The Soviet Union systematically used psychiatry to silence political dissidents. State psychiatrists, grouped around the Moscow School of Psychiatry, wielded a diagnosis called "sluggish schizophrenia"—a condition whose symptoms were said to be so slow to appear that it could be diagnosed even in their absence. In practice, anyone who disagreed with the Soviet state could be certified as mentally ill.
Dissidents declared mentally irresponsible were locked up in wards with violent patients and force-dosed with anti-psychotic drugs. Unlike legal proceedings, against which dissidents could prepare, psychiatric abuse left them feeling absolutely powerless.
Semyon Gluzman, a Ukrainian psychiatrist, was the first professional to call out the Moscow School. His samizdat campaign from Labour Colony Perm 35 helped turn Western psychiatry against Soviet practices. The first international committee to oppose the political abuse of psychiatry was established in Geneva, and the Soviet Union was ultimately expelled from the World Psychiatric Association.
After the Soviet collapse, Gluzman founded the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association in 1991, setting up the first rehabilitation centres and publishing manuals on human rights in psychiatric practice.
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