Stanislav Poznakomkin
Stanislav Poznakomkin was born in Moscow. As a child, he once saw a daisy break through the asphalt at Likhobory station. It shocked him incredibly. Then the desire to learn the secrets of nature, to comprehend its power was born. In 1957 he entered the Kishinev State University at the Faculty of Biology. He got a specialty of ichthyologist, in the Academy of Sciences he “shone” postgraduate studies. But he realized that theory does not fascinate him. “Each person intuitively feels in what field of activity his vocation, where he can be useful to himself and people, – says Stanislav Danilovich. – For several years of work as an engineer-ichthyologist I have visited the Atlantic, the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Ocean… Working in the sea element, I realized: how careless we, people, are towards nature. Even the ocean – great, huge – is so vulnerable. And how much filth gets there because of human irresponsibility.
Stanislav Danilovich became the director of the museum in 1982, and since then he has been permanently on the “fighting post”. At first it was a laboratory, later expanded to a museum. Its main task is to ensure the educational process of the university students. But as excursionists all comers are accepted free of charge. Stanislav Poznakomkin is its only employee, who united in one person both a guide, and a caretaker, and a scientist. About each exhibit the guide can fascinatingly tell for hours. And he specifies that not a single animal represented in the museum was killed to become a stuffed animal later. “More than 10,000 representatives of fauna from different corners of the planet are collected here, which almost all died due to the fault of man: his carelessness, or even malicious intent. They were brought by students and graduates of the Biology and Soil Faculty of the University since 1952. This is how a unique collection of fish, birds, animals was formed over the decades – as a testimony to the unreasonable man’s attitude to nature”.
By the way, the museum of the Kishinev Biology Faculty ranked fourth among similar university institutions of the former Soviet Union.
Some of the exhibits appeared in it thanks to Stanislav Poznakomkin himself. For example, the largest leatherback sea turtle, weighing 126 kilograms, was caught in a trawl, and when it was pulled out of there, it did not move. “At the autopsy, we saw the cause of the animal’s death: there were three polyethylene gobbles in its intestines. After all, turtles swallow a huge amount of jellyfish, and the bags often float like jellyfish, so she swallowed them. As a result, she got a blockage of the intestines.
This topic – the relationship between man and nature – is very important to Stanislav Danilovich. “It is possible to change the Constitution of the state, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to change the Constitution of natural processes, laws by which nature lives! It is possible only to study them, to create rules of behavior close to the laws of nature, to observe them and to participate as much as possible in the rational and reasonable development of mankind”.
Telling visitors the history of exhibits, Stanislav Danilovich hopes that people at least for a while will look at themselves from the outside, at their thoughtless attitude to nature. And they will properly educate their children in this respect, not in words, but in deeds, committing ecological actions.
There is a unique exhibit in the Chisinau museum, which is not found in any museum in the world – a newborn sperm whale, which is two days old. Other institutions have larger specimens or fragments, but there is no such thing, and even with an exact known age.
The remains of the sperm whale were delivered by a university graduate who persuaded the ship’s captain to allow the skeletal vertebrae of a 28-meter-long blue whale and the sperm whale’s jaw to be loaded as well.
Stanislav Poznakomkin calls the Museum of Natural History a museum of gratitude to his teacher. He is convinced that there is no one on earth higher than a person who has the quality of a real teacher, who loves his profession. The real one has something that others do not have – being an adult, serious, responsible, keeping childhood in his soul. Stanislav Danilovich knows that Teacher is a vocation. And he cherishes the names of his teachers in his memory.
“Each of the teachers of the university gave us not just their knowledge, but a little bit of himself, in love with his work. It is falling in love that is the main thing,” he says.
“I never thought that a book would come out,” Stanislav Danilovich admitted at the presentation. – For many years I wrote down thoughts and poems on anything, even on cigarette packs and matchboxes. Then gradually a diary took shape. Now, thanks to sponsors, the poems and prose have been published, and Stanislav Poznakomkin shares with us the ocean of his experiences and heartfelt warmth.
