A Town of 200 Residents Wants to Rename a Street Named After a Collective Farm Chairman 0 13

An appeal from residents to change the name of Ivan Sorokin Street in Stabulnieki to Anton Skutelis Street has been submitted to the Preili Regional Council. Residents point out that Anton Skutelis is a well-known native of the region and a respected professor of medicine.

According to information available at the Preili Museum of History and Applied Arts, Ivan Sorokin was the first chairman of the Kirov Collective Farm, a local resident and peasant who developed flax cultivation in the collective farm. He served as chairman from 1948 to 1961. In 1941, he organized a 'red corner' in Stabulnieki. He was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as were most of the leading officials of the Soviet state. He served in the ranks of the Soviet army during World War II. He actively participated in the collectivization of agriculture. The museum's materials do not contain information about Ivan Sorokin's involvement in the genocide of the Latvian people organized by the Communist Party. He was a typical chairman of a Soviet collective farm.

Since the Center for Public Memory had previously called for avoiding the use of personal names in street names, the local government invites residents to fill out a questionnaire by November 4 to express their opinion on the necessity of renaming Ivan Sorokin Street in Stabulnieki, also suggesting their own options for a new name.

Some residents propose naming the street after Anton Skutelis, who was born in 1939 in the Balozhi hamlet of the Stabulnieki parish. He studied at the Aizmezha Primary School, the Vidsmuyzh Secondary School, and the Riga First Medical School. From 1965 to 1971, he studied at the Riga Medical Institute, and from 1971 to 1973, he worked as a cardiologist in the ambulance service in Riga, then as a junior researcher in the pharmacology department's laboratory at the same institute (1973–1980), and as a senior researcher at the Latvian Institute of Cardiology (1980–1993). Since 1993, he has been an associate professor in the pharmacology department of the Latvian Medical Academy, a lecturer, and an associate professor in the pharmacology department of the University of Stradina in Riga. He is a co-author of studies on 22 drugs. For his research on the drug foridon, he was awarded the Council of Ministers of Latvia Prize in 1990. He is the author or co-author of more than 200 scientific articles, 8 books, and 20 inventions. He has been a member of the Latvian Society of Pharmacologists since 1971 and an honorary member of the Latvian Pharmaceutical Society.

Stabulnieki is a village in the Preili region, the center of the Stabulnieki parish. During the Latvian SSR, Stabulnieki was the center of the Kirov Collective Farm. Currently, about 230 people live there.