In their book. entitled "Russias Political Hospitals." published in London. in 1977. Block and Reddaway summarize their conclusions in the following words: "The use of psychiatry as a political weapon in the Soviet Union is in many ways unique. With the development of various modes of dissent by Soviet citizens in the 1960s. reports began to emerge that substantial numbers of humanrights activists. nationalist. religious believers. and wouldbe emigrants. almost all mentally healthy In the eyes of their families and friends. were being declared insane by psychiatrists and thereupon confined compulsorily for indeterminate periods to psychiatric hospitals. Rather than receiving appropriate care there. the dissenters were encountering brutal and punitive treatment apparently in an effort to stamp out their nonconformist behavior. "Allegations were subsequently made. both in the Soviet Union and in the West. that psychiatrists were being employed in the battle against dissent as part of a systematic. statedirected policy. whose objective appeared to be: the avoidance of a fullscale criminal trial with all its attendant publicity. the indefinite compulsory internment of dissenters in mental hospitals and the discrediting of their convictions as those of mentallysick people." To the groups of victims just enumerated. those who disagree with the system under which they live. there should be added one other: those who accept that system but who complain about actions of local bureaucrats. That truly pitiful group deserves to be mentioned. too.
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emigrants