BOOK REVIEW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83B00140R000100030039-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 7
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 15, 2007
• Sequence Number: 39
• Publication Date: October 9, 1981
• Content Type: CABLE

Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83BOO14OR000100030039-0
Next 16 Page(s) In Document Denied
STAT
Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83BOO14OR000100030039-0
 Problems of Communism July-August 1981
within the Soviet leadership. At the
same time, Murphy reminds us that
the post-Brezhnev generation are
also political apprentices of the
Brezhnev political structure. That
political structure originated under
Stalin and promotes a basic under-
lying continuity in mentality of all
those who achieve high office in the
Soviet Union, whatever the dispar-
ate nature of their formative life ex-
periences, careers, or backgrounds.
It is little consolation for any of us
that such a political structure con-
tinues to single out future Soviet
leaders more for their political cun-
ning than for their abilities or policy
views.
The "Action Arm" of the CPSU
By John J. Dziak
LENNARD D. GERSON. The Secret
Police in Lenin's Russia.
Phi''3delphia, PA, Temple
University Press, 1976.
GORDON BROOK-SHEPHERD. The
Storm Petrels: The Flight of the
First Soviet Defectors. London,
Collins, 1977.
ALEKSEI MYAGKOV. Inside the
KGB: An Expose by an Officer of
the Third Directorate. Richmond,
Surrey, England, The Foreign
Affairs Publishing Company,
1976.
IT HAS BEEN roughly seven years
since John Barron's KGB attracted
Western attention to the "action
arm" of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union (CPSU).1 His study ap-
propriately emphasized that the
Committee for State Security (KGB)
is something much more than just
another police organ or foreign in-
telligence service.
In the Soviet Union, the intelli-
gence and security services have
VLADIMIR SAKHAROV and
UMBERTO TOSI. High Treason.
New York, NY, G.P. Putnam's
Sons, 1980.
US CONGRESS, PERMANENT
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
INTELLIGENCE. Soviet Covert
Action: the Forgery Offensive,
Hearings, 96th Congress, 2nd
Session, February 6, 19, 1980.
Washington, DC, US Government
Printing Office, 1980.
HARRY ROSITZKE. The KGB: The
Eyes of the People. New York, NY,
Doubleday and Company, 1981.
enjoyed a pervasive and powerful
position since 1917. Created a little
more than a month after the Bolshe-
vik coup of November 7, 1917,
these services-the All-Russian Ex-
traordinary Commission to Combat
Counterrevolution and Sabotage
(CHEKA) and its successors-soon
became the mainstay of the party, a
situation recognized by every Soviet
leader from Vladimir Lenin through
Leonid Brezhnev. Indeed, it is no
accident that the KGB and its prede-
cessors have occupied a special
position as the cutting edge of party
authority domestically and the
leading organ in Soviet foreign ac-
tivities. Lenin consciously collabo-
rated with F. Dzerzhinskiy, the head
of the CHEKA, in granting the
CHEKA the extralegal or translegal
authority to employ special meas-
ures to guarantee the monopoly of
power of his faction. losif Stalin built
on such precedents, adroitly using
them to his own advantage, though
obviously at the party's (and coun-
try's) expense. Nikita Khrushchev
may have reined the KGB in, but he
did it primarily to insure its role as
servant of the party and not the
reverse. Moreover, he left the reins
on it considerably more slack with
respect to the country as a whole.
Brezhnev has essentially followed
the reorientation of his predecessor,
carefully overseeing the return of
the security organs to the tradition of
Dzerzhinskiy and Lenin, that of
"most trusted servant" and "action
arm" of the party.2
' For a survey of the function of the KGB and its
predecessors as well as its relationship to the party, see
Ronald Hingley, The Russian Secret Police: Muscovite,
Imperial Russian and Soviet Political Security Operations
1565-1970, New York, NY. Simon and Schuster, 1970.
 Book Reviews
It needs to be stressed that the
position of the Soviet security or-
gans, and principally the KGB rela-
tive to the party, is a special one
unmatched by any other Soviet insti-
tution, including the military. As the
party's praetorian guard, the KGB
has been allowed, without interrup-
tion, to penetrate every facet of the
Soviet system, domestic or foreign.
This penetration extends to the mili-
tary as well as to the KGB's sister
services, the Ministry of Internal Af-
fairs (MVD) and the Chief Intelli-
gence Directorate (GRU) of the Gen-
eral Staff. The KGB deploys its own
armed forces-border guards, 9th
Directorate troops, signal troops-
and may extend this control to the
internal security troops of the MVD,
together comprising military forces
of at least half a million men inde-
pendent of Marshal D. F. Ustinov's
Ministry of Defense. In foreign oper-
ations, the KGB clearly takes prece-
dence over the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, itself also subject to KGB
penetration and co-optation of its
personnel. KGB Chief Yu. V. Andro-
pov, a Brezhnev confidante of long
standing, is a voting.member of the
Politburo and reportedly one of the
six or seven permanent members of
the Defense Council, an elite inner
group frequently rumored to be the
true locus of central decision-
making.3 Hence, when examining
the KGB, we are dealing with some-
thing beyond just another state in-
stitution or another competitor in
some interest-group model. The
party without the KGB simply would
not be the party as we know it.
UNFORTUNATELY, few scholars
have paid the party-KGB phalanx
the serious and in-depth attention it
clearly merits. Many treatises on
3 For information on the Defense Council, see John J.
Dziak, Soviet Military Doctrine and Power, New York, NY,
National Strategy Information Center, 1981; and Harriet
Fast Scott and William F. Scott, The Armed Forces of the
USSR, 2nd ed., Boulder, CO, Westview, 1981.
Soviet politics and the Soviet system
either ignore the security and in-
telligence apparatus or relegate it to
the cursory coverage befitting a sub-
ject not open to meaningful scholar-
ly inquiry. Furthermore, the, special-
ized writings on the topic are quite
sparse. For instance, there has yet
to appear a definitive history of the
Soviet intelligence and security serv-
ices, notwithstanding commendable
surveys such as Ronald Hingley's
The Russian Secret Police or the
valuable contributions of Robert
Slusser.4 Since the publication of
Barron's KGB in 1974, in fact, out-
put on the subject has increased
only slightly, and a lot of this has
come from outside the academic
community.
One fine exception to this general-
ly dismal state of affairs is Lennard
Gerson's The Secret Police in
Lenin's Russia. This superior inquiry
deserves inclusion on required read-
ing lists for Soviet history and gov-
ernment courses. Among the sev-
eral conclusions one may draw from
Gerson's research, two merit high-
lighting for present purposes. First,
the author convincingly demon-
strates that productive analysis of
the Soviet secret police is possible
from open and available sources.
Too often the argument is proffered
that the very nature of the subject
inhibits meaningful inquiry, for the
data are buried in party/KGB ar-
chives, destroyed, or manipulated
according to the changing interpre-
tations of Soviet historiography.
While these are real limitations
which render the scholar's task es-
pecially onerous, Gerson has shown
that it can be done and done well.
The pertinent Soviet party and state
documents and memoir literature
which he has surfaced in them-
selves provide the necessary points
' See Hingley, op. cit.; Simon Wolin and Robert M.
Slusser, The Soviet Secret Police, Westport, CT,
Greenwood Press, 1975.
of departure for still further lines of
investigation.
Second, Gerson has meticulously
chronicled the Leninist roots of
party/state-directed terror as an in-
stitutionalized instrument of party
control. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
has so poignantly witnessed,
katorga and Gulag were not mere
aberrations attributable to the
whims of a vozhd' (Stalin) who
betrayed the noble ideals of a new
era of history ushered in by Lenin.5
Gerson concludes that it was "dur-
ing the formative years of Bolshevik
rule, when violence and terror were
extolled by men of theory and freely
indulged in by men of action, [that]
they had imprisoned and executed
thousands upon thousands to pre-
serve the Bolshevik monopoly of
power. For this they earned the
sincere gratitude of the Party's
leaders" (p. 274).
Internal repression and the dy-
namics of party-police interaction
constitute but one facet of the ac-
tivities of the Soviet security organs.
Intelligence, espionage, covert ac-
tion, disinformation and deception
undertakings, and counterintelli-
gence are others, and they are dealt
with in the rest of the works under
review. Gordon Brook-Shepherd
elucidates the workings of the Soviet
power elite and its foreign opera-
tions by retelling the odysseys of
several Soviet officials who defected
to the West before World War 11. The
Storm Petrels focuses on five promi-
nent Soviet defectors, ranging from
Boris Bajanov, who had been
Stalin's personal assistant and sec-
retary to the Politburo before he left
the USSR in 1928, to Alexander
Orlov, one of the highest-ranking
Soviet intelligence officers ever to
flee the system. Though each of the
defectors-Bajanov, Georges Aga-
bekov, Grigoriy Bessedovsky, Walter
Aleksanor Saz'er3fn. Gulag Archipelago, New York,
NY. Harper anc Row. 1979.
54
Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83B0014OR000100030039-0
 Problems of Communism July-August 1981
Krivitsky, and Orlov-wrote his own
memoirs, Brook-Shepherd relies
more on hitherto unpublished West-
ern official sources and, in the case
of Bajanov, on a lengthy personal
interview.
The result is an intriguing tapestry
of vignettes. Some of the most in-
triguing points, however, Brook-
Shepherd was not able to follow up
on. There is a possibility, for exam-
ple, that Bessedovsky was "turned
back" to Soviet service, especially in
the immediate postwar years in
Paris, where the KGB's I. I. Agayants
(later to head the KGB's new Disin-
formation Department) was operat-
ing (p. 105).6 Bessedovsky's trail
simply disappeared in the French
Riviera during the early years after
the war. Similarly, Orlov hinted tan-
talizingly that a Ukrainian faction of
the Unified State Political Direc-
torate (OGPU) had i:itrigued, with
possible army complicity, against
Stalin before both the military and
the police were savaged in the
purges of the 1930's, but he would
say no more. An intelligence officer
to the end, he revealed only what he
wished and took the rest with him
when he died in April 1973.
Nevertheless, Brook-Shepherd's
account has the highly readable
style of an accomplished journalist.
Its major drawback from a research-
er's perspective is the lack of bibli-
ography and pertinent citations.
IN THE STUDY of Soviet intelligence
and security services, defector tes-
timony provides some of the most
telling detail available, especially on
operational specifics. Much of this
information has become available as
published testimony before various
governmental commissions and
Congressional hearings. The rest
has appeared in the form of memoir
? On Agayants, see also Barron, op. cit.; and Ladislav
Bittman, The Deception Game: Czechoslovak Intelligence
in Soviet Political Warfare, Syracuse, NY, Syracuse
University Research Corporation, 1972.
literature, although this seems to
have had an impact only well after
the events described. Many of the
early defectors from the security or
state apparat were disillusioned
revolutionaries, themselves partici-
pants in the drama of the construc-
tion of the Soviet state. More recent
arrivals have manifested a different
type of disillusionment, coming as
they have from an ensconced elite
long since purged of early doubters.
They have also brought with them
experiences honed in the milieu of
post-Stalin developments.
Former KGB Captain Alexei
Myagkov's Inside the KGB may
strike some readers at first as
merely another expose by a disaf-
fected insider. Yet an appreciation
of where in the KGB Myagkov
worked and a careful reading of his
narrative as well as of the docu-
ments he brought with him reveals
this book to be one of the more sig-
nificant contributions to the litera-
ture on Soviet intelligence. Myagkov
was an officer of the KGB's Third Di-
rectorate, the successor to the
Soviet military counterespionage
organs known as SMERSH and
counterintelligence watchdog over
the Soviet military. To this reviewer's
knowledge, he is the only defector
since the immediate postwar years
from within the Third Directorate.
The Third Directorate, among
other things, runs in the military
what the Second Chief Directorate
does in the rest of Soviet society-an
intricate informant network. The
organizational means for this activity
are known as Special Departments,
and it was in one of these units in the
Group of Soviet Forces in Germany
that Myagkov worked from 1969 un-
til his defection in early 1974. His
service in this capacity provides in-
sight into the nature of the day-to-
day interaction of the KGB and the
military, the superior position of the
former, and the mandatory system
for unmasking enemies within the Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1974.
ranks of the Soviet armed forces.
In addition to the operational as-
pects of Myagkov's KGB duties, his
book provides glimpses into the
functioning and privileges of the
Soviet elite, including the party's
"nomenclature" system within the
armed forces and the attendant
overlap of privilege, bribery, and the
second economy. What emerges
from his brief memoir is a compact
case study of how the party, the mili-
tary, and the KGB function in mu-
tually beneficial symbiosis, and this
in spite of the frictions generated by
KGB penetration of the armed
forces. Myagkov's microcosmic
view adds valuable KGB-party-mili-
tary detail to the broader phe-
nomenon of an established self-per-
petuating elite first scrutinized by
that early believer-turned-dissident,
Milovan Djilas.7
Myagkov's perspective is essen-
tially one from the bottom up-i.e.,
that of a former enlisted man who
moved into the operational levels of
the KGB as a junior officer. In this
sense, it is the tactical?operational
perspective of the raw material of
the party's "action arm." A more
"strategic" panorama is provided by
Vladimir Sakharov's High Treason.
The son of a well-connected KGB
father, Sakharov was a member of
the Soviet aristocracy, thereby en-
joying both privilege and access.
Membership in such an elite helped
provide Sakharov entrance to the In-
stitute of International Relations in
preparation for service in the Minis-
try of Foreign Affairs and to that
most desired perquisite, foreign
travel. Though not a KGB officer,
Sakharov was a co-optee. His
father's influence was used to en-
sure that this institutional connec-
tion progressed no further, even
after the KGB had pressed young
Sakharov to integrate as a KGB reg-
55
Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83BOO14OR000100030039-0
 ular. Still, Sakharov served the
KGB-not uncommon for many, if
not most, Soviet Foreign Ministry
personnel overseas.
Sakharov's activities in the Middle
East were first mentioned in John
Barron's KGB, not long after
Sakharov's defection to the US in
1971. High Treason adds intimate
detail, ranging from Sakharov's con-
nections to elite KGB and party
families, to the Soviet penetration of
Abdel Nasser's Egypt and KGB/GRU
operations involving guerrilla and
terrorist groups in the Middle East.
Like Oleg Penkovskiy,8 Sakharov
was a defector/agent-in-place, hav-
ing been recruited by the US some
time (undisclosed) before his actual
flight in 1971.
High Treason is the first account
since Alexander Kaznacheyev's In-
side a Soviet Embassy to provide
working details on the structure and
operations of Soviet intelligence resi-
dencies abroad.9 Confirming the
continued preeminence of the KGB
over the Foreign Ministry both in
Moscow and abroad, Sakharov
adds other information pointing to
an enhanced role in foreign affairs
for certain higher party organs. Spe-
cifically, B. N. Ponomarev's Inter-
national Department of the Central
Committee, besides having a central
role in foreign policy formulation, is
a critical player in policy execution.
Sakharov observes that Interna-
tional Department representatives
at important foreign posts outranked
both the KGB resident and the am-
bassador, serving as the senior
Soviet authorities overseeing all ac-
tivities, whether diplomatic, sub-
versive, or intelligence. Some ana-
lysts, like Leonard Schapiro, have
long held that Ponomarev's depart-
ment and not the Foreign Ministry is
the true locus of foreign policy.10
Sahkarov's revelations support this
contention and indicate another
dimension to the Department's ac-
tivities: on-site supervision of all
Soviet intelligence, subversion, dis-
information, and other covert action
operations.
When viewed in the context of the
reorientation of the KGB's role ini-
tiated by Khrushchev and KGB chief
A. N. Shelepin in late 1958, such a
situation is not all that surprising.
The objective of these two men was
to refocus the secret police along
the lines initially established by
Lenin and Dzerzhinskiy-i.e., to re-
turn it to being an action instrument
of the party, fulfilling party objec-
tives and responding to party direc-
tion. Indeed, that appeared to be
the primary rationale for the ap-
pointment of Shelepin and the drop-
ping of General I. A. Serov (who
moved to the GRU) as head of the
organization. A clean leadership
break was made to prepare the KGB
for the more sophisticated opera-
tions mandated by Khrushchev's
"peaceful coexistence" policy. While
this step made good foreign policy
sense, it may, of course, have been
a foolish internal political move, for
both Shelepin and his handpicked
successor, V. Ye. Semichastnyy,
were among the plotters of Khru-
shchev's downfall in 1964.
AT ANY RATE, the changes begun in
1958 ushered in a new phase of
KGB foreign operations. Concurrent
with the appointment of Shelepin
was the selection of Colonel I. I.
Agayants-who, as noted earlier,
had run disinformation operations in
Paris-to head the new Disinforma-
' See Oleg Penkovsky, The Penkovsky Papers, London.
Collins, 1965.
' Alexander Kaznacheyev, Ins-de a Soviet Embassy:
Experiences of a Russian Diplomat in Burma, Philadelphia,
PA, Lippincott, 1962.
10 Leonard Schapiro, "The ln:ernaxnal Department of
the CPSU: Key to Soviet Policy." International Journal
(Toronto), Winter 1976-1977, pp. 41-58.
11 On the "Trust" operation, see Geoffrey Bailey, The
Conspirators, New York, NY, Harpers, 1960; S. L.
Voytsekhovskry, Trest-Vospomrnanrya i documenty (The
Trust-Recollections and Documents), London, Ontario,
Zarya Publishers, 1974.
tion Department of the KGB's First
Chief Directorate. Although the
Soviets had for years carried out
centrally directed deception and
disinformation activities-the highly
successful "Trust" operation of
1922-27 was an almost textbook
example'1-the institutionalization
of such a function portended more
and better-organized efforts. By the
time of Agayants's death in 1968, he
had been a KGB general for several
years; and by the early 1970's, the
Disinformation Department itself
had been bureaucratically up-
graded to the level of Service
("Sluzhba A"). Both developments
were clear indicators of the ac-
complishments and weight of
Agayants and his organization.
Further signs of an intent to con-
duct a full range of "active meas-
ures" came in March 1978 with the
creation of the Central Committee's
International Information Depart-
ment, under the direction of Leonid
Zamyatin, Brezhnev intimate and
former chief of the press agency
TASS. In the same year, the KGB
itself was formally redesignated the
KGB of the USSR and thereby re-
lieved of its titular subordination to
the Council of Ministers. Thus,
Brezhnev not only has continued the
reorientation that Khrushchev set in
motion in 1958 but has strength-
ened it by fashioning a party con-
glomerate composed of the Interna-
tional Department, the International
Information Department, and the
KGB itself. The board of directors of
the "active measures" apparat are
all members of the Politburo, Secre-
tariat, or Central Committee, and in-
clude such prominent figures as
Brezhnev, M. A. Suslov, Andropov
(also KGB chief), Ponomarev, K. V.
Rusakov, and Zamyatin.
Soviet Covert Action: The Forgery
Offensive, issued in 1980 by the
Senate Permanent Select Commit-
tee on Intelligence, deals with the
results of these post-Khrushchev de-
56
Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83BOO14OR000100030039-0
 Problems of Communism July-August 1981
velopments-specifically, the role of
both propaganda and covert action
in Soviet foreign policy.-It includes a
study and testimony on Soviet "ac-
tive measures," plus documentation
on Soviet or Soviet-inspired forger-
ies, by the Central Intelligence Agen-
cy and testimony by Ladislav Bitt-
man, former deputy chief of the
Czech intelligence service's Disinfor-
mation Department. The document
is highly useful on several counts. It
provides valuable specifics on the
centralized party-KGB phalanx for
conceiving and executing/oversee-
ing broad covert action and prop-
aganda initiatives. There are several
excellent case studies of Soviet ac-
tion-e.g., against US production of
neutron weapons and the modern-
ization of NATO theater nuclear
forces. It contains important anal-
ysis of the increase in Soviet bloc
forgeries aimed at discrediting the
US and allied countries, as well as
facsimiles of many of the forged
materials. Finally, the testimony of
Bittman places such "active meas-
ures" in the context of broader ob-
jectives and operations of Soviet
bloc foreign policy. In sum, Soviet
Covert Action is one of the more val-
uable additions to the small body of
dependable literature treating
Soviet intelligence and merits care-
ful reading by those interested in
that realm of Soviet foreign policy
which transcends traditional
diplomacy.
The last work under considera-
tion, Harry Rositzke's The KGB: The
Eyes of the People, is the only study
of those reviewed here produced by
a former US intelligence officer.
Rositzke began his intelligence
career in the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS) and then spent the
bulk of his service in the Central In-
telligence Agency (CIA) on the
operational side, "viewing the KGB
in action both at home and abroad"
(p. X).
The book is also the most difficult
of the items under review to come to
grips with. It seems to abound with
stark declarations such as the jacket
characterization of the KGB as the
"world's best intelligence organiza-
tion," or-more troublesome-
robust assertions such as "it [the
KGB) is a straightforward, secret
service, even in its more devious
and deceptive practices" (p. ix); or
"organized ethnic and religious
minorities face the KGB with the
least problem of security control" (p.
254). The problem with such state-
ments is that they are, at the least,
debatable and merit much more in
the way of explication, rationale,
and convincing supporting develop-
ment.
While the KGB qualifies as one of
the most pervasive and powerful
security services the world has ever
seen, this reviewer would hesitate to
characterize it as the world's best in-
telligence organization. To be sure,
it is probably the largest single intel-
ligence service, but a judicious com-
parison with others, including
smaller intelligence services such as
the Israeli organization, is warranted
before any sweeping conclusion can
be drawn about the quality of its ef-
forts.
Moreover, the fact that the KGB,
unfettered by many of the govern-
mental, constitutional, and societal
checks imposed on Western serv-
ices, has a unique mandate, argues
against characterization of it as just
a "straightforward secret service."
Differences in degree ultimately add
up to differences in kind. Although
KGB officers are not giants of capa-
bility, the position of their service in
the Soviet system imposes far fewer
restraints on them in both internal
and international operations, than
intelligence officers in constitution-
ally limited systems face.
Essentially an anecdotal treat-
ment, Rositzke's KGB includes
many fascinating cases from before
World War 11 as well as from the con-
temporary period, yet a connective
theme is difficult to pinpoint be-
cause of skips in chronology, case
flashbacks, and undeveloped asser-
tions which do not build a compel-
ling narrative. This is an interesting
work, but it leaves too many loose
ends.
IN CONCLUSION, one may say that
despite some of the fine contribu-
tions discussed above, there is
much more work that needs to be
done on the Soviet intelligence and
security services. To supplement the
necessarily sporadic information
that is available from the infrequent
"petrels," solidly researched in-
quiries are essential. This is espe-
cially the case with regard to the
original formation and role of the
political police under Lenin. George
Leggett's forthcoming volume on the
CHEKA is most welcome in this
respect and promises to be a solid
complement to Gerson's book.12
However, later periods also de-
serve further scrutiny, especially
relative to the role of the KGB within
the party-state structure. Indeed, a
case can be made for examining the
party and police apparatuses
together rather than as entirely
separate institutional entities. For
example, Brezhnev has staffed the
security services with close party as-
sociates from earlier days (An-
dropov, S. K. Tsvigun, G. K. Tsinev,
V. M. Chebrikov, and others in the
KGB; N. A. Shchelokov and the late
V. S. Paputin in the MVD). More-
over, because the chairman of the
KGB, the party's "action arm," is a
member of the Politburo and re-
putedly a Defense Council member
as well, the KGB today appears to
be in a stronger postion than at any
time since Stalin's death and the fall
of L. P. Beriya, yet it achieved this
12 (George Leggett's. The CHEKA: Lenin's Political Police,
was released by oxford University Press after this essay-
review was written-Eds.l
57
Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83B00140R000100030039-0 -
 Book Reviews
status under and through Brezhnev
and not through any free-wheeling
maneuverings of its own. Brezhnev,
Psychiatry and the Soviet State
it would seem, has successfully car-
ried the reorientation begun by
Khrushchev to its logical end-the
shaping of a faithful servant of the
party and a partner for the party in
pursuit of the party's objectives.
By Harvey Fireside
ALEXANDER PODRABINEK.
Punitive Medicine. Ann Arbor, MI,
Karoma Publishers, 1980.
SIDNEY BLOCH AND PETER
REDDAWAY. Psychiatric Terror:
How Soviet Psychiatry Is Used to
Suppress Dissent. New York, NY,
Basic Books, 1977.
P.S. GRIGORENKO. The
Grigorenko Papers. Boulder, CO,
Westview Press, 1976.
WESTERN CHARGES that Soviet
psychiatry has been corrupted by
the political bias of its practitioners
rest on hundreds of well-document-
ed cases over the past decade. Alex-
ander Podrabinek inscribes 200
names on a "white list" of inmates of
the "special" psychiatric hospitals
whose only crime was political or
religious dissent. Sidney.Bloch and
Peter Reddaway's "register of vic-
tims of Soviet psychiatric abuse"
runs to 210, half of them supple-
mentary to Podrabinek's list. From
these and other sources, such as
the London-based human rights
organization Amnesty International,
it is possible to estimate that be-
VICTOR NEKIPELOV. Institute of
Fools: Notes from the Serbsky.
New York, NY, Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1980.
LEONID PLYUSHCH. History's
Carnival: A Dissident's
Autobiography. New York, NY,
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1977.
TATYANA KHODOROVICH, Ed.
The Case of Leonid Plyushch.
Boulder, CO, Westview Press,
1976.
tween 1,000 and 2,000 persons are
being forcibly treated in institutions
for the criminally insane to "cure"
them of their urges for free expres-
sion.
There are upwards of a dozen
"special" hospitals, or psycho-
prisons, operated by the Ministry of
the Interior (MVD). Conditions in
these institutions resemble the worst
snakepits of the psychiatric dark
ages. In addition, there is an exten-
sive network of "ordinary" hospitals
and local clinics to frighten would-be
dissenters into conformity.
What all these facilities have in
common is that they are run under
the cover of "socialist legality." Their
experts examine a suspect referred
to them by the "security organs,"
routinely supply a diagnosis of psy-
chopathy, paranoia, or "creeping
schizophrenia" to justify a judicial
determination of legal nonresponsi-
bility, and order a new inmate to be
drugged into stuporous submission.
The dissident's trial is conducted in
absentia, so that he has no oppor-
tunity to offer a plea that his sup-
porters might publicize and relay to
the West. His eventual release is
made contingent on a recantation of
offending opinions stigmatized as
"reformist delusions."
The existence of punitive psychi-
atry was revealed to the West in
June 1970, when the noted biologist
Zhores Medvedev was detained at
the Kaluga mental hospital for his
"schizophrenic" concern with politi-
cal reforms. It was immediately rec-
ognized by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
as a metastasis of the cancerous
Gulag archipelago of Stalin's time.
"Servile psychiatrists who break
their Hippocratic oath," observed
Solzhenitsyn, "are able to describe
concern for social problems as
'mental illness,' can declare a man
insane for being too passionate or
for being too calm, for the bright-
58
Approved For Release 2007/03/16: CIA-RDP83B00140R000100030039-0