The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1981 (4. évfolyam, 3-6. szám)
1981-05-01 / 3. szám
Abuse of Psychiatry Officialy Confirmed A research paper studied at a recent five‘*day Moscow conference of psychiatrists contained the first official Soviet confirmation of the long-known fact that some of the mentally healthy critics of the USSR's political system are being held in psychiatric hospitals. Despite this admission intended solely for the ears of an exclusive group of specialists, Soviet Government spokesman are continuing to deny that there has ever been any abuse of psychiatry in the USSR for political purposes. Such denials have been made often in recent years, despite the publication in Western and Third World countries of much carefully verified evidence of the abuse, and despite the Soviet malpractice having been condemned in 1977 by both the World Psychiatric Association and the World Federation for Mental Health. The recent research paper was compiled by six psychiatrists led by Dr. Zoya Serebrykova, Chief Specialist in Psycho-Neurology of the Main Department of Treatment and Prophylaxis of the USSR Ministry of Public Health. As the ministry’s principal psychiatrist, she directly advises rhe Soviet Health Minister, S. P. Burenkov, who opened the Moscow conference, held at the end of May. (According to Russia’s Political Hospitals, a book by psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Bloch and political science lecturer Peter Reddaway, Dr. Serebrykova „plays a significant role since all policies in the practice of psychiatry, no matter their source, must ultimately meet with her approval.”) The research paper, one of 350 issued to delegates before the conference started, showed that more than one per cent of a sample group of people admitted to an unidentified Moscow psychiatric hospital were critics of various aspects of the Soviet politico-economic system. The paper claimed that they had made „groundless” and „slanderous” complaints and statements against the government. More than 84 per cent of the sample vere admitted to the hospital because of worsening longterm mental illnesses. Apart from political nonconformity (on perhaps mere complaining about personal grievances), the other reasons for admission included suicidal tendencies, „lapses of sexual restraint” and other violent behaviour. The Moscow hospital where the research was conducted was almost certainly one of these: the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry, the Central Hospital for Clinical Psychiatry (Moscow Region), Gannushkin Psychiatric Hospital, the Special Psychiatric Reception Centre Number Two, and Psydiiatric Hospitals Numbers One, Three, Seven, 14 and 18. Sections of all these hospitals have close links with both the KGB secret police and the MVD police (militia'}. Certain „wards” (cells) are permanently reserved for sane prisoners of conscience. In co-operation with the KGB, the MVD and the Health Ministry, Number Four Department (Political) of the Serbsky Institute plays a coordinating role in the Soviet authorities’ systematic and widespread abuse of psydtiatry for political purposes. KGB-controlled psychiatrists in Department Four initiated the bogus „treatment” of hundreds of mentally healthy people now being held against their will in psychiatric kospitals all over the USSR. t CARDINAL WYSZYNSKG... (Continued from page 3) strengthened. However, a government ban on him travelling abroad was not lifted untill968. It is believed that it was his appeals for moderation which persuaded the communisms to abandon their initial use of force as a means of ending the workers’ food-price riots which occurred in the Baltic ports shortly before Christmas, 1970, and led to Edward Gierek replacing Gomulka as Party leader. In the early years of the Gierek era it seemed that Church-State relations would improve, but they soon deteriorated. Cardinal Wyszynski often criticised the severe limitations imposed on religious teaching in schools, the “banning of the Church from public life“, “making Catholics second-class citizens", and the communist government’s exploitation of workers, including forcing them to work without pay on Sundays. He again used his great moral authority to cool tempers and generally prevent extremism during and after the June, 1976, foodprice riots. He made more of his many appeals for social justice. He also deplored brutality committed by police holding workers in custody on suspicion of having participated in the riots. Cardinal Wyszynski was yet again the chief mediator and voice of moderation in the present sequence of momentous events in Poland. The first of these were the many strikes in the summer of 1980 and the spontaneous emergence of the independent trade union movement, Solidarity. Then followed the freeing of many State controls on the Church, a considerable relaxation of censorship and numerous other liberalising developments. Well over 250,000 people crowded imo Warsaw’s Victory Square for the funeral of Cardinal Wyszynski. One enforced absentee was Pope Tohn Paul II, confined to a Rome hospital bed with serious gunshot wounds inflicted by a political fanatic. The Pope, the former Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, Archbishop Metropolitan of Krakow until his election to the Papacy in 1978, sent a message expressing his desire to have been “with you“ and to have “personally performed the last offices.“ He described Cardinal Wyszynski, his former ecclesiastical superior and mentor, as "the keystone of the whole Church in Poland." Oefore emigrating from Russia in November, 1977, Mark Popovsky, a writer on scientific subjects, wrote a samizdat report on the KGB’s secret links with Moscow’s Psychiatric Hospital Number Seven. One of the waiting rooms in the building of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet was one of 12 to 15 such rooms in Moscow where duty psychiatrists accosted members of the public who had gone there in the hope of obtaining settlement of a great variety of personal problems and grievances. Others of the waiting rooms were in government ministries and other official buildings. From these rooms, Popovsky reported, the unfortunate petitioners were taiken to Psychiatric Hospital Number Seven. There they were certified insane and dispersed among other Moscow mental hospitals. Later, they were escorted by orderlies to hospitals in the provinces. More than 70 such orderlies worked from a „central evacuation point”, each making ten to 15 or more journeys to different towns each year. Popovsky commented that the actions of theKGB- controlled psychiatrists in Hospital Number Seven annually created more than 1,000 supposedly mad people. In October, 1976, the Helsinki Monitoring Group in Moscow issued its Document Number Eight which said; „Every day the militia sends about 12 (Continued on page 3) IRONIC LAUGHTER Ironic laughter continues to help fortify morale in crisis-torn Poland, whose internal affairs are the subject of frequent Polish-language commentaries by Moscow Radio. One of the questionand-answer jokes circulating in Warsaw reflects the Poles’ awareness that the Soviet Communist Party leadership regards itself, rather than its Polish counterpart, as the ultimate arbiter of Poland's fate. The joke: Question: Could Brezhnev become a member of Solidarity? Answer: No, because he does not recognise the leading role of the PZPR (the communist Dolish United Workers’ Party). WARSAW’S DECISIONS OF 1970s BLAMED The DIW, the West German Institute of Economic Research, says that Poland’s present economic crisis has been caused mainly by the bad structural decisions made by the Polish communist authorities in the early 1970s. The Polish party was then led by Edward Gierek, now in disgrace. The institute’s analysis of the Polish economy notes that industry is producing at only 60 per cent of capacity. The DIW estimates that there will be 1.500.000 unemployed next year. The Polish labour force at present totals 16.500.000 including 5,400,000 in the private sector, mainly farming. On May 20, Poland’s government-controlled Press published a report on Gierek’s appearance before a Party Central Committee commission. He was reported to have agreed that the Party Politburo and government had exercised insufficient control of borrowing during his period of leadership. This resulted in Poland incurring debts she could not afford. Gierek was described as being „particularly self-critical” of his personal policy in the Communist Party and State. He reportedly admitted that after 1976 nobody had analysed the growing crisis. In recent months, the Polish Government has repeatedly told its Western creditors that Poland will eventually repay her total debt of about 23,000 million dollars. MAY-JUNE, 1981