Repressive Psychiatry as a Means of Combating Religious Dissidents in the Soviet Union

Authors

Oksana Vysoven, Hryhoriy Skovoroda University in Pereyaslav, UkraineFollow
Nina Brehunets, Hryhoriy Skovoroda University in Pereyaslav, UkraineFollow
Tetyana Lohvynyuk, Hryhoriy Skovoroda University, Pereyaslav, UkraineFollow

Author ORCID Identifier

Oksana Vysoven: ORCID: 0000-0002-0061-2301

Nina Brehunets: ORCID: 0000-0001-7328-3927

Tetyana Lohvynyuk: ORCID: 0000-0003-0892-2993

Abstract

The article highlights the impossibility of the coexistence of modern civilization in conditions of impunity for crimes against humanity, which have no statute of limitations, but due to the lack of punishment and concealment of information it creates even greater crimes. Many of the unjustly convicted political prisoners have been rehabilitated since the condemnation of Stalin's cult of personality and his crimes in Soviet Ukraine since 1956. As a result of the mass rehabilitation of political prisoners, the regime gained serious opposition, some of whom сonsisted of evangelical Baptist communities who advocated genuine freedom of conscience. The Soviet regime used a whole range of preventive and punitive means to fight the opposition, an important place among which was occupied by repressive psychiatry. Therefore, the theoretical and legal framework was brought under psychiatric repression, which caused significant restrictions for the so-called mentally ill. In the 1970-80s, the punitive and repressive machine of the totalitarian system by the hated KGB developed torture for dissidents. The main role in their subjugation was relied on psychiatrists and their methods, based on the so-called “innovative” teaching of the Moscow School of Psychiatrists A. Snezhnevsky, on “slow schizophrenia.” This diagnosis was recognized only in the USSR and its satellite countries. Anyone who expressed somehow dissatisfaction with the actions of the ruling regime could be diagnosed with “slow schizophrenia.” In the late 1970s, threats by the psychiatric hospital for active believers became systemic. The special services put pressure on the members of the Council of Relatives of Prisoners, who were engaged in printing and publishing the crimes of the totalitarian government against humanity and freedom of conscience and religion. Despite the measures taken by the leadership and intelligence services of the totalitarian regime to debunk the so-called “myths of punitive medicine in the USSR,” believers and the international community gathered many real facts and interviewed people who were subjected to inhumane torture in medical facilities of the communist state.

Recommended Citation

Vysoven, Oksana; Brehunets, Nina; and Lohvynyuk, Tetyana (2022) "Repressive Psychiatry as a Means of Combating Religious Dissidents in the Soviet Union," Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe: Vol. 42 : Iss. 4 , Article 7.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.55221/2693-2148.2353
Available at: https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/ree/vol42/iss4/7