On 20 October the Leningrad engineer Anatoly Dmitrievich Ponomaryov (information on him was first given in CCE 26.5) was again forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital, for the third time since 1970.
In the autumn of 1973 he was released from the Special Psychiatric Hospital on Arsenalnaya Street; a year later he was forcibly hospitalized again in Psychiatric Hospital No 3 (of ordinary type) and put in the section for violent patients. In spring 1975 he was released, but remained at liberty for only three months. While he was free, Ponomaryov wrote a number of protests and open letters — both to Soviet authorities and to the West — about the illegalities he had suffered; this was used as the pretext for his latest hospitalization. M, S. Bernstam was a witness of this undertaking. The Chronicle possesses a report made by Bernstam, which is given below in an abbreviated form.
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‘On 20 October A. D. Ponomaryov set off for his monthly routine checkup at the district psychiatric clinic with L. F. Lomovtseva, the doctor in charge of his treatment.
‘Lomovtseva invited him into her consulting-room, but as soon as the door had closed behind him she went out again, and, in full view and hearing of the people standing about in the corridor, shouted to three waiting men: ‘He’s in there! Grab him! Quickly!’ Then everything happened quickly according to plan. The three men, in quilted jackets, ran into the consulting room; the sound of blows and shouting was heard. The three pinioned A. D. Ponomaryov while the doctors stood at a distance. Anatoly tried to break loose. Then one of his captors deliberately, sharply and accurately gave him a heavy blow in the solar plexus. The now unconscious Ponomaryov was dragged down the stairs to a car parked outside the entrance.
All this lasted no longer than a few minutes, M. S. Bernstam, who entered the consulting-room almost immediately after Ponomaryov, witnessed all these events but was not able to interfere. When Ponomaryov was dragged out of the consulting room, Bernstam told the doctors present that he (giving his name) was a representative of the Soviet Committee for the Defence of Human Rights and was recording the incident. On hearing this unexpected, if somewhat presumptuous statement, the doctors lost their heads. The first to recover was Lomovtseva, who asked M. S. Bernstam to accompany her to the deputy head doctor, where Ponomaryov’s mother was already waiting.
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There followed a detailed conversation with Lyudmila Dmitrievna Fedoseyeva, the deputy head doctor of the Vyborg district psychiatric clinic. Varvara Alexeyevna Ponomaryova stated that she, like her son, protested against her son’s compulsory psychiatric treatment and cited as proof of his normality his normal behaviour at home, at work and in public places, and the absence of any complaints against him.
L. D. Fedoseyeva replied that a mother could not be a judge of her son’s state of health and that the reason for his hospitalization and the compulsory treatment lay in the letters of protest he had written which were interfering with the work of the authorities. These letters were a symptom indicating that A. D. Ponormaryov’s illness was growing worse; apart from these letters she was not objecting to anything in his behaviour, so the normality of his behaviour proved nothing about his health.
Bernstam: ‘What sort of letters are they?’
Fedoseyeva: ‘Neither I nor the doctor treating him have read the letters, but we know their contents. They are the letters of a sick man. They are not anti-Soviet, but in them he expresses a low opinion of the Soviet government and in general writes cynically about our leaders.’
Bernstam: If you haven’t read the letters, on what grounds did you hospitalize Ponomaryov?’
Fedoseyeva: ‘We possess information and an evaluation of the letters from competent authorities.’
Bernstam: ‘Which authorities do you mean?’
Fedoseyeva: ‘Well, surely you understand ….’
Bernstam: ‘But nonetheless?’
Fedoseyeva: ‘Well then, officials of the KGB.’
Bernstam: ‘You said the letters were a symptom that the patient’s illness is getting worse. But are KGB officials really competent to make such judgements? ‘
Fedoseyeva: ‘They make a political judgement and phone us, advising us to intern Ponomaryov in a hospital; for us to make a medical diagnosis it’s enough simply to know of the existence of anti-government letters, there’s no need for us to read them.’
Bernstam: ‘But still — a diagnosis based on a phone-call from the KGB … . You have not read the documents, yet you decide the treatment. I don’t understand that.’
Fedoseyeva: ‘Nor will you understand it — after all, you’re not a specialist.’
Bernstam: ‘All the same, what do you know about the letters?’
Fedoseyeva: ‘They curse our government; they’re written in a rude, cynical, aggressive manner, by a person in an emotional, sick condition, and they were sent to fascist organizations — the Federal German government and Pinochet.’
Bernstam (to Lomovtseva): ‘Were you, as his doctor, shown the letters written by your patient?’
Lomovtseva: ‘No, that’s not the way things are done.’
Fedoseyeva: ‘Lyubov Fyodorovna would simply be overcome with shame if she read them, they’re so cynical; why should she read them?’
At this point the discussion came to an end.
The next day the head doctor of the clinic, E. Ya. Obolsky, said that they would be treating Ponomaryov for a long time, as he was ‘inclined to fall under the alien influence of dubious persons’, and that he would not be released without a ruling that he was mentally incompetent and without the appointing of a guardian.
According to Fedoseyeva, Ponomaryov’s letters would not be attached to his medical history, but would remain in the files of the KGB.
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A. D. Ponomaryov has been put in the 8th section (for violent patients) of the Skvortsov-Stepanov psychiatric hospital (No 3), head doctor of this section, Tobak; the address, 36 Fermskaya Street, Leningrad.
A Chronicle of Current Events 