Концентричните кръгове на ада: тоталитарната психиатрия в няколко литературни примера
The Concentric Circles of Hell: Totalitarian Psychiatry In Several Literary Examples

Summary/Abstract: One of the earliest serious examples of psychiatric abuse under communism is the 150-page manuscript smuggled to the West by the Russian dissident and “imperialist spy” Vladimir Bukovsky, after being exchanged for the Chilean communist activist Luis Corvalán. The information about the so-called “latent” or “mild schizophrenia”, under which many dissidents in the USSR were institutionalized, serves as definitive proof of abuse, which the World Health Organization condemned. After 1989, numerous literary works and memoirs about repressive psychiatry emerged in the former Eastern Bloc. The article is based on several eloquent examples from post-Yugoslav and Bulgarian contexts. As psychiatrist Dr. Kiril Milenkov claims, after the Revival Process, most of the documentation of abuse in the People’s Republic of Bulgaria was destroyed, so today information about this can primarily be drawn from the memories of victims or the rare confessions of physicians. Among the key Bulgarian accounts is the book by the prominent Bulgarian intellectual and translator Vladimir Svintila, The Face of the Gorgon. In the post-Yugoslav context, the contributions of the writer Dragoslav Mihailović and psychologist Petar Kostić are significant, as they helped create a systematic account of the psychological repressions at Goli Otok.

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