Volume 27, Number 4 · March 20, 1980
Psycho-Suppression
By Peter B. Reddaway
Punitive Medicine
by Alexander Podrabinek, translated by Alexander Lehrman
Karoma (Ann Arbor), 223 pp., $12.95
Soviet Psychoprisons
by Harvey Fireside
Norton, 201 pp., $11.95
Institute of Fools: Notes from the Serbsky
by Victor Nekipelov, edited and translated by Marco Carynnyk, by Marta Horban
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 285 pp., $15.00
The practice of 'political psychiatry' has so far been limited mainly to the USSR and, to a lesser extent, Eastern Europe, but it could well spread to any country under authoritarian rule. Essentially it is a secret police tool to intimidate, suppress, or terrorize into recantation through drug treatment the open critics of a regime. In Russia it has roots so deep in the practices of both the KGB and their medical collaborators that even if the Kremlin oligarchy wanted to end the bad publicity it causes abroad, the task of stamping it out would not be easy. Not that there is any clear sign that the current KGB boss Yuri Andropov, a powerful member of the Politburo, is concerned to stop it, rather than just conceal it.
Review, 2113 words
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