TRANSFORMATION OF SOVIET PSYCHIATRY: FROM THE BRANCH OF MEDICINE TO A PUNITIVE SYSTEM TO COMBAT DISSENTENCE
TRANSFORMATION OF SOVIET PSYCHIATRY: FROM THE BRANCH OF MEDICINE TO A PUNITIVE SYSTEM TO COMBAT DISSENTENCE

Summary/Abstract: The problem of establishing the truth about mass violations of human rights through the use of "punitive psychiatry" during the 1930s-1980s, the publication of figures of human rights activists, teachers, lecturers, military personnel, students, artists who were tortured in Soviet specialized institutions, remains relevant. The factors that influenced the transformation of psychiatry from a medical field into an effective tool for combating dissent require special attention from researchers. Unfortunately, the mental consequences of the fight against dissent remain tangible to this day, and psychiatry still evokes associations with Soviet institutions where torture and forced treatment were carried out. The purpose of the study is to highlight the socio-political, legal and ideological factors that led to the transformation of psychiatry from a medical field into one of the most effective mechanisms for combating dissent as a phenomenon and human rights movement that threatened the existence of the Soviet empire. Given the specifics of the research topic, which is considered at an interdisciplinary level, historical methods of reconstructing the past, analyzing the source and historiographical base, synchronizing events, establishing structural connections with historical and medical research, as well as the problem-chronological method and the method of retrospective analysis were used. Conclusions Thus, having analyzed the use of psychiatry by the Soviet authorities for five decades to suppress resistance, several aspects can be distinguished. Firstly, we are talking about the violation of medical ethics, the transformation of medical and preventive institutions into a network of specialized closed institutions for the forced treatment of dissidents. Secondly, medicine, like other spheres of life, came under the total control of the punitive authorities, scientific and research institutions underwent negative changes, and doctors who opposed the system and wanted to develop the latest trends and Western methods in psychiatry were repressed. Thirdly, people over the age of sixteen were subjected to “punitive psychiatry” – students, school teachers, scientists, professors, writers, and military personnel, who were subjected to torture, psychiatric terror, and forcibly treated for non-existent diagnoses. This practice continued since the early 1930s and changed only with the collapse of the USSR.

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