Radziecki szpital psychiatryczny jako forma zniewolenia

Abstract

A special function of the Soviet mental hospital – one of the tools of annihilating all forms of independent political and social thought – resulted from the general assumptions of the enslaving communist system. According to these assumptions, the totalitarian state was to rule all aspects of life and control all spheres of human activity. Modus operandi, assumed by the Bolsheviks, and then perfected by the Soviet authorities, resulting in a necessity for using all feasible mechanisms of enslavement and terror, tailored psychiatry and mental hospital to its needs. Moreover, a suitable legislative and theoretical background was created for these aims to enable their operation in the spirit of the law and with “scientific” justification. It can therefore be said that this was the most refined form of totalitarian enslavement, for – in the first place – mental hospital had a role parallel to prison or lager, i.e., it functioned as a form of external enslavement, and in the second – used by authorities usurping the rights to have total control over a human being – it acted as a means of enslaving the mind and the spirit.