NINE INDIVIDUALS
[1]
Vladimir llych TRIFONOV (b. 1938, Kalinin Region, Central Russia).
In 1966 Trifonov was studying at the physics faculty of the Kalinin Pedagogical Institute. He frequently argued with teachers in the department of political economy. As a result, a psychiatric examination was arranged for him.
The examination lasted five minutes, and was carried out by Victor Mikhailovich Shpak, a leading psychiatrist from the Kalinin Medical Institute. On the basis of Shpak’s diagnosis Trifonov was expelled from the Institute. In March 1968 he was arrested for making “anti-Soviet statements”.
Six months later he was sent to the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital (SPH), where he remains to this day.
His mother’s name and address: Kalininsk, Ostashkovsky district, Shirokovskoye post office, Orlinka village, Trifonova Vera llynichna.
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[2]
Anatoly Dmitrievich PONOMARYOV (b. Leningrad, 1933).
Worked as an engineer at the All-Union Research Institute of Medical Instrument Design (Leningrad branch). In October 1970, Ponomaryov was taken into custody and criminal proceedings were instituted against him under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code) for circulating his own satirical verses and retyping Solzhenitsyn’s 1967 letter to the Writers Congress [1].
An examination at Psychiatric Hospital No. 2 on Pryazhka Street [2] found him of unsound mind.
On 29 January 1971, the Leningrad City Court sent Ponomaryov to the Leningrad SPH for compulsory treatment. Since 11 March 1971, he has been in this hospital.
His family’s address family is: Leningrad, 34/36 Lesnoi Avenue, flat 125.
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[3]
Anatoly Fyodorovich CHINNOV (b. 1938).
In 1967 Chinnov graduated from the Chemistry Faculty of Leningrad University. In December 1968 he was arrested for attempting to cross the frontier.
At the beginning of 1969, a psychiatric commission in the city of Lvov (West Ukraine) found him of sound mind. At the end of 1969 Chinnov was subjected to a second psychiatric examination in Moscow’s Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry. The diagnosis was schizophrenia.
At the present time Chinnov is in the Leningrad SPH.
His brother’s name and address are: Chinnov Valery Fyodorovich, Moscow Zh-4, 2 Mayakovsky St, flat 27. His sister’s name and address are: Chinnova Raisa Fyodorovna, Leningrad V-48, 68 15th liniya, flat 9.
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[4]
Yury Sergeyevich BELOV
In April 1967, Yury Belov was sentenced under Article 70, pt. 2 (RSFSR Criminal Code) to five years in special-regime camps. He served his term, first in Camp 10 in Mordovia, then in Vladimir Prison.
In the autumn of 1971 new proceedings — the third! — were instituted against Belov, once again under Article 70 (for “agitation inside the prison”). From December 1971 to February 1972, he was under examination in the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry and was found to be of unsound mind.
In May 1972 Belov was transported from Vladimir Prison to the Special Psychiatric Hospital in the town of Sychovka (Smolensk Region, west-central Russia).
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[5]
Vladimir SHLEPNYOV
In 1971, Vladimir Shlepnyov was tried in Moscow.
He was charged under Articles 64 (“Betrayal of the Motherland”) and 15 (“responsibility for preparation of a crime, or for an attempted crime”) of the RSFSR Criminal Code. His “attempt” to “betray the motherland” had consisted in “endeavouring to cross the frontier illegally”.
The court sent him to the Kazan SPH (CCE 10.10) for compulsory treatment.
*
[6 & 7]
Yevgeny Viktorovich SHASHENKOV & Vladimir Vasilyevich POPOV
At the beginning of June, the Leningrad City Court changed its ruling of compulsory treatment for Yevgeny Shashenkov (CCE 5.2 & CCE 18.1) and Vladimir Popov (CCE 18.1) in a Special Psychiatric Hospital.
It ordered their compulsory treatment in a hospital of ordinary type.
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[8]
Victor FAINBERG
It was reported in CCE 25.10 [6] that a diagnostic commission at the Serbsky Institute had found August 1968 Red Square demonstrator Victor Fainberg to be of sound mind.
Later, however, a new court ruling arrived at the Leningrad Special Psychiatric Hospital where Fainberg was awaiting the hearing: “V. Fainberg requires compulsory treatment in a hospital of the ordinary type for a period of four to five months” [3].
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[9]
Petro Grigorevich GRIGORENKO
On 29 June Petro Grigorenko [4] underwent one of his regular six-monthly psychiatric examinations. The commission resolved to extend the term of compulsory treatment.
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COMMENT & NOTES
“This subject continues to provoke intense controversy.
When on 11 July 1972 the French Minister of Interior, R. Marcellin, referred in a speech to the Soviet practice of imprisoning dissenters in mental hospitals, the Soviet ambassador P. Abrasimov made an official protest to the French government (see 14 July AP dispatch from Paris; and L’Aurore, Paris, 16 July). On 8 May, moreover, Pravda accused Israel of exactly the same practice.
“Meanwhile the American Psychiatric Association (APA; Washington, D.C.), had responded to I.F. Stone’s articles [see CCE 23.1-1, note 4] by setting up a powerful ad hoc committee, consisting of Doctors R.W. Waggoner (chairman), Paul Chodoff, and John Visher and Judge D.L. Bazelon, to examine the ‘Bukovsky papers’ on which they were based.
“In its report this committee was ‘impressed by the scope and quality of the material reviewed’. ‘Assuming the reliability of the documents’ the committee was ‘of the opinion that they support the allegations’.
“Following the committee’s recommendation, therefore, the APA asked the World Psychiatric Association in June, first, to circulate the APA’s earlier statement, which opposed ‘the misuse of psychiatric facilities for the detention of persons solely on the basis of their political dissent, no matter where it occurs,’ to all WPA member associations. Secondly it recommended to the WPA ‘that an appropriate international organization be urged to establish a properly staffed agency to formulate internationally acceptable standards and guidelines as far as is possible, to receive complaints from any individual or appropriate national body alleging the enforced use of psychiatric facilities for political purposes, and to make investigations of such complaints’, the WPA executive will consider these recommendations in November 1972.
“The APA committee, however, at Judge Bazelon’s urging, has decided to transfer its attention from Soviet to American abuses of psychiatry. See an account of all these developments in the APA’s bulletin, Psychiatric News (5 July 1972).
“Meanwhile, the Canadian psychiatrist Professor Norman Hirt of Vancouver is writing a book on Professor Lunts, whom he compares in some ways to the Nazis’ Dr. Mengele, and on the system which he operates. The book is based in part on interviews with people who have recently emigrated from the USSR, both with psychiatrists and with some of Lunts’s victims. See The Economist (London, 8 July 1972).”
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NOTES
- “Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers — such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade.
“Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.”
Solzhenitsyn’s 16 May 1967 Open Letter to the 4th Congress of the Union of Soviet Writers (it was only the third time that writers were meeting since Stalin’s death).
The full text in English translation of Solzhenitsyn’s demand for an end to censorship and denunciation of the shameful past and present of the Writers’ Union is in L. Labedz, Solzhenitsyn : A Documentary Record ( Penguin, 1972).
↩︎ - The official address of this hospital is: 126, Moika River Embankment, Leningrad.
↩︎ - See extracts from Academician Sakharov’s protest of 1 August 1972 against this ‘’astonishing ruling” and against Borisov’s continued imprisonment. The appeal, widely reported in the world press on 3 August, was addressed to Minister of Health B.V. Petrovsky: “Without your intervention, as well as that of the world public, no force is capable of saving them”.
On 11 September 1972, 36 prominent British personalities, including Lord Gardiner and Bishop Trevor Huddleston, interceded for the two men (and also for Greek poet Alexandros Panagoulis) in a long letter to The Times.
↩︎ - “Grigorenko’s remarkable writings were due to be published in book form later that year by the Alexander Herzen Foundation, Amsterdam, under the title Mysli sumasshedshego (Thoughts of a Madman).”
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