No Asylum State Psychiatric Repression in the Former USSR

No Asylum is a quantitative assessment of the incidence of state repression via the peculiar institution of forced psychiatric hospitalization of evidently healthy Soviet dissidents. The book explains who was targeted and why, as the State used psychiatry

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Also by Theresa C. Smith

SECURITY vs SURVIVAL: The Nuclear Arms Race (editor with Indu B. Singh) TROJAN PEACE: Some Deterrence Propositions Tested Also by Thomas A. Oleszczuk

POLITICAL JUSTICE IN THE USSR: Lithuania

No Asylum State Psychiatric Repression in the Former USSR

Theresa C. Smith Mankato-Minnesota State University

in collaboration with

Thomas A. Oleszczuk Stern School of Business New York University

© Theresa C. Smith and Thomas A. Oleszczuk 1996

Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W 1P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1996 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

ISBN 978-1-349-13557-8 DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-13555-4

ISBN 978-1-349-13555-4 (eBook)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 05 04

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4 3 2 1 99 98 97 96

To all the ships at sea.... and one capsized sailboat

Since then [1971], the Western press has carried one report after another about the use in the USSR of 'psychiatric terror against dissidents,' and various made-up numbers and new names - Plyushch, Vaikhanskaya, Fainberg and many others- have kept on surfacing. M. Ye. Vartanyan, quoted in A. Novikov, 1987

vi

Contents viii

List of Figures List of Tables

lX

Acknowledgements

x

1 Political Hospitalization: Conception, Conceptualization and Conduct

1

2 Characteristics of the Evidence: The Database of Psychiatric Hospital Detainees

44

3 Four Explanations of the Political Use of Psychiatry

65

4 Who Are the Dissident Detainees? Some Observations and Descriptive Statistics

74

5 Trends, Changes with Administration and Spatial Dispersion

92

6 The Risk of Psychiatric Detention, Demographic Variables and Deterrence of Dissent

122

7 Legal and Political Developments in the Gorbachev and Yeltsin Administrations and After

146

8 Summary of Empirical Findings and Conclusions

173

Appendixes

Table A1: Articles Used in Soviet Dissidents' Trials: RSFSR Code of Criminal Law

201

Table A2: Comparison of RSFSR Major Criminal Code Articles Used against Dissidents with Comparable Articles in the Criminal Codes of the Union Republics

203

Table A3: Five Lists of Confirmed Cases of Soviet Psychiatric Detainees

205

Notes

238

References

260

General Index

279

Index of Laws, Decrees, Administrative Instructions

290

vii

List of Figures All New Hospitalizations New Court-Ordered Forcible Hospitalizatio