This section had been compiled largely from the Information Bulletins of the Working Commission: Nos. 18 (12 August 1979), 19 (15 October 1979) and 20 (8 December 1979) [1].
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Special Psychiatric Hospitals
Tashkent SPH
Following Nikolai Demyanov’s transfer from Perm Regional Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 to the Tashkent Special Psychiatric Hospital (CCE 53.21) his mother Maria Yegorovna Plakhotkina (129346 Moscow, 13 Palekhskaya Street, flat 227) issued a Press Statement:
‘My son has never committed any crime, he only told the truth about the situation in his country … He was deprived of his freedom while still virtually a child and for many years now he has been moved about under guard as a dangerous criminal and subjected to compulsory treatment, having been declared insane …
‘I can no longer stand this tyranny. I am already very old and ill and his transfer to a prison means that I shall never see him again.
‘My son’s health has been seriously undermined in prisons and psychiatric hospitals …
‘Today Iappeal to all mothers in the world to help me free my son from the Soviet Gulag …’
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CCE 53.21 wrongly reported that V. O. Lipinskaya (CCE 52.7) had been transferred to an ordinary psychiatric hospital She is in fact, still in Tashkent SPH.
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In May a regular medical commission refused to recommend the release of Lev Ubozhko (CCE 49.10). He is being given intensive insulin shock ‘therapy’. Ubozhko is in a seriously depressed state.
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Chernyakhovsk SPH
Leonid Ivanovich Melnikov is here. In 1973 or thereabouts Melnikov who was then employed as an economist in a factory, organized a Committee for Social Assistance. According to his ideas the Committee would, through studying the works of Marx and Lenin, help citizens to solve ‘confusing questions’.
He was dismissed from his job became of ‘staff reductions’ and for a long time was unable to find a job. He applied to various official bodies in this connection and ended up in the local psychiatric hospital. On his release from there he went to Krasnodar. He was arrested there in 1976. charged under Article 190-1 (RSFSR Criminal Code) with recording foreign radio broadcasts, declared not responsible and sent by the court for compulsory treatment in an SPH.
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Dnepropetrovsk SPH
Vladimir Kalyuzhny from Donetsk has been here since 3 June 1976.
In 1975 (or the beginning of 1976) he crossed the Soviet-Afghan border and got as far as Kabul, where he tried to locate the embassy of any Western country; but he was arrested and handed over to the soviet authorities. He was convicted of ‘illegal crossing of the frontier’ declared not responsible and sent to an SPH for compulsory treatment. Kalyuzhny was given an intensive course of treatment with neuroleptic drugs, which has made him inhibited and apathetic.
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According to his wife, Josyp Terelya [2] has changed beyond recognition: he has put on weight, become sluggish and inhibited and rarely writes letters. These are evidently the effects of psychotropic drugs (Terelya is known to have been treated with haloperidol for a long time). His wife learned from talks with the doctors that there is no hope of a speedy release.
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Kazan SPH
Vyacheslav Kondratyevich Zaitsev (b. 1917), Doctor of Philological Sciences, was brought here after a trial under Article 186-1 (Belorussian SSR Criminal Code = Article 190-1, RSFSR Code). His wife I. Konopatskaya was unable to obtain a copy of the decision on his case of the Belorussian Supreme Court. Zaitsev was arrested in November 1978.
In the hospital Zaitsev was prescribed injections, then these were stopped and when his wife visited him on 30 August he told her that he felt well. Later, however, his condition deteriorated. He is virtually unable to write or read. Letters consisting of a few uneven lines have begun to arrive from him.
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In Ordinary Hospitals
Alexander Skobov (trial, CCE 53.6) is undergoing compulsory treatment in Leningrad City Psychiatric Hospital No. 3 (Skvortsov-Stepanov). He is in Section Eight, which is under the charge of A. I. Tobak [3].
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Alexander Yankovich (CCE 53.21) is in the Kaluga Regional Psychiatric Hospital.
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Anatoly Lupinos (CCE 53.21) is in Cherkassy Regional Psychiatric Hospital (in the town of Smela).
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Sergei Malyarevsky was in a psychiatric hospital in the town of Novozhdanovka (Donetsk Region) from 20 August to 20 September 1979.
Malyarevsky (b. 1954) was a student at Donetsk University. In March 1979 he applied for an exit visa; in June he received a refusal. He was then sent to Donetsk for a psychiatric examination. On the same day a search was conducted at his home, and books and letters were confiscated.
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YANKOV
On 11 September Gavriil Yankov [4] was discharged from Moscow Psychiatric Hospital No. 13. During a talk with Yankov on the eve of his discharge, the doctors advised him to go and stay with his sister in Buryatia, but Yankov replied that he would assert his right to live in Moscow.
On leaving the hospital Yankov also tried to get his old job back: he filed alawsuit against his former employers. On 2 November he received a summons to the Zhdanov district people’s court. Yankov arrived early and asked Judge G. A. Moliboga to give him a chance to study the case materials. He was sent to the archive room, where two policemen were waiting for him. They took him to a police station and then to Psychiatric Hospital No. 14.
The duty officer at the police station said that he had detained Yankov on the orders of the Judge. Judge Moliboga told V. Kuvakin (CCE 48.18, CCE 51.20 and ‘The Trial of Nikitin’ this issue, CCE 54.12), who arrived at the court for the hearing, that Yankov’s suit would not be heard, since the plaintiff had not appeared. Yankov was told in hospital that there was a statement to the effect that he had made a provocative speech in the court. In answer to enquiries from the hospital, the Judge said that he had not seen Yankov on that day. Furthermore, he asked the doctors to help the court by persuading their patient that his lawsuit was hopeless.
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On 16 August the Ukrainian Supreme Court upheld the decision of the Regional Court to refuse the petition of a medical commission that Nikolai Plakhotnyuk (CCE 53.21) be released from compulsory treatment.
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KAREISHA
Ivan Timofeyevich Kareisha (b. 1938) lives in the village of Vysokaya village (Tolochin district, Vitebsk Region). He has worked on a collective farm from the age of 12: he was a shepherd, then a tractor driver.
In 1970, due to a serious stomach ulcer, he switched to lighter work as head of the collective farm fire service. While doing this job he came into conflict with the collective farm chairman: Kareisha warned him of the fire risk to one of the farm buildings, which did, in fact, later burn down; the chairman was fined. This was when Kareisha’s troubles began. In flagrant violation of all the rules, the chairman turned Kareisha out of his job and managed to organize his expulsion from the collective farm. Kareisha fought back. He wrote complaints to all the higher official bodies and to the newspapers; at the lower level, he wrote to the village and district authorities, who brought more and more pressure to bear on him. The police told him plainly: ‘stop complaining or we’ll put you inside’.
In 1976 the certificate exempting him from hard physical labour was taken away and charges of ‘parasitism’ brought against him. The case, however, ended only in administrative punishment.
In the summer of 1978 Kareisha, who holds a ‘white ticket’ [exempting him from military service] was summoned to the Military Registration Office, where he was told that he would be sent for ‘hypnotic’ treatment of his ulcer. He suspected something was wrong, and two policemen handcuffed him and took him to a psychiatric hospital. He was not examined by a medical commission until the seventeenth day after his arrival. The doctors also advised him not to write any more complaints and let him go.
In April 1979 Kareisha was detained by police in Moscow, where he had come with a new batch of complaints. In the police station he was at once seen by two psychiatrists. He was released. But at home, in the village, his ‘own’ police were waiting for him. From time to time, he hid and did not live at home.
On 1 November Kareisha was once again forcibly interned in the hospital. This is his own description of it in a letter dated 7 November:
‘Dear Aunt,
‘On 1 November 1979 the police came to our house, where I was chopping wood, and said to me: ‘come on, the district Chief Doctor is summoning you for a health check’. I refused to go. They immediately twisted my hands behind my back and pushed me into a car.
‘I felt sad when I heard mother crying and shouting that the Germans were so vicious to me [i.e., to her, Chronicle] because of her husband and four brothers, that she had sent them off to defend the Soviet regime, and now you are taking my son away. They took me to the police station and threw me into a cell, like a dog. There was nowhere to sit or lie down …
‘Early on the morning of the 2nd they summoned me from my detention cell, shoved me in a car and drove off. Of course, I didn’t know straight away where they were taking me, but later, when we passed our house, I realized that we were going to the Regional Psychiatric Hospital, the madhouse When we arrived, they threw me into a ward and began compulsory treatment with injections straight away. I lost consciousness. But my health has not yet collapsed completely.
‘Dear Auntie, it is 7 November 1979 and I am in a serious condition, and I decided to write you a letter.
‘I don’t know whether I will survive all this treatment and the drugs. But there is someone else here, who has fought for lawfulness like me … help me to get away from psychiatry so that I’m not given these injections …’
Kareisha is in Vitebsk Regional Psychiatric Hospital.
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Releases
On 17 July the Gorky Regional Court decided to end the compulsory medical treatment of Nikolai Vasilyevich Levenkov (CCE 53.21). The decision of the Court was as follows:
‘… Levenkov is in a state of lengthy and steady remission as regards his emotional-volitional personality disorder. He has fully normalized his behaviour and has shown a firm determination to work. During his stay in hospital, it was noticed that he made no attempt to write any letters, apart from letters to relatives, or medical works. Also, taking into account his long stay in the psychiatric hospital, the medical commission considers that Levenkov is no longer a danger to society and that further compulsory treatment will not be required …’
In August Levenkov was released under medical supervision and was given the status of an invalid (Group II).
In CCE 53.21 there was some inaccuracies in the information given on Levenkov. Levenkov was arrested on 28 April 1977, because of an autobiographical manuscript, A Confession, which he had given to a typist and which then fell into the hands of the KGB. The work entitled Soviet Power and Medicine was confiscated from Levenkov during a search.
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On 14 September Yakov Agafonovich Khutorskoi (CCE 53.21) was released from the Republican Psycho-neurological Clinic in the town of Nalchik (Kabardino-Balkar ASSR).
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On 20 June Salavat Gallyamov (CCE 53.21) was released from the Republican Psychiatric Hospital in Ufa (Bashkir ASSR).
Gallyamov (b. 1959) was a student taking evening courses at the Faculty of History, Bashkiria University. In the autumn of 1977 Gallyamov was baptized. During the spring of 1978 he travelled round monasteries, talking to the monks and priests.
On 3 April 1979 Gallyamov was taken to KGB headquarters. There he was told that he had been travelling round the neighbouring districts because he was getting ready to flee the country. He was also told that he was spreading religious propaganda and disseminating slanders about the Soviet system. The KGB demanded that Gallyamov write an explanation, but he refused. Four hours later he was released.
On 17 April, while Gallyamov was attending classes, a search was carried out at his home and 11 religious and philosophical books were confiscated. No copy of the search warrant was left behind.
Gallyamov sent a complaint to Chirikov, Chairman of the Bashkir KGB.
On 4 May Chirikov received Gallyamov. Also present at the interview was Povarov, head of the admissions department at the Republican Psychiatric Hospital (he introduced himself as ‘colleague, Ivanov’). Chirikov told Gallyamov that they would not stand any ‘church rubbish’ and tried to persuade him not to read religious literature, as such books ‘don’t teach you anything’. At the end of their talk Chirikov said the Povarov: ‘See what kind of comrade we have here — writes complaints, but won’t sign explanations’. Gallyamov was asked to come back two days later. However, on the same day he was called out of a lecture to see Pro-Rector Ismailov — where medical orderlies were awaiting him.
In hospital Gallyamov was diagnosed as a ‘severe psychopathic case’. For the first three weeks he was given no medicine. Doctor-in-charge Z. M. Amirova turned her talks with Gallyamov into interrogations, but he refused to discuss religious themes in hospital. On 1 June Gallyamov began to receive intensive treatment. Aminazin made him vomit, so he was given injections of sulphazine, which gave him a temperature of 40 degrees Centigrade and pains in the heart.
Before he was discharged, Gallyamov was advised persistently by the doctor to avoid contact with his former friends and not to travel anywhere. She warned him that ‘psychopathy can turn into schizophrenia’. Gallyamov has been put on the register at his local Psycho-neurological Clinic.
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NOTES
- This issue of the Chronicle is dated 15 November but the reference to the Commission’s Bulletin No. 20 (8 December) suggests that later information was included.
↩︎ - On Terelya (Ukrainian poet, 1943-2009) see CCE 43.8 1976 onwards; CCE 45.14 1977 letter to Andropov; CCE 46.13 1977 transfer to Ukraine, escape from hospital (and recapture); CCE 47.12 1977 sent to Dnepropetrovsk SPH and CCE 47.15 comment on Terelya’s memoirs; 48.12 1978 wants to leave USSR & CCE 51.11 1978 worsening condition.
↩︎ - On Arnold I. Tobak, director of Leningrad City Psychiatric Hospital, see CCE 38.10 1975 forcible incarceration of Ponomaryov; CCE 43.7 1976 psychiatric arrest of Borisov; CCE 44.21 1977 release of Borisov & CCE 52.7 negative response to Ponomaryov’s mother.
↩︎ - On Yankov, see CCE 49.18, CCE 51.11, CCE 53.21 and Name Index.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 