Russian term
психушка (slang)
Translit: psikhushka
English: psychiatric hospital

In the Soviet Union, psychiatry was used for punitive purposes. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages The Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet and Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text likewise called a " translation The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 Psychiatry is a medical specialty which exists to study, prevent, and treat Mental disorders in Humans Psychiatric Psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture. A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned and usually deprived of a range of A political prisoner is someone held in Prison or otherwise detained perhaps under House arrest, for his or her involvement in political activity Torture, according to the United Nations Convention Against Torture, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental is intentionally ^[1] The official explanation was that "no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and Communism". Communism is a Socioeconomic structure that promotes the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, stateless Society based

Psikhushka (Russian: психушка) is a Russian colloquialism for psychiatric hospital. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages A colloquialism is an expression not used in formal speech, writing or Paralinguistics. A psychiatric hospital (previously called insane asylum, mental hospital; or derogatorily looney bin, nut house or Funny Farm) is It has been occasionally used in English since the dissident movement in the Soviet Union became known in the West. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States A dissident, broadly defined is a person who actively challenges an established doctrine policy or institution The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR was a constitutionally Socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991 The term Western world, the West or the Occident ( Latin: occidens -sunset -west as distinct from the Orient) can have multiple meanings

Contents 1 History 2 Soviet psychiatric abuse exposed 3 Reaction by the World Psychiatric Association 4 Post-Soviet times 5 People 6 References 7 See also 8 Bibliography

History

Psikhushkas had been already used since the end of the 1940s (see Alexander Esenin-Volpin) and during the Khrushchev Thaw period in the 1960s. The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949 Events and trends The 1940s was a period between the radical 1930s and the conservative 1950s which also leads the period to be Alexander Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin ( Александр Сергеевич Есенин-Вольпин)is a prominent Khrushchev's Thaw or the Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s when repression and Censorship in the Soviet Union The 1960s decade refers to the years from the beginning of 1960 to the end of 1969 One of the first psikhushkas was the Psychiatric Prison Hospital in the city of Kazan. Kazan (Каза́нь Казан tt Qazan) is the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, and one of Russia's largest cities It was transferred to NKVD control in 1939 under the order of Lavrentiy Beria. The NKVD ( НКВД, ru Народный Комиссариат Внутренних Дел ''Narodnyy Komissariat Vnutrennikh Del'') or People's Commissariat Year 1939 ( MCMXXXIX) was a Common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович ^[2] On April 29, 1969 the head of KGB, Yuri Andropov, submitted to the Central Committee of CPSU a plan for creating a network of psikhushkas. Events 1429 - Joan of Arc arrives to relieve the Siege of Orleans. Year 1969 ( MCMLXIX) was a Common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar of the Gregorian calendar. KGB ( Transliteration of "КГБ" is the Russian abbreviation of Committee for State Security ( Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosty Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov) ( &ndash 9 February 1984 was a Soviet politician ^[3]

The official Soviet psychiatry allegedly abused the diagnosis of sluggishly progressing schizophrenia (вялотекущая шизофрения), a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace of other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Moscow Serbsky Institute professors (a quote ^[4] from Vladimir Bukovsky's archives). Sluggishly progressing schizophrenia or sluggish schizophrenia was a category of Schizophrenia diagnosed by Psychiatrists in the Soviet Paranoia is a disturbed thought process characterized by excessive Anxiety or Fear, often to the point of Irrationality and Delusion. Moscow Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry (Центр социальной и судебной психиатрии им Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Влади́мир Константи́нович Буко́вский b Some of them had high rank in the MVD, such as the infamous Danil Luntz, who was characterized by Viktor Nekipelov as "no better than the criminal doctors who performed inhuman experiments on the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps" ^[4]. Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov (Виктор Александрович Некипелов September 29, 1928 Harbin, China - July 1 Nazism, which was a short name for National Socialism (Nationalsozialismus refers primarily to the Ideology and practices of the National Socialist German Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people commonly in large groups without trial

The sane individuals who were diagnosed as mentally ill were sent either to regular psychiatric hospitals or, those deemed particularly dangerous, to special ones, run directly by the MVD. Mental disorder or mental illness is a psychological or behavioral pattern that occurs in an individual and is thought to cause distress or disability that is not expected as A psychiatric hospital (previously called insane asylum, mental hospital; or derogatorily looney bin, nut house or Funny Farm) is The treatment included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, a range of drugs (such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin) that cause long lasting side effects, and sometimes involved beatings. The term narcotic (ναρκωτικός is believed to have been coined by the Greek physician Galen to refer to agents that benumb or deaden causing loss A sedative, or more specifically a sedative-hypnotic, is a substance that depresses the Central nervous system (CNS resulting in calmness relaxation sleepiness Insulin is a Hormone with intensive effects on both metabolism and several other body systems (eg vascular compliance Nekipelov describes inhuman uses of medical procedures such as lumbar punctures. In Medicine, a lumbar puncture (colloquially known as a spinal tap) is a Diagnostic and at times therapeutic procedure that is performed in order

At least 365 sane people were treated for "politically defined madness" in the Soviet Union, and there were surely hundreds more ^[4].

Soviet psychiatric abuse exposed

In 1971, Bukovsky managed to smuggle to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of psychiatric institutions for political reasons in the USSR. Year 1971 ( MCMLXXI) was a Common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. The facts galvanized the human rights activists worldwide, including inside the USSR. Human rights refers to the "basic Rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled In January 1972, the Soviet authorities incarcerated Bukovsky for 7 years of imprisonment plus 5 years in exile, officially for contacts with foreign journalists and possession and distribution of samizdat (Article 70-1). Samizdat (самиздат was the clandestine copying and distribution of government-suppressed literature or other media in Soviet-bloc

Together with a fellow inmate in Vladimir prison, psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, Bukovsky coauthored A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents^[5] in order to help other dissidents fight abuses of the authorities. A psychiatrist (also archaically called an alienist) is a Physician who specializes in Psychiatry and is certified in treating Mental disorders

In 1971, a renowned Soviet physicist Academician Andrei Sakharov supported protest of two political prisoners, V. Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (Андре́й Дми́триевич Са́харов (May 21 1921 – December 14 1989 was an eminent Soviet nuclear Physicist Fainberg and V. Borisov, who announced a hunger strike against "compulsory therapeutic treatment with medications injurious to mental activity" in a Leningrad psychiatric institution. A hunger strike is a method of Non-violent resistance or pressure in which participants fast as an act of political Protest, or to provoke feelings of ^[6] For his activism in defense of human rights Sakharov was expelled from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and sent to internal exile. Human rights refers to the "basic Rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled

Reaction by the World Psychiatric Association

When early concerns were raised in the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), the Soviet delegation threatened to withdraw from the international organization and WPA held out its involvement in the issue. The World Psychiatric Association (WPA is an international umbrella organisation of psychiatric societies As the number of documented cases of abuse continued to increase and international protests started to mount, WPA changed its stance and adopted an ethical code of conduct for its members and established investigative bodies to enforce it.

The first committee against the political abuse of psychiatry was founded in 1974 in Geneva. In 1977, the WPA's World Congress in Honolulu adopted the Declaration of Hawaii,^[7] the first document to set forth a set of basic ethical standards guiding the work of psychiatrists worldwide. The congress also officially condemned Soviet political psychiatric abuses for the first time. In 1982, facing imminent expulsion from the WPA, the Soviet delegation voluntarily withdrew, and in 1983 the WPA's World Congress in Vienna adopted a resolution that placed strict conditions on its return.

Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost campaign significantly contributed to the exposure of more evidence in the Soviet press. Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev ( Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov;; born 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye Stavropol Krai) is a Russian politician (Гла́сность)is literally defined as publicity and sometimes figuratively interpreted as "tipping a vase to let someone see into the vase but not the bottom of the vase" In 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet delegation to the WPA's World Congress in Athens acknowledged that systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes had indeed taken place in their country. The Soviet Union 's collapse into independent nations began early in 1985 ^[8]

Post-Soviet times

The Moscow Serbsky Institute still conducts thousands of court-ordered evaluations per year, and is a source of many modern conspiracy theories.

When war criminal Yuri Budanov was tested there in 2002, the panel conducting the inquiry was led by Tamara Pechernikova, who earlier condemned poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Former Colonel Yuri Dmitrievich Budanov (born 1963 Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine) is the first Russian Natalya Gorbanevskaya (Наталья Евгеньевна Горбаневская (born May 26, 1936 in Moscow) is a Russian Poet Budanov was found not guilty by reason of "temporary insanity". After public outrage, he was found sane by another panel that included Georgi Morozov, the former Serbsky director who declared many dissidents insane in the past. ^[9]

There have been reports in the 2000s about alleged imprisonment of people "inconvenient" for Russian authorities in psychiatric institutions. The BBC reported, notably, that dissident Larisa Arap was forcibly confined at a psychiatric clinic in Apatity. Larisa Arap (Лариса Ивановна Арап born in 1958) is a Russian opposition Activist who became a victim of illegal Involuntary ^{[10][11][12][13][14]}

People

• Vladimir Bukovsky
• Natalya Gorbanevskaya
• Alexander Esenin-Volpin
• Pyotr Grigorenko
• Zhores Medvedev
• Viktor Nekipelov
• Valeriya Novodvorskaya
• Andrei Sakharov
• Natan Sharansky
• Andrei Sinyavsky

References

See also

• Involuntary commitment
• Human rights
• Gulag
• Larisa Arap

Bibliography

• Antébi, Elizabeth (1977). Involuntary commitment is the practice of using legal means or forms as part of a Mental health law to commit a person to a Mental hospital, Insane asylum Human rights refers to the "basic Rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled The Gulag was the government agency that administered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. Larisa Arap (Лариса Ивановна Арап born in 1958) is a Russian opposition Activist who became a victim of illegal Involuntary Droit d'asiles en Union Soviétique. Paris: Julliard. Julliard may refer to The Juilliard School Editions Julliard Augustus Juilliard Alexandre Julliard ISBN 2260000657.  
• Applebaum, Anne (2003). Gulag: A History. Gulag A History, also published as Gulag A History of the Soviet Camps, written by Anne Applebaum and published by Doubleday, won New York: Doubleday. The Doubleday Publishing Group is the fifth largest Book Publishing company in the world ISBN 0-7679-0056-1.  
• Boulet, Marc (2001). Dans la peau d'un. . . . Paris: Seuil. ISBN 2-02-038072-2.  
• Fireside, Harvey. Soviet Psychoprisons.  

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