Russia has lost one of the founders of the vegetarian movement: on August 15, 1998, Yury Nickolayev, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, died. The organization of the first vegetarian society in Russia (1989) - after the revolution - was made possible through Yory Nickolayev's work, who caused the word "Vegetarianism" to be pronounced again in our country, not in a mocking way but with interest and respect. People who were interested in naturo-pathy, in vegetarianism in particular, gathered around Prof. Nickolayev. He corresponded with many doctors abroad and made a good collection of books on naturopathy and veg-etarianism. It was through Nicko-layev that many well-known names from the West were introduced to Russia. Yury Nickolayev was born in 1905 in the family of S. Nickolayev, a dis-ciple of Leo Tolstoy, who was a veg-etarian and whose sons and a daugh-ter were vegetarians from birth. (Nickolayev's son is also a vegetar-ian and so are his children, Nicko-layev's grandchildren, but not his daughter.) Nickolayev's mother used to organ-ise vegetarian canteens in Moscow. Yury Nickolayev had a medical edu-cation and he chose the method of fasting cure as his specialty. The method was first applied for treating mental patients and showed good re-sults. Later it was used to treat so-matic patients: cardiac, gastric, aller-gic disorders. When the patients were leaving the hospital they were in-structed to go on keeping to the veg-etarian diet if they did not wish to have a relapse. As the method worked these recommendations were becom-ing more and more popular, and the number of enthusiastic adherents of the vegetarian nutrition grew stead-ily. Yury Nickolayev was also interested in contacts with India, the mainstay of vegetarianism. In the after-war years there was a great rush towards the alternative cure methods and the general interest in yoga coincided with the advance of the naturopathic method of fasting cures which Prof. Nickolayev practised. People no longer mocked the veg-etarian diet, but began to believe that it is good for health, that it is wise to stop eating meat. The fact that a vegetarian diet was recommended at a state-supported hospital, that it was officially adop-ted, made a great impression on peo-ple's minds: it was kind of a revolu-tion. The changes that have taken place were proved by the fact, that the books on vegetarianism published by the vegetarian Society were quick-ly bought each time and became a rarity. Yury Nickolayev was an Honorary Director on the Board of Directors of the Vegetarian Society in Russia. Tatyany Pavlova President of the Vegetarian Society 39-3-23, Volsky bul. Moscow 109462 Russia Tel/ Fax: +7 095 170 7029