The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
idk man, maybe being anti-communist is the one mental illness that’s fine to lockup and mistreat
It’s sort of interesting that characterizing your opponents as mentally ill seems to be something that all the liberals and anti-communists do nowadays, while us communists try to be more respectful of mental illness
To be completely fair to the Soviets here, being rabidly anti-communist kinda is a mental illness and definitely requires some getting to the bottom of by mental health professionals. But I really don’t think intentional abuse of these people, whether in a jail or in a mental hospital, is an actual solution to anything. It’s a vindictive and sadistic post revolution revenge fantasy and one of the worst sorts of idealism. Do some of these people genuinely need reeducation, mental health treatment, or both? Absolutely. But that should consist of tested and true evidence based treatments and pedagogy, not vindictive abuse.