Psikhushka (Russian: психушка) is a Russian colloquialism for psychiatric hospital. It has been occasionally used in English since the dissident movement in the Soviet Union became known in the West. In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture.^[1] The official explanation was that "no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and communism".^{[citation needed]} The romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet and into the Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet and other Latin alphabets in particular (and sometimes non-Latin alphabets). ... Look up translate in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Look up Colloquialism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A psychiatric hospital (also called, at various places and times, mental hospital or mental ward), is a hospital specialising in the treatment of persons with mental illness. ... The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... The term Western world, the West or the Occident (Latin occidens -sunset, -west, as distinct from the Orient) [1] can have multiple meanings dependent on its context (e. ... A political prisoner is someone held in prison or otherwise detained, perhaps under house arrest, because their ideas or image are deemed by a government to either challenge or threaten the authority of the state. ... Torture is defined by the United Nations Convention Against Torture as any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he... Communism is an ideology that seeks to establish a classless, stateless social organization based on common ownership of the means of production. ...

History

Psikhuskas have been already used by the end of 1940s (see Alexander Esenin-Volpin) and during the Khrushchev Thaw period in the 1960s. One of first psikhuskas was Psychiatric Prison Hospital in the city of Kazan. It was transferred under NKVD control in 1939 under the order by Lavrentiy Beria. ^[2] On April 29, 1969 the head of KGB Yuri Andropov submitted to the Central Committee of CPSU a plan for creating of a network of psikhushkas.^[3] This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... Alexander Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin (Russian: Александр Сергеевич Есенин-Вольпин; born on May 12, 1924) is a prominent Russian American mathematician. ... In Soviet history, Kruschevs Thaw or Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period between the end of 1950s and the beginning of 1960s, when repressions and censorship reached a low point. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from January 1, 1960 to December 31, 1969, inclusive. ... Kazan (Russian: ; Tatar: Qazan, Казан) is the capital city of the Republic of Tatarstan, Russia, and one of Russias largest cities. ... This does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... Year 1939 (MCMXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Lavrenty Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (Georgian: ლავრენტი ბერია, Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria; Russian: Лаврентий Павлович Берия; 29 March 1899–23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and chief of the Soviet security and police apparatus. ... is the 119th day of the year (120th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Stargate SG-1 episode, see 1969 (Stargate SG-1). ... The KGB emblem and motto: The sword and the shield KGB (transliteration of КГБ) is the Russian-language abbreviation for Committee for State Security, (Russian: ; Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti). ... Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov (Russian: Ю́рий Влади́мирович Андро́пов; 15 June [O.S. 2 June] 1914 – February 9, 1984) was a Soviet politician and General Secretary of the CPSU from November 12, 1982 until his death just sixteen months later. ... The Communist Party of the Soviet Union ( Russian: Коммунисти́ческая Па́ртия Сове́тского Сою́за = &#1050...

The official Soviet psychiatry allegedly abused the diagnosis of sluggishly progressing schizophrenia (вялотекущая шизофрения), a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace on other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Moscow Serbsky Institute professors (a quote ^[4] from Vladimir Bukovsky's archives). Some of them had high rank in the MVD, such as the infamous Danil Luntz, who was characterized by Viktor Nekipelov as "no better than the criminal doctors who performed inhuman experiments on the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps".^[4] This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ... For other senses of this word, see paranoia (disambiguation). ... Moscow Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry (Russian: ) is a psychiatric hospital and the main center for the forensic psychiatry of the Soviet Union and Russia. ... Vladimir Bukovsky early photo Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Russian: ; b. ... The acronym MVD can stand for: Mitral valve disease, or Mitral regurgitation. ... Viktor Nekipelov (1928 - 1989) was a Russian poet, translator, human rights activist and dissident. ... National Socialism redirects here. ... It has been suggested that Internment be merged into this article or section. ...

The sane individuals who were diagnosed as mentally ill were sent either to a regular psychiatric hospitals or, those deemed particularly dangerous, to special ones, run directly by the MVD. The treatment included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, a range of drugs (such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin) that cause long lasting side effects, and sometimes involved beatings. Nekipelov describes inhuman uses of medical procedures such as lumbar punctures. The Scream, the famous painting commonly thought of as depicting the experience of mental illness. ... A psychiatric hospital (also called, at various places and times, mental hospital or mental ward), is a hospital specialising in the treatment of persons with mental illness. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... A sedative is a drug that depresses the central nervous system (CNS), which causes calmness, relaxation, reduction of anxiety, sleepiness, slowed breathing, slurred speech, staggering gait, poor judgment, and slow, uncertain reflexes. ... Insulin (from Latin insula, island, as it is produced in the Islets of Langerhans in the pancreas) is a polypeptide hormone that regulates carbohydrate metabolism. ... A patient undergoes a lumbar puncture at the hands of a neurologist. ...

Soviet psychiatric abuse exposed

Vladimir Bukovsky, a psikhushka inmate who exposed Soviet psychiatric abuse

In 1971, Bukovsky managed to smuggle to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of psychiatric institutions for political reasons in the USSR. The facts galvanized the human rights activists worldwide, including inside the USSR. In January 1972, the Soviet authorities incarcerated Bukovsky for 7 years of imprisonment plus 5 years in exile, officially for contacts with foreign journalists and possession and distribution of samizdat (Article 70-1). Vladimir Bukovsky (from [1]) , I think File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Vladimir Bukovsky (from [1]) , I think File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Vladimir Bukovsky early photo Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Russian: ; b. ... Year 1971 (MCMLXXI) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the 1971 Gregorian calendar. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... Samizdat, book published by Pathfinder Press containing a collection of forbidden Trotskyist Samizdat texts. ...

Together with a fellow inmate in Vladimir prison, psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, Bukovsky coauthored A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents^[5] in order to help other dissidents fight abuses of the authorities. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that studies and treats mental and emotional disorders (see mental illness). ...

In 1971, a renowned Soviet physicist Academician Andrei Sakharov supported protest of two political prisoners, V. Fainberg and V. Borisov, who announced a hunger strike against "compulsory therapeutic treatment with medications injurious to mental activity" in a Leningrad psychiatric institution.^[6] For his activism in defense of human rights Sakharov was expelled from the Soviet Academy of Sciences and sent to internal exile. Andrei Sakharov, 1943 For the historian, see Andrey Nikolayevich Sakharov. ... A hunger strike is a method of non-violent resistance in which participants fast as an act of political protest, or to provoke feelings of guilt or to achieve a goal such as a policy change. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ...

Reaction by the World Psychiatric Association

When early concerns were raised in the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), the Soviet delegation threatened to withdraw from the international organization and WPA held out its involvement in the issue. As the number of documented cases of abuse continued to increase and international protests started to mount, WPA changed its stance and adopted ethical code of conduct for its members and established investigative bodies to enforce it. The World Psychiatric Association is an international umbrella organisation for psychiatrists that sets ethical, scientific and treatment standards in the practice of psychiatry. ...

The first committee against the political abuse of psychiatry was founded in 1974 in Geneva. In 1977, the WPA's World Congress in Honolulu adopted the Declaration of Honolulu, the first document to set forth a set of basic ethical standards guiding the work of psychiatrists worldwide. The congress also officially condemned Soviet political psychiatric abuses for the first time. In 1982, facing imminent expulsion from the WPA, the Soviet delegation voluntarily withdrew, and in 1983 the WPA's World Congress in Vienna adopted a resolution that placed strict conditions on its return.

Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost campaign significantly contributed to the exposure of more evidence in the Soviet press. In 1989, two years before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Soviet delegation to the WPA's World Congress in Athens acknowledged that systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes had indeed taken place in their country.^[7] Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (Russian: ), surname more accurately romanized as Gorbachyov; born March 2, 1931) is a Russian politician. ... //   (Russian: IPA: ) is politics of maximal openness, transparency of activity of all official (governmental) institutes, and freedom of information. ... The rise of Gorbachev Although reform stalled between 1964–1982, the generational shift gave new momentum for reform. ...

Post-Soviet times

The Moscow Serbsky Institute conducts thousands of court-ordered evaluations per year. When war criminal Yuri Budanov was tested there in 2002, the panel conducting the inquiry was led by Tamara Pechernikova, who earlier condemned poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Budanov was found not guilty by reason of "temporary insanity". After public outrage, he was found sane by another panel that included Georgi Morozov, the former Serbsky director who declared many dissidents insane in the past. ^[8] In December of 2002, a Russian court tried Russian Colonel Yuri Budanov on war crimes charges. ... Gorbanevskaya at the balcony of the library Russian abroad, Moscow, 19. ...

There have been reports in the 2000s about imprisonment of people "inconvenient" for Russian authorities in psychiatric institutions. ^{[9] [10] [11] [12]}

People

• Vladimir Bukovsky
• Alexander Esenin-Volpin
• Pyotr Grigorenko
• Zhores Medvedev
• Viktor Nekipelov
• Andrei Sakharov
• Natan Sharansky
• Andrei Sinyavsky
• Porfiry Ivanov

Vladimir Bukovsky early photo Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Russian: ; b. ... Alexander Sergeyevich Esenin-Volpin (Russian: Александр Сергеевич Есенин-Вольпин; born on May 12, 1924) is a prominent Russian American mathematician. ... Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko, alternative Petro Grigorenko (Russian: Петр Григоренко) (1907-1987) is a former Major General in the Soviet Army and prominent Soviet human right activist, a dissident and a writer. ... Zhores Aleksandrovich Medvedev (born in the former USSR on November 14, 1925) is a Russian biologist and dissident. ... Viktor Nekipelov (1928 - 1989) was a Russian poet, translator, human rights activist and dissident. ... Andrei Sakharov, 1943 For the historian, see Andrey Nikolayevich Sakharov. ... Natan Sharansky (Hebrew: נתן שרנסקי, Russian: Натан Борисович Щаранский; born January 20, 1948) is a notable former Soviet anticommunist, Zionist, Israeli politician and writer. ... Andrei Sinyavsky Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky (Russian language: Андрей Донатович Синявский) (1925 - 1997) was a Russian writer, dissident, gulag survivor, emigrant, Professor of Sorbonne University, magazine founder and publisher. ... New ethics, new rules of life are required to avoid a global catastrophe that man is likely to cause by his nature-destroying activities—such is the conclusion reached by scientists. ...

References

The Library of Congress is the de facto national library of the United States and the research arm of the United States Congress. ...

See also

• Psychiatric imprisonment
• Human rights
• Gulag

This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Human rights are rights which some hold to be inalienable and belonging to all humans. ... Gulag ( , Russian: ) was the government body responsible for administering prison camps across the former Soviet Union. ...

Bibliography

• Antébi, Elizabeth (1977). Droit d'asiles en Union Soviétique. Paris: Julliard. ISBN 2260000657. 
• Applebaum, Anne (2003). Gulag: A History. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-7679-0056-1. 
• Boulet, Marc (2001). Dans la peau d'un.... Paris: Seuil. ISBN 2-02-038072-2. 
• Fireside, Harvey. Soviet Psychoprisons. 

The Juilliard School is a performing arts conservatory in New York City, informally but definitively identified as simply Juilliard, and most famous for its musically-trained alumni. ... It has been suggested that The Crime Club be merged into this article or section. ...