Soviet mental institutes A new terror

The growth of the anti-Stalinist opposition in the Soviet Union over recent years has forced the bureaucracy to expand and perfect this technique.

The article in • question claims that a panel of forensic psychiatry experts has been formed in Moscow to organize this campaign.

It is, headed by a Professor D. R. Lunts, who is known to have headed the 'politicals' of the same Serbsky Institute in the 1950s. the court house and circulated it amongst the opposition.

International support for the persecuted intellectuals was rallied, much of it (though not of course all) on the basis of socialist principles.

These trials were a defeat and a disaster for the Stalinist bureaucracy.

They have obviously resolved to use these more clinical and scientific methods to deal with all future oppositionists who speak out against Stalinism.

But it should not be assumed that this is a purely post-Stalin technique.

The journal reveals that the first lunatic asylum for oppositionists was set up before the last war in Kazan:

•After the war, a special colony was created Sychevka, in Smolensk province . . . people who land up in this colony are reduced to a condition complete mental collapse. [In other words, the colony was not to cure its "patients" of mental disorders, but to create them.] In 1952, [one year before the death of Stalin] a special hospital was opened in Leningrad.' ROBERT BLACK The 'patients' in these institutions are kept in the same cells as genuine patients suffering from mental disorders, and are given the same treatment:

(They are] subjected to injections of large doses aminazin and sulfazin which cause depressive shock reaction and serious physical disorders ... sometimes sodium aminate, a strong narcotic, is administered by injection to weaken the patient, and after the injection he is interrogated.' All the patients are under the tender care of MVD officers who wear white overalls over their uniforms.

Conditions are so harsh in the institutions that camp prisoners who have feigned mental illness to get away from the labour camps often beg to be sent back.

Barbaric

Apart from Grigorenko, many other oppositionists are now undergoing this barbaric They include Victor Fainberg, who was interned in the Leningrad institution after protesting against the Kremlin invasion of Czechoslovakia.

The diagnosis made of his 'disease' was described as 'schizoheterdoxy', in other words, he suffered from ideas different to those of his Stalinist captors..

This diagonsis creates a prePiotr Grigorenko, now in an institute cedent unparalleled even in the 40 years of Stalinist barbarism, repression and political betrayal.

Now thoughts different NOW (For any two days OR Organizer, Workers Press, London, SW4. (Tel: 01-720-200 Oppositionist Pavel Litvinov attacked by the bureaucracy after protesting over writers' trials from those of the current occupants of the Kremlin are not only a crime, but lisease, officially diagnosed as schizoheterdoxy'.

This hideous new development within Stalinism does not reflect the strength of the Soviet bureaucracy.

They fear connumbers of only small groups of but members of the powerful petitions and the state leaders ition.

Behind Yakir and Litvinov the iming class.

1956, that working class while reof socialism.

coats had been international working class Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek the rest workers to Franco.

No excuse That is not the situation today, and both the bureaucracy and its enemies know it.

But confidence in their final victory must not serve as an excuse for complacency or silence.

We denounce the barbaric and cynical methods used by the Stalinist bureaucracy in silencing the voices of those who wish to return to the road of Lenin.

We also denounce what has been until now the silent acqulescence of the British Communist Party leaders in this onslaught on the Soviet opposition.

Gollan's 'opposition' to the Kremlin invasion of Czechoslovakia is exposed as a fraud when he fails to speak out against the identical methods being used in the Soviet Union-and especially against those who stand in solidarity with the Czech people.

Yakir, Litvinov and others take to the streets of Moscow. defying the pogroms mobilized by the Stalinist secret police and raised their voices and their banners against a return to the dark days of Stalin.

Cannot the leaders of the British Communist Party, from the safety of their King Street offices, speak out with them against this crime?

We appeal to all Communist Party members to join with us in demanding that the entire labour movement, in the name of socialism, call for the release of all oppositionists in the Soviet Union and an end to the Stalinist inquisition.