# Soviet Punitive Psychiatry · The Cult Dossier · The Atlas · The Congregation of Tomorrow

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The Cult Dossier · No. 161 · Psychiatry / The Asylum
Soviet Punitive Psychiatry
The psikhushka; sluggish schizophrenia; special psychiatric hospitals
c.1950s – 1980s · Soviet Union
XV. THE ASYLUM — WHEN MEDICINE DECIDED WHOSE MIND WAS WRONG
None. The state doctrine at issue was Marxism-Leninism, and disagreement with it was the symptom.
### Who led it
### What it worshipped and taught
### Who was in it
### How it ended, or where it stands
### The dead
### Of note
### Its timeline
- 24 MAY 1959 In PRAVDA, Khrushchev says that those who call for opposition to communism are people whose mental state is not normal. The logic is now official.
- 1960s–70s Dissidents are detained, assessed at the SERBSKY INSTITUTE, and committed to SPECIAL PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITALS — the psikhushki — WHICH WERE RUN BY THE MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS, NOT BY THE HEALTH MINISTRY. They were prisons with a medical vocabulary. A 1989 United States delegation later documented high-dose antipsychotic injections used to punish rule-breaking and to treat delusions of reformism, and SULFAZINE, which causes severe pain, fever, immobility and muscle damage, used in a pattern that strongly suggested punishment.
- 25 AUGUST 1968 NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA is among eight who demonstrate in Red Square against the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Arrested in December 1969, she is diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia after a trial in July 1970 and held in the KAZAN SPECIAL PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL until February 1972.
- MAY 1970 ZHORES MEDVEDEV, a biologist whose writings circulated among Soviet scientists, is committed to the psychiatric hospital at Kaluga. Protests by ANDREI SAKHAROV, PYOTR KAPITSA, ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN and others secure his release within weeks, demonstrating that the practice was sensitive to publicity.
- MARCH 1971 VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY SMUGGLES OVER 150 PAGES OF SOVIET FORENSIC PSYCHIATRIC REPORTS TO THE WEST, on Grigorenko, Gorbanevskaya and others, with a letter to Western psychiatrists. They are the documentary basis of everything that follows: the diagnoses are in the state's own words. Arrested that month, he is sentenced in January 1972 to two years in prison, five in a labour camp and five in internal exile.
- 1977 THE WORLD PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION CONDEMNS the Soviet Union for the practice.
- JANUARY 1983 THE SOVIET ALL-UNION SOCIETY RESIGNS FROM THE WORLD PSYCHIATRIC ASSOCIATION rather than face almost certain expulsion. It is readmitted in October 1989 on conditions, after a last-minute partial admission of past political abuse.
- 1988–89 A JANUARY 1988 LAW TRANSFERS THE SPECIAL HOSPITALS FROM THE MVD TO THE MINISTRY OF HEALTH, and one to two million people are removed from psychiatric registers. In 1989 a US DELEGATION INTERVIEWS 27 SUSPECTED VICTIMS and finds no evidence of mental disorder of any kind in 14 of them.
### Its people
### Andrei Snezhnevsky
Andrei Vladimirovich Snezhnevsky
Architect of sluggish schizophrenia; director, Institute of Psychiatry, USSR · 1904 – 12 July 1987 · active 1950s–1987
Before the law. Never charged. He held state honours to the end.
Where things stand. Deceased 1987. SLUGGISH SCHIZOPHRENIA IS DISCREDITED AND ABANDONED, and the Soviet society was readmitted to the World Psychiatric Association in 1989 on conditions, after an acknowledgement that psychiatry had been used for political purposes.
- 1950s–60s Develops and promulgates the broad Soviet concept of schizophrenia.
- 1960s–70s Dissidents are assessed and committed under his framework.
- 1971 VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY smuggles roughly 150 pages of forensic reports to the West.
- 1983 The Soviet All-Union Society of Psychiatrists WITHDRAWS from the World Psychiatric Association rather than face expulsion.
- 1987 Dies.
Checked 2026-09-05
### Vladimir Bukovsky
—
Dissident; smuggled the Soviet psychiatric records to the West · 30 December 1942 – 27 October 2019 · active 1963–1976
Before the law. Convicted under Soviet anti-Soviet agitation provisions; expelled by prisoner exchange in 1976.
Where things stand. Deceased 27 October 2019, in Cambridge. HIS DOCUMENTS ARE THE EVIDENTIARY BASIS OF ENTRY 161 — without them the practice would rest on testimony alone.
- 1963–70 Repeatedly detained; held in psychiatric hospitals including the Serbsky and Leningrad special hospitals.
- 1971 SMUGGLES ROUGHLY 150 PAGES OF PSYCHIATRIC REPORTS TO THE WEST.
- 1972 Sentenced to seven years imprisonment and five in internal exile.
- 18 DECEMBER 1976 EXCHANGED for Luis Corvalán and expelled to the West.
- 1978 Publishes his memoir TO BUILD A CASTLE.
- 2019 Dies in Cambridge, England.
Checked 2026-09-05
### Pyotr Grigorenko
Petro Hryhorenko
Soviet major general declared insane for dissent · 16 October 1907 – 21 February 1987 · active 1961–1987
Before the law. Never convicted at a trial with a verdict — he was found not responsible by reason of insanity and committed, WHICH IS THE MECHANISM ENTRY 161 DESCRIBES.
Where things stand. Deceased 1987. Posthumously rehabilitated; his rank was restored after the Soviet collapse.
- 1961 Publicly criticises the Party leadership; demoted and transferred.
- 1964 First psychiatric detention.
- 1969 Arrested in Tashkent while defending the Crimean Tatars; declared insane again and committed.
- 1974 Released after five years.
- 1977 Travels to the United States for medical treatment; his Soviet citizenship is revoked in his absence.
- 1979 AMERICAN PSYCHIATRIC EXAMINATION FINDS NO MENTAL ILLNESS.
- 1987 Dies in New York.
Checked 2026-09-05
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