Moscow Serbsky Institute

Moscow Serbsky Institute for Social and Forensic Psychiatry ( _ru. Центр социальной и судебной психиатрии им. В.П.Сербского) is a psychiatric hospital and the main center for the forensic psychiatry of the Soviet Union and Russia. The hospital got a lot of negative publicity because many Soviet dissidents were incarcerated and tortured there.

Institute

The Institute was organized in 1921. The institute is named after Russian psychiatrist Vladimir Serbsky. One of the main stated purpose of the institute is forensic psychiatry for the criminal courts. Moscow Serbsky Institute conducts more than 2,500 court-ordered evaluations per year [http://www.medportal.ru/clinics/guide/213/ Official Site] ru icon ] .

The Institute also claimed leadership in studying different types of psychosis, brain trauma, alcoholism and drug addiction. Among the celebrities treated there of addictions was Vladimir Vysotsky [http://www.newsru.com/russia/28nov2001/serbskogo.html Article about the Institute] in Newsru ru icon ] . The current director of the Institute is Tatyana Dmitrieva [ [http://www.biograph.comstar.ru/bank/dmitrieva_tb.htm Biography of Tatiana Dmitrieva] ru icon ]

Instrument of psychiatric repressions

In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally. The official explanation was that "no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and communism". Such hospitals were called Psikhushkas (a Russian colloquialism).

Alexander Esenin-Volpin, Viktor Nekipelov, and Zviad Gamsakhurdia [http://www.geocities.com/shavlego/AdamLazi.htm] were among the prisoners of Serbsky Institute. Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko was determined as insane in the Serbsky Institute because he "was unshakably convinced of the rightness of his actions" and twisted by "reformist ideas."

The official Soviet psychiatric science also came up with the definition of "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia", a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace on other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a "struggle for truth and justice" are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Serbsky Institute professors (a quote [Applebaum, 2003] from Vladimir Bukovsky's archives). Some of them had high rank in the MVD, such as the infamous Danil Luntz, who was characterized by Viktor Nekipelov as "no better than the criminal doctors who performed inhuman experiments on the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps".

Recent years

According to the Institute director Tatyana Dmitrieva the Institute is completely changed now and is not used for the repressive psychiatry anymore. The rooms where Soviet dissidents were imprisoned are used only to treat alcohol and drug addicts now.

Many psychiatric trials were pursued in order to confirm the inability to understand of many high-rank officials in cases of rapes and murders, as occurred in Chechnya by Yuri Budanov (he was eventually charged for his crimes, after more than three years of trials).

On the other hand, Yuri Savenko, head of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia alleges that "practically nothing has changed. They have no shame at the institute about their role with the Communists. They are the same people, and they do not want to apologize for all their actions in the past" . Attorney Karen Nersisyan agrees: "If they didn’t tell me it’s the Russian Federation now, I wouldn’t know there was any difference at Serbsky Institute from Soviet times. Serbsky is not an organ of medicine. It’s an organ of power."

Recent controversies

Moscow Serbsky Institute conducts many court-ordered evaluations. Results of some of them are hotly disputed

*When war criminal Yuri Budanov was tested there in 2002, the panel conducting the inquiry was led by Tamara Pechernikova, who condemned poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya. Budanov was found not guilty by reason of "temporary insanity". After public outrage, he was found sane by another panel that included Georgi Morozov, the former Serbsky director who declared many dissidents insane in the past. [http://www.chechentimes.org/en/comments/?id=10108 Psychiatry’s painful past resurfaces] - from Washington Post 2002]

*Serbsky Institute also made an evaluation of the alleged mass poisoning of hundreds of Chechen school children [http://2006.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2006/92n/n92n-s10.shtml A mysterious illness moves along the roads and makes frequent stops in schools (Russian)] - by Anna Politkovskaya, Novaya Gazeta, 2006. ] Panel found that the disease was caused simply the "psycho-emotional tension". [http://www.jamestown.org/publications_details.php?volume_id=416&issue_id=3672 What made Chechen schoolchildren ill?] - The Jamestown Foundation, March 30, 2006 ] [http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/19/MNGVJHOKJE1.DTL War-related stress suspected in sick Chechen girls] - by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, March 19, 2006]

*There are numerous cases when people "inconvenient" for Russian authorities are imprisoned in psychiatric institutions in 2000s. [http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-psychiatry30may30,1,3925644.story?page=1&ctrack=1&cset=true Speak Out? Are You Crazy?] - by Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, May 30, 2006 ] [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/29/AR2006092901592_pf.html In Russia, Psychiatry Is Again a Tool Against Dissent] - by Peter Finn, Washington Post, September 30, 2006] [http://www.aapsonline.org/nod/newsofday339.php Psychiatry used as a tool against dissent] - by Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, October 2, 2006 ] . Some of the these people were diagnosed at the Serbsky Institute.

In fiction

In the 1983 novel Firefox Down by Craig Thomas, captured American pilot Mitchell Gant is imprisoned in a KGB psychiatric clinic "associated with the Serbsky Institute", where he is drugged and interrogated to force him to reveal the location of the Firefox aircraft, which he has stolen and flown out of Russia.

References

See also

* Psikhushka
* Psychiatric imprisonment
* Human rights abuses
* Anti-psychiatry
* Punitive psychiatry in the Soviet Union
* Psychiatric survivors movement
* Elli Perkins

Bibliography

* cite book
last = Antébi
first = Elizabeth
title = Droit d'asiles en Union Soviétique
location = Paris
publisher = Julliard
year = 1977
id = ISBN 2260000657
* cite book
last = Applebaum
first = Anne
title =
location = New York
publisher = Doubleday
year = 2003
id = ISBN 0-7679-0056-1
* cite book
last = Boulet
first = Marc
title = Dans la peau d'un...
location = Paris
publisher = Seuil
year = 2001
id = ISBN 2-02-038072-2
* cite book
last = Fireside
first = Harvey
title = Soviet Psychoprisons

External links

* [http://www.medportal.ru/clinics/guide/213/ Official Information] ru icon