Rethinking Psychiatric Terror against Nationalists in Ukraine: Spatial Dimensions of Post-Stalinist State Violence
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Date
2014
Authors
Bertelsen, Olga
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
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Abstract
This study focuses on psychiatric terror in the Soviet Union in the 1960s–1980s applied
to nationalists who constituted approximately one-tenth of those who fell victim to
political psychiatry. More specifically, through the spatial examination of two Ukrainian
psychiatric clinics’ practices and the individual history of the Ukrainian dissident
Victor Borovsky, this study analyses the effectiveness of silence that surrounded the
cases of “psychiatric patients” in the context of increasing discontent in the republic
and the national liberation movement. The medicalization of social control, psychiatric
abuses, state violence and brutality exacerbated non-violent popular resistance in
Ukraine, which culminated in political activism of Ukrainian patriots in the late
1980s, contributing greatly to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence
of independent Ukraine. Despite these ultimate outcomes, forced silence through
psychiatric terror was an effective tool in the Soviet arsenal of suppression.
Description
Keywords
state violence, psychiatric terror, silence, nationalists, Kharkiv, Ukraine
Citation
Bertelsen Olga. Rethinking Psychiatric Terror against Nationalists in Ukraine : Spatial Dimensions of Post-Stalinist State Violence [electronic resource] / Olga Bertelsen // Kyiv-Mohyla Humanities Journal. - 2014. - No. 1. - P. 27-76.