Recently, the term "mental illness" has been quite popular. Let's talk about the history of epidemic mental illness in the Soviet Union. In 1959, Khrushchev delivered a shocking speech at the Soviet Writers' Union: "Is it possible for some people here to go insane? The answer is yes. Those who oppose the Soviet Union, we can clearly say, their minds are obviously not normal, because only madmen would doubt the bright and beautiful future of the Soviet Union." Khrushchev's speech revealed a well-known secret: the severe epidemic and contagious mental illness crisis in the Soviet Union. It also sparked a long-lasting topic: how to prove one is not mentally ill if confined in a psychiatric hospital?
It is well known that the Soviet Union made two major contributions: the most upright jokes in human history and an all-encompassing mental illness. The origin of this epidemic is quite mysterious, yet it has a long history. It can be traced back to the Tsarist Russia period: in 1836, the famous Russian philosopher Chaadaev fiercely criticized serfdom in his "Philosophical Letters" and called for gradual reforms of the social system in Tsarist Russia. However, just a few days later, he was sent to a mental institution by the Moscow police on the grounds that "according to our decision, you are a madman."
French philosopher Michel Foucault mentioned in his work "Madness and Civilization" that mental illness is not as straightforward as medical concepts like malaria; rather, it is part of the operation of power machinery, a special existence between law and medicine. When power combines with medical diagnosis, psychiatric hospitals often become tools for the abuse of power. In the Soviet Union, this power was fully exercised, and the study of mental illness was creatively developed into a unique discipline.
The Soviet Union believed that Western psychiatric research lacked the positive spirit of materialism and was instead filled with the decadent thoughts of idealism. The theoretical system of psychiatric research in the Soviet Union held that individualism is a common psychological trauma in Western society, and complaints about difficult living conditions are a serious form of mental perversion. The representative figure in Soviet psychiatry, Andrei Snezhnevsky, dominated this field for forty years and invented the concept of "sluggish schizophrenia." He was highly regarded by successive Soviet leaders and received numerous honors. He believed that if a Soviet citizen was dissatisfied with reality, considered themselves to possess the truth, fantasized about reforming society, or even pursued the "reactionary" thoughts of the West, this was a typical manifestation of schizophrenia.
Most remarkably, Andrei Snezhnevsky also pointed out that schizophrenia has an indefinite incubation period, meaning that regardless of whether one exhibits symptoms, they may be a potential carrier of schizophrenia. Before the 1930s, such "patients" were usually physically removed or sent to Gulag labor camps. However, by the late 1940s, as the number of "patients" continued to surge and international attention increased, the Soviet "epidemic of mental illness" began to spread widely. For example, there was a forensic psychiatric research institute in Moscow, nominally studying social mental issues, but in reality, it was focused on how to diagnose a dissenting individual as mentally ill.
They even gave this operation a grand name—electrification psychotherapy. Moreover, there was a lofty justification: "For the mental and physical health of the patients, for the common good of society." Using the guise of treatment to dispose of inconvenient troubles was incredibly convenient, maintaining the dignity of the law, demonstrating humanitarian concern, bypassing judicial procedures, and solving social problems, achieving four goals in one move. In 1969, then KGB chief Andropov proposed to clear out dissenters against the Soviet Union all at once. Thus, he issued a decree—the "Regulations on Preventing Dangerous Behavior by Mental Patients," which mandated that doctors had the obligation to eliminate mental patients from society and had the right to identify mental patients mingling among the populace and subject them to electrification psychotherapy. Thus, the Soviet Union gave birth to a spectacle in the history of psychiatry: doctors launched widespread campaigns, fishing for diagnoses, always ready to declare someone mentally ill. A military doctor at the Shelebski Institute, Lentz, once proudly declared: "I say who is schizophrenic, and who is schizophrenic." In 1967, a report from the KGB's Fifth Directorate indicated that due to a large number of anti-Soviet cases, the existing psychiatric hospitals were insufficient, requesting at least five more. At that time, the Fifth Directorate already had 16 psychiatric hospitals, capable of accommodating 800,000 people. According to the mayor of St. Petersburg, in 1978, there were 4.5 million registered mental patients across the Soviet Union, while the population was less than 300 million, with the infection rate of mental illness exceeding that of Class B infectious diseases. By 1989, there were still 10.2 million people registered as suspected mental patients in the Soviet Union. Notable individuals who were confined to psychiatric hospitals as mental patients included: Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb who supported relativity; biologist Yores Medvedev, who opposed the claim of 100,000 jin per mu; and the great writer Joseph Brodsky, known as the "sun of Russian poetry." Sending someone to prison requires a trial and has a term of detention, but confinement in a psychiatric hospital can bypass those cumbersome procedures; as long as doctors continuously prove the patient's mental abnormality, it is sufficient to keep these "patients" locked up indefinitely. Moreover, these mental patients have no opportunity for self-defense; anything they say is considered madness and not credible. For instance, the famous Soviet writer Bukovsky was confined in a psychiatric hospital for over a decade: in 1961, at the age of 19, Bukovsky wrote a critical article. As soon as the article was published, he was diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia. In 1976, under strong international condemnation, the Soviet Union was forced to release a batch of sluggish schizophrenia patients, and Bukovsky was fortunate to be released. After his release, he immediately moved to the UK and took a teaching position at Cambridge University.
An ordinary Soviet citizen had to be cautious in their words and actions to avoid contracting the uniquely Soviet sluggish schizophrenia. It can be said that until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the fear and oppression of being "mentally ill" loomed over the minds of Soviet people. Of course, the situation was not absolute; if one accidentally found themselves forcibly sent for treatment, there was still a possibility of being discharged. The key was not to prove how normal one was—this was fundamentally impossible—but to demonstrate that one was beneficial to the construction of the Soviet Union. If a mental patient ceased to discuss any inappropriate topics and correctly recognized that they had not worked for too long, had not contributed to the great construction of the Soviet Union, and urgently needed to fulfill their glorious obligation to labor, expressing with emotion that they could achieve great things in the vast Siberia, then congratulations, you could be discharged the next day.