Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes

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The Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes
Рабочая комиссия по расследованию использования психиатрии в политических целях
Formation5 January 1977 (1977-01-05)
Founder
Alexandr Podrabinek
Publication
  • Information Bulletin
  • A Chronicle of Current Events
Parent organization
Moscow Helsinki Group
Psychiatry in Russia and the USSR
Anatoly Koryagin (b. 1938), a psychiatrist, expert of the Working Commission

The Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes (Russian: Рабо́чая коми́ссия по рассле́дованию испо́льзования психиатри́и в полити́ческих це́лях) was an offshoot of the Moscow Helsinki Group[1][2] and a key source of information on psychiatric repression in the Soviet Union.[3]

Private staff

The commission was established on 5 January 1977 on the initiative of

prisoners of conscience in Soviet mental hospitals and a ‘black list’ of over one hundred medical staff and doctors who took part in committing people to psychiatric facilities for political reasons.[7]: 15  The psychiatric consultants to the Commission were Dr Alexander Voloshanovich and Dr Anatoly Koryagin.[8]
: 153 

Investigating activities

The task stated by the Commission was not primarily to diagnose persons or to declare people who sought help mentally ill or mentally healthy.

Kharkov psychiatrist Anatoly Koryagin.[5]: 150  Koryagin's contribution was to examine former and potential victims of political abuse of psychiatry by writing psychiatric diagnoses in which he deduced that the individual was not suffering from any mental disease.[5]: 179  Those reports were employed as a means of defense: if the individual was picked up again and committed to mental hospital, the Commission had vindication that the hospitalization served non-medical purposes.[5]: 179  Also some foreign psychiatrists including the Swedish psychiatrist Harald Blomberg and British psychiatrist Gery Low-Beer helped in examining former or potential victims of psychiatric abuse.[5]: 150  The Commission used those reports in its work and publicly referred to them when it was essential.[5]
: 150 

The commission gathered as much information as possible of victims of psychiatric terror in the Soviet Union and published this information in their Information Bulletins.

A Chronicle of Current Events.[5]: 148  The Information Bulletins were sent to the Soviet officials, with request to verify the data and notify the Commission if mistakes were found, and to the West, where human rights defenders used them in the course of their campaigns.[5]: 148  The Information Bulletins were also used to provide the dissident movement with information about Western protests against the political abuse.[5]: 148  The Working Commission also gathered information about relevant international events and published reports on the Honolulu Congress of the World Psychiatric Association, including the texts of the key resolutions, and printed translations of long letters by Professor Peter Berner about the course of establishing the Review Committee on abuse.[12]
: 81 

Foreign reactions

Over fifty victims examined by psychiatrists of the Moscow Working Commission between 1977 and 1981 and the files smuggled to the West by

Semyon Gluzman, Alexander Podrabinek, Alexander Voloshanovich, and Vladimir Moskalkov.[14]

Forcing shutdown

Members of the Working Commission have been stifled through exile and imprisonment.

anti-Soviet activities for having corresponded with the British medical journal The Lancet, which published an article by Koryagin critical of the Soviet government's use of involuntary psychiatric confinement for political reasons.[18] On 5 April 1981, the Moscow Helsinki Group members Yelena Bonner, Sofiya Kalistratova, Ivan Kovalyov, Naum Meiman issued document No. 162 "The Arrest of Anatoly Koryagin" which stated,[19][20]

The arrest of Koryagin puts a definite end to the humane and legal activity of the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, and gives rise to the fear that the authorities intend to increase their use of psychiatric persecution for political reasons.

References

  1. ^ Reddaway, Peter (23 February 1978). "More psychiatric terror". The New York Review of Books.
  2. ^ Burns, John (26 July 1981). "Moscow silencing psychiatry critics". The New York Times.
  3. ^ Алексеева, Людмила (2013) [1979]. "Путеводитель по аду психиатрических тюрем" [The guidebook to the hell of psychiatric prisons]. Kontinent (in Russian) (152).
  4. ^ Miku, Natalya; Molkin, Alexey (2015). Консультант правозащитной ассоциации "Рабочей комиссии по расследованию использования психиатрии в политических целях"—врач-психиатр А.А. Волошанович [The consultant of human rights association "The Working Commission on Investigation of Use of Psychiatry in Political Goals "—Psychiatrist A.A. Voloshanovich]. Современные научные исследования и инновации [Modern Scientific Studies and Innovations] (in Russian) (3).
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-90-420-3046-6
    .
  6. ^ a b "The spread of Soviet suppression". New Scientist. 78 (1104): 493. 25 May 1978.
  7. ISBN 978-0-8020-9140-6
    .
  8. ISBN 1-85649-104-8
    .
  9. ^
    ISBN 90-72657-01-2
    .
  10. doi:10.1192/pb.4.5.70
    .
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-90-420-2585-1
    .
  12. ISBN 0-8133-0209-9
    .
  13. doi:10.1176/pn.45.22.psychnews_45_22_023
    .
  14. doi:10.1192/pb.3.1.5
    .
  15. ISSN 0262-4079
    .
  16. ISBN 978-0226226286
    .
  17. ^ a b Bonner, Yelena; Kalistratova, Sofiya; Kovalyov, Ivan (29 July 1981). Документ № 176. Осуждение последнего члена Рабочей Комиссии по расследованию использования психиатрии в политических целях Феликса Сереброва [Document Nr 176. The conviction of Feliks Serebrov, the last member of the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes] (in Russian). Moscow Helsinki Group.
  18. PMID 6402080
    .
  19. ^ Bonner, Yelena; Kalistratova, Sofiya; Kovalyov, Ivan; Meiman, Naum (5 April 1981). Документ № 162: Арест Анатолия Корягина [Document Nr 162. The Arrest of Anatoly Koryagin] (in Russian). Moscow Helsinki Group. Archived from the original on 2 June 2010.
  20. A Chronicle of Current Events
    (62). Amnesty International Publications: 19–26. 1982.

Further reading
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