Putin Expands Use of Soviet-Style Punitive Psychiatry Across Russia

Executive Summary:

• Throughout his tenure, but especially since the start of his expanded war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has dramatically expanded the use of punitive psychiatry against his opponents and other dissenters, a practice that its victims have said made the Soviet Union, and is making Russia today, “an evil empire.”
• A major difference in the uses of punitive psychiatry by the Russian regime today compared to the Soviet Union is that the latter employed it against high-profile dissidents, while today, it is most often targeted toward Russian regions and republics.
• As the uses of punitive psychiatry today are largely unnoticed by Western observers and thus escape serious criticism, its use is likely to expand further, limited only by the number of opponents Putin faces and the relatively high costs of psychiatric imprisonment compared to other methods of intimidation and control. 

One of the most horrific practices of the late Soviet period was the use of psychiatry to punish and even eliminate political opponents of the regime. Some of the victims of this practice were subject to long periods of detention and the use of mind-altering drugs. Unsurprisingly,  other dissidents and the West were both sharply critical of such practices (see the cases described in Executed by Madness (Казнимые сумасшествием) (in Russian; London, 1971); and Sidney Block and Peter Reddaway, Russia’s Political Hospitals: The Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union (London, 1977)). With the fall of the Soviet Union, Russians worked hard to eliminate this horrific practice, largely succeeding during the first decade of post-Soviet Russia in ending a practice that its victims said had made the Soviet Union and, more recently, Russia truly “an evil empire” (Agents.media, May 22, 2024).  As Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime maintains power, and especially in the years since he launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, however, he has dramatically expanded the use of punitive psychiatry against his opponents and other dissenters. According to one investigation, the number of victims has risen by at least 500 percent since 2022 (Agents.media, May 22, 2024). 

There has been one major difference in Putin’s approach as compared to Soviet times. The Soviets under Leonid Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982, misused psychiatry against high-profile dissidents in Moscow, most often at the notorious Serbsky Institute, in actions that attracted widespread international condemnation. Putin, on the other hand, has employed it primarily in the regions and republics of Russia. (On Putin’s initial steps, see EDM, March 12, 2008, November 13, 2012; on his use of punitive psychiatry far beyond Moscow’s ring road, see Window on Eurasia, March 22, 2021; Siber.Realii, January 26.) That refocusing of attention has allowed the Kremlin leader to retain the intimidating effects of punitive psychiatry but avoid much of the domestic and Western criticism that his predecessors’ actions repeatedly attracted. If Putin succeeds in continuing to avoid serious criticism for his punitive psychiatry, he is likely to continue to expand the use of this criminal practice further. He would be limited only by the number of opponents he has not been able to suppress or drive out by other means, as well as by the relatively high costs of psychiatric imprisonment compared to other methods of intimidation and control (Window on Eurasia, August 20, 2023).   

Among the most prominent recent examples of the confinement of Putin’s political opponents for various periods in psychiatric hospitals and prisons is the treatment of Sakha Shaman, Alexander Gabyshev. This is one of the few instances in recent history with a detailed discussion in independent media about these practices. Gabyshev has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals and prisons since 2019, and his case has led other regional officials to similarly harass dissidents in their areas (Idel.Realii, November 22, 2021). Other examples include the incarceration of Bashkir activist Ramilya Saitova in the Bashkir Republic Psychiatric Hospital near Ufa and the psychiatric examinations imposed on five of the leaders of the Ingush protest movement against the handing over of ten percent of the territory of their republic to Chechnya (Window on Eurasia, October 21, 2019; Idel.Realii, March 20, 2021). In these cases and dozens of other recent ones, the intended message is that “normal people do not protest,” in the words of a Russian psychiatrist who works for the Federal Security Service (FSB), Lala Kasimova. She stated, “If you fight against the authorities, you are mentally ill” and thereby deserve to be forcibly confined in a psychiatric hospital and treated with psychotropic medications (Radio Svoboda, October 16, 2022). This is not the same as “sluggish schizophrenia” (вялотекущая шизофрения, vyalotekushchaya shizofreniya), the preferred charge of Soviet-era psychiatrists concerning dissidents, but it is at least as elastic and can be applied to almost anyone at the insistence of the powers that be (Radio Svoboda, October 16, 2022).

Targeting individuals in the regions and republics rather than high-level officials Moscow and holding that any protest is a form of mental illness, of course, are not the only ways that Putin’s use of punitive psychiatry is different from its Soviet predecessor. First, unlike the Soviets, Putin has put in place over the last two decades numerous laws and regulations governing psychiatric confinement, laws, and regulations that, if interpreted by most Westerners, would appear anodyne, but when interpreted by the Russian government opens the way to human rights violations. This is typical of Putin’s approach and has helped him avoid criticism, despite the efforts of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia to bring the glaring differences between declared law and actual practice to the attention of the West (NPAR, accessed January 30). Second, Putin has used psychiatric prisons not against political opponents, but rather against members of religious sects. As many in the West oppose such organizations as well, they are less willing to criticize Putin and often fail to see how the regime extends its actions against sects to actions against political opponents (see EDM, January 23). Third, Moscow has closed down many regional media outlets that had reported about such abuses, making it difficult to find out exactly what has happened and allowing spokesmen for the Putin regime to contest any claims (see Robert van Voren, On Dissidents and Madness: From the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to ‘the Soviet Union’ of Vladimir Putin (Amsterdam, 2009)). 

As a result, protests by international human rights, medical groups, and Western governments about punitive psychiatry in Putin’s Russia have become significantly less frequent and impassioned than at the end of Soviet times. Both the groups and the governments continue to note what the Russian government is doing, but there is nothing like the intensity of protests that were regularly featured in the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, the Kremlin assumes that it can continue to expand its punitive psychiatry, especially if the target’s focus remains outside of Moscow and thus beyond the attention of Western media and diplomats. In addition, the Kremlin assumes it can cast these efforts as necessary steps to protect “traditional values,” a position attractive to an increasing number of people and regimes in the West. Western retreat on this issue, however, opens the way to an even larger Russian advance against human rights and the imposition of an oppressive regime.