk (who was actually of Lithuanian Jewish origin) was adopted there, so he offered it to the others Soviet Union (he took it there in a suitcase).

He knew Soviet top virologists Mikhail Chumakov, who happened to know personally Anastasia Mikoyan, who was close to Nikita Khrushchev and in 1955 was First Deputy Premier. As it was impossible to phone so high a dignitary from a private office, Chumakov had to sneak in into

some government or party bureau and from there reached Mikoyan. Mikoyan asked Chumakov if he vouched for the vaccine, which Chumakov did. And then Mikoyan just ordered, first the vaccination of 2 million children and within a few years the entire Soviet population, without the

for extensive trials. As Latynina said, the speed with which this was done is one of the very few advantages of a totalitarian dictatorship, provided you can find someone like someone like Anastasiia Mikoyan.
As a result of this success, Mikhail Chumakov became a hero to the

Soviet population but the bureaucracy could never forgive him this unauthorised phone call, especially after Khrushchev’s fall.
Mikhail Chumakov’s wife, who kept her name Voroshilova, was also a remarkable scientist of her own right. She originated a completely new area of

oncology, based on the use of viruses to combat, with significant success, certain cases of cancer regarded as hopeless. Here is an abstract of one of her papers
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2555836 

Voroshilova for various reasons was not favoured by the Soviet establishment, her work was starved of funds, and her achievements were recognised only after her death.
The Chumakovs had 4 sons, all of whom became biologists. Zone of them, Konstantin Chumakov, is now the Deputy

of FDA (in the US, of course). Another son, Pyotr Chumakov, continued his mother’s work on the use of viruses to treat cancer. He left USSR in the late 1980s, first for The UK, then the US. From 2001 till 2012 he was the head of a laboratory in Cleveland. But in 2012 he accepted

an offer of having his own laboratory here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelhardt_Institute_of_Molecular_Biology
At that time he gave an interview in which he criticised the financing of scientific research in the United States. Here is an extract.

“Scientists from the whole world are attracted to the USA by the widespread belief that it offers the ideal conditions for a successful scientific career. But the reality is less pleasant. Everyone has heard stories, of scientists who have started up small innovative companies

& then sold them to big business which turned them into millionaires or even billionaires. The only problem is that in this way, they often cease to be scientists, and no longer aim at discovering the truth. I myself frequently saw how in the search for money for their projects

they resorted to tricks to present and sell their work more profitably. In fact, they became businessmen. Surprisingly, big business is happy with this They buy everything, and sometimes put it into action right away, but more often put it into storage, in case it will be

useful in the future. Against the background of their fantastic wealth, these expenses are peanuts. These peanuts are what the scientists live on.

This system allows big business to keep everything in their hands. For example, only “big pharma” can register, launch and

sell a new drug. Not a single company created by a scientist can do this. Therefore, having brought the development of a medicine to a certain stage, they sell it one of the pharmaceutical giants.

I often go to the USA and see the changes taking place in science. The situation is getting worse: there is almost no money for grants. Previously, to get them, it was enough to write a good proposal. Now grants are primarily allocated to centers, such as Stanford or Harvard

Lesser-known research institutes are in great financial difficulty. There is a stratification in science, and corruption is growing. It’s now hard to believe that until recently, it was almost non-existent.”

Here is Pyotr Chumakov explaining his fascinating work on treating cancer with viruses:

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