Reviews for Soviet psychoprisons

The average rating for Soviet psychoprisons based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-09-29 00:00:00 Amanda Black Insane? No, but a danger to the State. Psychiatric illness/mental illness were used as a tool to suppress dissidence in the Soviet Union. These psychoprisons seem to have been established in 1936-38 on orders of the secret-police chief Nikolai Yezhov and were used to incarcerate enemies of the state. So, upon arrest and processing, the court decided if a forensic psychiatric evaluation was necessary. All dissenters were given one of two diagnoses: schizophrenia or paranoia. Political demonstrators, teachers, university staff, artists, other doctors, and other political enemies were all subject to forced confinement in a psychoprison until deemed "corrected". The forward written by Zhores Medvedev himself was diagnosed with "spilt personality" because he was a biology professor and a poet! Inside the psychiatric does it get interesting: the use of "external behavior correction and dissimulation" aided in the prisoners' "treatment". The equivalent of maximum security would be the Special Psychiatric Hospitals (SPH). These institutions were designated by law for "especially dangerous" mentally ill persons ruled by the courts to have criminal acts. On average, they housed 600 inmates each and served strictly as institutions of punishment. Most former inmates say they would rather serve a sentence in a camp than be confined in a SPH. SPH's are your cliche high walls, barbed wire, watchtowers, dogs, spotlights—the whole thing! They were ran by the militarized Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) and military guards. Discipline through beatings and discipline through medication (haldol, sulfazin, etc.). Instead of straight-jackets—they used forced restraint/strapped to a bed frame called "fixation" for hours/days/weeks and "wet packing" being wrapped tightly in strips of wet sheeting that tighten as they dry cause excruciating pain to the inmate. The Anti-Therapy method included: 1. Neuroleptic drugs: aminazin, haloperidol, tizerpin, sanapax, etc. to increase psychomotor agitation, chronic paranoia, hallucinations and then the dangerous and painful side-effects to the inmate. 2. Insulin-shock therapy: intentional insulin overdosing, inducing hypoglycemic coma, and violent shock, then injecting glucose to stabilize the inmate. One setting the inmate would be shocked 25-30 times repeatedly causing heart and kidney damage. 3. Sulfazin: injections cause extreme physical pain and prohibit sitting/laying down and make walking difficult. Others included electroshock therapy, isolation punishment, and physical work details. Some political prisoners do recant their beliefs, acknowledge that they are mentally ill, and promise not to repeat their "crimes" if the "treatment" stops. RSFSR Criminal Code was used to label dissenters as "socially dangerous". These included Article 70 "anti-Soviet propaganda and agitation", Article 190-1 "knowingly disseminating false information slandering the Soviet State and social system", and Article 206 "hooliganism" were specifically mentioned in this book. The last part of the book is stories and testimonies of various victims and inmates of the Soviet Psychoprison system. An interesting book in my opinion and I enjoyed reading it!! Thanks!

Review # 2 was written on 2020-03-28 00:00:00 George King It should surprise no one that, in addition to the gulag system, the Soviets employed psychiatry as a weapon against dissent. As an outsider, after the fact, it's easy for me to think one would have to be crazy to stand up against Soviet power and ruthlessness. Many of the victims we meet were scientists; one was a General. These people had acquired some status. The true believers in the Soviet system thought that anybody with such status is crazy to risk losing it to protest against the system. But, of course, "crazy" has nothing to do with what happened to the people whose stories are told here. The book is made up of two roughly equal halves. The first half is a narrative description of the system of Soviet psychoprisons, how they operate, and the reaction to them from the psychiatric professionals in the West. The second half is a series of appendices which, combined, tell the stories of many of the victims of this treatment in their own words. I felt the appendices were the best part of the book. For me, one of the more interesting aspects of this sad story is that this wasn't a system built primarily by Stalin. Stalin, of course, sets the standard for cruelty. The events told in this book are certainly cruel. I would hesitate to imagine the abuses of such a system under Stalin.