Interviews with Mr. S., 2022-03-23, 1989-03-02

Mr. S. describes his early years, how his dissident views formed, his first arrest under Article 70 of the Criminal Code, his expert psychiatric evaluation at the Serbsky Institute, and the judicial procedure that followed. He describes his subsequent commitment in an 'ordinary' psychiatric hospital and shares insights about the internal regulations, regime, and the release procedure. He also talks about his next arrest and the legal aspects of it. Mr. S. shares his views about whether Soviet psychiatrists seriously believed that 'failure to adapt to the society' was a sign of mental illness and whether they can be blamed for presumably following the orders from above. Mr. S. proceedes to describe his transfer to a special psychiatric hospital, the mass release of political prisoners in 1987, the reasons for such a drastic change of the political course in the Soviet Union, and gives an overview of the U.S. – U.S.S.R. relationship in the second half of the twentieth century. He then talks about how the 1989 U.S. State Department psychiatric mission to the U.S.S.R. fit into the broader human rights negotiations in the CSCE. Mr. S. tells how he taken off the psychiatric register and legally rehabilitated; he talks about the destiny of the Criminal Code 'political' articles 70 and 190-1 and current political articles in Russian Criminal Code used to suppress dissent. Mr. S. shares about his life and political activity after 1989, his subsequent arrests, and his assessment of the evolution of civil and political freedom in Russia after 1989. He then talks about the future of Russia, his own future as a dissident in Russia, and his views about the Russian war in Ukraine.

Olena Protsenko, a Post-doctoral Research Associate in Psychiatry and Law at the University of Virginia School of Law, conducted this interview remotely over the Zoom application.

In addition to the oral history given in 2022, this file contains a recording of an interview that Mr. S gave on March 2, 1989.