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Inside the Psychiatric Word: Diagnosis and Self-Definition in the Late Soviet Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Rebecca Reich
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Abstract

The punitive psychiatric hospitalization of Soviet dissidents and nonconformists spurred the writing and circulation of memoirs of detention, transcripts of conversations with psychiatrists, copies of psychiatric files, handbooks on legal and medical aspects of psychiatric examination, works of fiction, poems, and other related documents. Rebecca Reich draws on this major body of texts to determine how politically unorthodox citizens engaged with psychiatry in life and on the page. Close reading of texts by Vladimir Bukovskii, Semen Gluzman, Aleksandr Vol'pin, and others suggests that unsanctioned accounts of hospitalization did more than expose the abuse of psychiatry; they challenged Soviet psychiatric discourse and promoted inakomyslie, “thinking differently,” as the psychological norm. By depathologizing themselves and pathologizing the state during encounters with psychiatrists and in samizdat, dissidents and nonconformists engaged in self-definition and asserted their own diagnostic authority.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 73 , Issue 3 , Fall 2014 , pp. 563 - 584
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2014 

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References

1. In addition to the published and unpublished texts cited in this article, many documents may be found in Sobranie dokumentov samizdata, 30 vols., comp. Radio Liberty (Munich, 1972-78; hereafter SDS, with documents indicated by arkhiv samizdata [AS] number). Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

2. On dissidents’ preference for imprisonment over hospitalization, see Vladimir Bukovskii, J vozvrashchaetsia veter… : Avtobiografiia(Moscow, 2007), 190 Google Scholar; Petro, Grigorenko, Vpodpol'e mozhno vstretit’ tol'ko krys…(Moscow, 1997), 542 Google Scholar; Aleksandr, Podrabinek, Karatel'naia meditsina(New York, 1979), 85.Google Scholar

3. Soviet law had two designations for citizens found unable to evaluate and control their actions as a result of mental illness or deficiency: non-accountability (nevmeniaemost’)and incompetency (nedeesposobnosf). Article 11 of the Russian Criminal Code defined non-accountability as the inability to answer for one's crimes. See Ministerstvo iustitsii RSFSR, Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR: Ofitsial'nyi tekst s izmeneniiami na 1 avgusta 1962 g. i s prilozheniem postateino sistematizirovannykh materialov(Moscow, 1962), 9-10. Articles 11 and 15 of the Russian Civil Code defined incompetency as the inability to independently assert or fulfill one's rights and duties. See RSFSR, Grazhdanskii kodeks RSFSR: Ofitsial'nyi tekst(Moscow, 1964), 11-13.

4. In 1983 the Ministry of Health released a set of guidelines in which it reported that cases of simulation had grown ten times more frequent over the 1960s and 1970s. See V. E., Pelipas, Simuliatsiia psikhicheskikh rasstroistv i ee raspoznavanie pri sudebnopsikhiatricheskoi ekspertize (Metodicheskie rekomendatsii)(Moscow, 1983), 3.Google Scholar

5. I translate the adjective inakomysliashchiias “differently thinking” and the noun inakomyslieas “thinking differently” to highlight the psychological dimension of dissident and nonconformist self-definition. Questions of unity and diversity of thinking have proved central to recent scholarship. Vladimir Kozlov proposes the term kramola(religious rebellion) to argue that what united nonconformists was how they were perceived by an orthodox state. See S. V. Mironenko and V. A. Kozlov, eds., Kramola: Inakomyslie v SSSR pri Khrushcheve i Brezhneve, 1953-1982 gg.: Rassekrechennye dokumenty Verkhovnogo suda i Prokuratury SSSR(Moscow, 2005), 5-64. Boris Firsov argues for society's gravitation toward raznomyslie(diversity of thinking). See B. M. Firsov, Raznomyslie v SSSR, 1940-1960-e gg: Istoriia, teoriia i praktika(St. Petersburg, 2008). Alexei Yurchak challenges the opposition of “official” and “unofficial” culture with concepts such as “being vnye“:a style of living inside and outside the system. See Alexei, Yurchak, Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More: The Last Soviet Generation(Princeton, 2006), 126-57.Google ScholarOn these debates, see Ann, Komaromi, “Samizdat and Soviet Dissident Publics,” Slavic Review 71, no. 1(Spring 2012): 70–90 Google Scholar; and Benjamin, Nathansand Kevin M. F., Piatt, “Socialist in Form, Indeterminate in Content: The Ins and Outs of Late Soviet Culture,” Ab Imperio,no. 2(2011): 301-24.Google Scholar

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8. Sidney, Blochand Peter, Reddaway, Psychiatric Terror: How Soviet Psychiatry Is Used to Suppress Dissent(New York, 1977), 51–53.Google Scholar

9. On punitive psychiatry, see Artemova, A. N., Rar, L., and Slavinskii, M. A., eds., Kaznimye sumasshestviem(Frankfurtam Main, 1971)Google Scholar; Bloch and Reddaway, Psychiatric Terror, Sidney, Blochand Peter, Reddaway, Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow over World Psychiatry(London, 1984)Google Scholar; Harvey, Fireside, Soviet Psychoprisons(New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Semyon, Gluzman, On Soviet Totalitarian Psychiatry(Amsterdam, 1989)Google Scholar; A., Korotenkoand N., Alikina, Sovetskaia psikhiatriia: Zabluzhdeniia i umysel(Kiev, 2002)Google Scholar; A. S., Prokopenko, Bezumnaia psikhiatriia: Sekretnye materialy o primenenii v SSSR psikhiatrii v karatel'nykh tseliakh(Moscow, 1997)Google Scholar; Walter, Reich, “Psychiatric Diagnosis as an Ethical Problem,”in Sidney, Blochand Paul, Chodoff, eds., Psychiatric Ethics(Oxford, 1991), 101-33Google Scholar; Smith, Theresa C.and Oleszczuk, Thomas A., No Asylum: State Psychiatric Repression in the FormerUSSR(New York, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Voren, Robert van, On Dissidents and Madness: From the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to the “Soviet Union” of Vladimir Putin(Amsterdam, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Robert van, Voren, Cold War in Psychiatry: Human Factors, Secret Actors(Amsterdam, 2010)Google Scholar.

10. For Pisarev's account of the investigation, see SDS, torn (t.) 6, AS 384 (S. P. Pisarev, “Pis'mo v Prezidium Akademii Meditsinskikh Nauk SSSR ob ispol'zovanii Instituta im. Serbskogo dlia raspravy nad inakomysliashchimi“).

11. “Sluzhenie narodu—vysokoe prizvanie sovetskikh pisatelei. Rech’ tovarishcha N. S. Khrushcheva na III s“ezde pisatelei 22 maia 1959 goda,” Pravda, 24 May 1959,2. Khrushchev's statement would feature centrally in arguments that punitive psychiatry had been sanctioned from above.

12. Major manuals of Soviet psychiatry from the 1960s onward include Kerbikov, O. V.et al., eds., Psikhiatriia(Moscow, 1968)Google Scholar; Snezhnevskii, A. V., Spravochnik po psikhiatrii(Moscow, 1974)Google Scholar; and Snezhnevskii, A. V., ed., Rukovodstvo po psikhiatrii, 2vols. (Moscow, 1983)Google Scholar.

13. On the literary properties of psychiatric texts and psychiatry's attitude toward literature, see Bogdanov, K. A., Vrachi, patsienty, chitateli: Patograficheskie teksty russkoi kul'turyXVIII-XIXvekov(Moscow, 2005)Google Scholar; Cathy, Popkin, “Hysterical Episodes: Case Histories and Silent Subjects,”in Laura, Engelsteinand Sandler, Stephanie, eds., Self and Story in Russian History(Ithaca, 2000), 189–216 Google Scholar; and Irina, Sirotkina, Diagnosing Literary Genius: A Cultural History of Psychiatry in Russia, 1880-1930(Baltimore, 2002).Google Scholar

14. Bukovskii, I vozvrashchaetsia veter…, 349.

15. Ibid., 185.

16. Yuri, Glazov, The Russian Mind since Stalin's Death(Dordrecht, 1985), 12–13.Google Scholar

17. Ibid., 11, 76.

18. Michel, Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason,trans. Richard, Howard(New York, 1965), 247, 260-62.Google Scholar

19. Laura, Engelstein, “Combined Underdevelopment: Discipline and the Law in Imperial and Soviet Russia,” American Historical Review 98, no. 2 (April 1993): 344,351Google Scholar. See also Angela, Brintlinger, “The Hero in the Madhouse: The Post-Soviet Novel Confronts the Soviet Past,” Slavic Review 63, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 46.Google Scholar

20. Engelstein, “Combined Underdevelopment,” 353.

21. On dissidents’ “mimetic resistance” to authority, see Serguei Alex, Oushakine, “The Terrifying Mimicry of Samizdat,” Public Culture 13, no. 2 (April 2001): 191–214.Google Scholar

22. Bukovskii,/vozvrashchaetsiaveter…,222.

23. Ibid., 232.

24. Shoshana, Felman, Writing and Madness (Literature/Philosophy/Psychoanalysis),trans. Martha Noel, Evansand Shoshana, Felman, with Brian Massumi (Stanford, 2003), 252 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original. Felman is primarily interested in literature's ability to subvert this self-denying rhetoric of madness through a “madness of rhetoric” that defers meaning. This “madness of rhetoric” is less evident in texts that seek to validate their authors’ sanity, but it plays a role in literary works that explore the ambiguities of madness.

25. MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 16,11. 23-23ob (“Opisanie A. S. Eseninym-Vol'pinym svoego nasil'stvennogo pomeshcheniia v psikhiatricheskuiu bol'nitsu,” hereafter “Opisanie 1“). For Articles 126 and 178, see Ministerstvo iustitsii RSFSR, Ugolovnyi kodeks RSFSR, 70,91.

26. MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 16,1.1 (“Pis'mo A. S. Esenina-Vol ‘pina V. B. Vol'pin po povodu svoei nasil'stvennoi gospitalizatsii“).

27. Ibid., 1.23 ob (“Opisanie 1“).

28. Ibid., 1.24.

29. Benjamin, Nathans, “The Dictatorship of Reason: Aleksandr Vol'pin and the Idea of Rights under ‘Developed Socialism,'” Slavic Review 66, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 663.Google Scholar

30. Esenin-Vol'pin, A. S., “Grazhdanskoe obrashchenie,” Filosofiia. Logika. Poeziia. Zashchita prav cheloveka: Izbrannoe(Moscow, 1999),313.Google Scholar

31. Nathans, “The Dictatorship of Reason,” 660.

32. Ibid., 637, 647.

33. Ibid., 662.

34. Esenin-Vol'pin, , “Iuridicheskaia pamiatka,” Izbrannoe, 356-72.Google Scholar

35. Aleksandr Vol'pin, interview, Revere, Mass., 2 September 2009.

36. Esenin-Vol'pin, “Obrashchenie k druz'iam,” Izbrannoe, 331.

37. MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 13,11.89ob-91 (“Istekaet 44-i god moei zhizni…“).

38. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 8131, op. 31, d. 89189b, 1. 4 (“Zakliuchenie“).

39. Aleksandr Sergeyevich, Yesenin-Volpin, A Leaf of Spring, trans. George, Reavey(New York, 1961).Google Scholar

40. Esenin-Vol'pin, “Svobodnyi filosofskii traktat, ili Mgnovennoe izlozhenie moikh filosofskikh vzgliadov,” Izbrannoe, 40.

41. Esenin-Vol'pin, “Fronda,” in ibid., 261.

42. Esenin-Vol'pin, “Svobody ne bylo i net na svete …, “ “Razbito serdtse, zabyta strast',” and “Vesennii list,” in ibid., 261-63.

43. Esenin-Vol'pin, “Svobodnyi filosofskii traktat,” in ibid., 40.

44. Vol'pin allegedly “conducted counterrevolutionary agitation among those surrounding him, wrote poems of an anti-Soviet nature, and read them to others.” MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 14,11.53-54 (“Opredelenie SKUD Verkhovnogo suda SSSR…“).

45. Yesenin-Volpin, A LeafofSpring, 2.1 have retranslated the Russian original printed in this bilingual edition. On Vol'pin's rejection of literature's moral authority, see Ann, Komaromi, “The Unofficial Field of Late Soviet Culture,” Slavic Review 66, no. 4 (Winter 2007): 622-23Google Scholar; and Nathans, , “The Dictatorship of Reason,” 647, 654.Google Scholar

46. MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 16,11.14-15 (“Opisanie A. S. Eseninym-Vol'pinym psikhiatricheskoi komissii, kotoraia ego posetila 06.03.1968,” hereafter “Opisanie 2“).

47. MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 16,11.24ob-25 (“Opisanie 1“). Vol'pin's parents were the poet and translator Nadezhda Vol'pin and the poet Sergei Esenin.

48. Bukovskii, I vozvrashchaetsia veter…, 223.

49. Vol'pin, interview.

50. MSA, f. 120, op. 1, d. 16,1.16 (“Opisanie 2“).

51. SDS, t. 8, AS 571 (Vladimir Bukovskii, “Otkrytoe pis'mo vracham-psikhiatram SShA, Anglii, Gollandii, Kanady i Izraelia s prilozheniem kopii i vyderzhek iz zakliuchenii sudebno-psikhiatricheskikh ekspertiz i drugikh dokumentov o liudiakh, priznannykh nevmeniaemymi, 28 ianvaria 1971 g.“).

52. SDS, t. 24, AS 1243 (Troe sov. anonimnykh psikhiatra, “Psikhiatricheskaia zaochnaia ekspertiza po delu P. G. Grigorenko v Komitet prav Cheloveka, akad. Sakharovu, v KGB pri SM SSSR, dr. vysshim sov. instantsiiam i ko vsei obshchestvennosti, bez mesta i daty, no do 15.11.72“).

53. Vladimir Bukovskii, interview, Cambridge, Eng., 27 March 2012.

54. Semen Gluzman, interview, Kiev, 22 May 2009.

55. Bukovskii, interview; Gluzman, interview; and S. F. Gluzman, Risunkipo pamiati, Hi Vospominaniia otsidenta(Kiev, 2012), 210-13, 302-4.

56. V. Bukovskii and S. Gluzman, “Posobie po psikhiatrii dlia inakomysliashchikh,“ Khronika zashchity prav v SSSR13 (January-February 1975): 55.

57. Bukovskii, J vozvrashchaetsia veter…, 217; Bukovskii, interview.

58. Gluzman, interview.

59. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 58.

60. Gluzman, interview.

61. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 41.

62. Gluzman, S. F., “Zloupotrebleniia psikhiatrii: Sotsial'nye i iuridicheskie istoki,“ Filosofskaia i sotsiologicheskaia mysl', no. 7 (1990): 77.Google Scholar

63. Bukovskii, interview.

64. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 47-48.

65. Ibid., 57.

66. Ibid., 51-53.

67. Gluzman's poems from the 1970s and 1980s are collected in Psalmy i skorbi(Khar'kov, 1994). For references to madness in his verse, see, for instance, “Gel'derlin“ and “la v sotvoren'i mira-prakh …, “ 90-91,109.

68. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 57. See also SDS, t. 5, AS 344 (P. G. Grigorenko, “Vtoraia ekspertiza, 20-25 noiabria 1969 g.“), 6.

69. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 51.

70. Ibid., 42.

71. Ibid., 48-50.

72. Gluzman, interview.

73. Bukovskii, interview.

74. Bukovskii,Ivozvrashchaetsiaveter…,362-63.

75. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 53.

76. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics, trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis, 1984), 6.

77. SDS, t. 6, AS 386 (A. I. Solzhenitsyn, ‘“Vot kak my zhivem,’ zaiavlenie v sviazi s nasil'stvennym pomeshcheniem Zh. Medvedeva v psikhbol'nitsu, 15 iunia 1970 g.“); SDS, t. 6, AS406 (A. S. Vol'pin, “'Vechnuiu ruchku Petru Grigor'evichu Grigorenko!'—Otkrytoe pis'mo A. I. Solzhenitsynu, 20 iiulia 1970 g.“).

78. See also SDS, 1.16, AS 659-v for the multiple opinions on punitive psychiatry collected in Obshchestvennye problemy11 (May-Iune 1971).

79. Gorbanevskaia had been diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1959 after seeking treatment for fatigue. This earlier diagnosis provoked her brief psychiatric hospitalization in 1968 and more extended hospitalization from 1970 to 1972.

80. SDS, t. 2, AS 153 (N. Gorbanevskaia, “Ocherk ‘Besplatnaia meditsinskaia pomoshch',' mart 1968 g.“), 4,11.

81. Ibid., 21-22.

82. Natal ‘ia, Gorbanevskaia, Russko-russkii razgovor: Izbrannye stikhotvoreniia. Poema bez poemy: Novaia kniga stikhov(Moscow, 2003), 34 Google Scholar. Translation slightly adapted from Natalya, Gorbanevskaya, Selected Poems, with a Transcript of Her Trial and Papers Relating to Her Detention in a Prison Psychiatric Hospital, trans. Daniel, Weissbort(Oxford, 1972), 99.Google Scholar

83. SDS, t. 2, AS 153 (Gorbanevskaia, “Besplatnaia meditsinskaia pomoshch'“), 22.

84. Zhores, Medvedevand Roi, Medvedev, Kto sumasshedshii?(London, 1971), 106-7.Google Scholar

85. Ibid., 36.

86. Dialogue also wards offmadness in literary narratives of Soviet psychiatric hospitalization. See Rebecca Reich, “Madness as Balancing Act in loseph Brodsky's ‘Gorbunov and Gorchakov,'” Russian Review72, no. 1 (January 2013): 45-65

87. SDS, t. 5, AS 345 (P. G. Grigorenko, “'Sravnenie dvukh ekspertiz’ [6 avgusta i 22 oktiabria], bez daty, veroiatno, konets oktiabria 1969 g.“), 3.

88. Grigorenko, Vpodpole, 422.

89. Gluzman, “Zloupotrebleniia psikhiatrii,” 69.

90. Ibid., 67.

91. Mention of Chaadaev is a common trope in dissident accounts of psychiatric hospitalization. See Bukovskii, I vozvrashchaetsia veter…, 350; Gluzman, Risunki po pamiati, 283; Grigorenko, Vpodpol'e, 397; Medvedev and Medvedev, Kto sumasshedshii?, 141-42; Pliushch, Na karnavale istorii, 658; Podrabinek, Karatel'naia meditsina, 15-17; and SDS, t. 6, AS 386 (Solzhenitsyn, “'Vot kak my zhivem'“), 1.

92. Bukovskii and Gluzman, “Posobie,” 36. The epigraph is taken from Andrei Platonov's play The Lycee Pupil, in which the word equality (ravenstvo)appears as servitude (rabstvo). Andrei, Platonov, “Uchenik litseia,” Noev kovcheg(Moscow, 2006), 334.Google Scholar

93. A. S., Pushkin, “Ne dai mne bog soiti s uma … ,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 17vols. (Leningrad, 1937-59), 3:322-23.Google Scholar

94. Pliushch, Na karnavale istorii, 624.

95. Gluzman, interview.

96. MSA, f. 163, op. 1, d. 9 (“Iz zheltogo bezmolviia“), 1.2.

97. Ibid., 1.4.

98. SDS, t. 6, AS 406 (Vol'pin, ‘“Vechnuiu ruchku Petru Grigor'evichu Grigorenko!“’), 3.

99. Ibid., 6.

100. Gluzman, Risunki po pamiati, 243.