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Is there a resumption of political psychiatry in the former Soviet Union?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Robert van Voren*
Affiliation:
Vytautas Magnus University, Kaunas, Lithuania, and Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia
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Abstract

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After the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis in the spring of 2014, the former Soviet Union again became front-page news. The sequence of events led to an atmosphere reminiscent of the Cold War. In Russia itself it led to a hunt for ‘national traitors’ and ‘foreign agents’ and observers both inside the country and abroad fear a return to Soviet-style repression. For the outside world this may come as a surprise, but human rights activists have been ringing the alarm bells for a few years. Ever since Vladimir Putin took power, the human rights situation has deteriorated. One of the warning signs was the return of the use of psychiatry for political purposes, to ‘prevent’ social or political activism or to ostracise an activist.

Type
Special paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists 2014

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