Soviet Psychoprisons

“A useful account of the dissidents’ struggle to expose psychiatric abuse and embarrass the regime. [Fireside’s] chapters on ‘Patients,’ ‘Doctors,’ and ‘Resisters’ are especially suited for readers with little background on Soviet dissent. The defiance of activists like Vladimir Bukovsky, Semyon Gluzman, and Alexander Podrabinek did much to deflate the government’s omnipotence. . . .Fireside describes their activity well, he has also compiled important primary material. These documents, including A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents, which Bukovsky and Gluzman wrote in a labor camp, are note easy to find, and Fireside has performed a service by making them available.” —Joshua Rubenstein, New England Coordinator of Amnesty International, U.S.A. and author of Soviet Dissidents, in Commentary

The first official condemnation of political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR to be made by an international psychiatric organization came on August 30, 1977. On that date, the General Assembly, governing body of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), adopted a resolution of Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists against “the systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR.” Subsequently passed by a vote of 122 to 66 was a resolution submitted by the American Psychiatric Association, to set up a committee monitoring “The misuse of psychiatric skills, knowledge and facilities for the suppression of dissent wherever it occurs.”