The Guardian of Liberty - Nemzetőr, 1986 (9. évfolyam, 1-6. szám)

1986-07-01 / 4. szám

12 Psychiatrist EVIocks "Sluggish Schizophrenia“ A Soviet psychiatrist, Dr. German Vulfert, has spoken mockingly about a „mental disorder“ that he knows does not exist. It is „sluggish schizophrenia“, which is unrecognis­ed by the mental health profession worldwide, except by some psychiatrists in the USSR and other Soviet-bloc countries. In an open letter to Viktor Chebrikov, the KGB Chairman, Dr. Vulfert said sarcastically that he suspected that a hooligan was suffer­ing from „sluggish schizophrenia“. This man was one of several informers and provocateurs who had been harassing him and his family and who were, he believed, in the employ of the secret police. The term „sluggish schizophrenia“ is used by KGB-influenced psychiatrists (but not, of course, by the vast majority of their Soviet colleagues) to describe the mental state of some sane critics of the USSR’s politico­­economic system. According to Professor Andrei Snezhnevsky, Director of the Institute of Psychiatry of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences, „sluggish schizophrenia“ develops extremly slowly. In­deed, its rate of progress is so slow that many of the persons examined, mainly human rights activists, are said to display all the signs of „seeming normality“. Dr. German Vulfert (spelt Hermann Wulfert in German) is a Soviet citizen of German nationality. He and his Russian wife, Svet­lana, and their son and daughter have for years been applying to the Soviet authorities to emigrate. Dr. Vulfert was born in 1939. He was a Communist Party member for 18 years until he resigned. Although holding the degree of Candidate of Medical Sciences, he is prevent­ed by the authorities from practising as a psychiatrist. In 1977 he discovered that his natural father is living in West Germany. In the same year the KGB accused him of being a nation­alist and a dissident, after he had spoken in defence of Solzhenitsyn and Academician Sakharov. Since 1978 Dr. Vulfert has not been per­mitted to publish or take part in scientific meetings. His wife, a computer scientist, has been similarly restricted in her professional work since 1971. The KGB has suggested she divorce him. The Vulferts now live in the Ukrainian town of Melitopol, past harassment having made them move from USt-Kamenogorsk. Their children have been subjected to sustain­ed abuse from teachers at school. Eleven statements Dr. Vulfert wrote be­tween January, 1984, and May, 1985, including copies of his emigration appeals, were recently pased out of the USSR. One of the documents claimed that every third or fourth Soviet citizen was or had been a KGB informer, bringing great benefit to their careers, even to the least able. Another document said that many Germans, Jews and members of other minorities in the USSR changed the nationality entries in their internal passports, and also their name, so as to pass as Rusisans. This practice was wel­comed by the authorities. Dr. Vulfert expressed regret that he had read aloud a text about the alleged humane treatment of his family. The KGB had provid­ed the script and video-filmed him. He claimed that he had been given a glass of mineral water which was doped. He read the text straight out without going through it first — something he would never normally have done. NINE YEARS FOR RE-SENTENCED WOODCARVER Petro Ruban, a Ukrainian woodcarver, is one of the latest victims of the increasingly common Soviet practice of re-sentencing pris­oners of conscience shortly before their scheduled date for release from labour-camp imprisonment or „internal exile“. According to information recently passed out of the USSR, at the end of a trial from December 25 to 27, Ruban was sentenced to nine years’ „strict regime“ camp imprisonment to be followed by five years’ „internal exile“. According to information recently passed out of the USSR, at the end of a trial from December 25 to 27, Ruban was sentenced to nine years’ „strict regime“ camp imprisonment to be followed by five years’ „internal exile“. Described in court as a „particularly dang­erous recidivist“, he was convicted of „anti- Soviet agitation and propaganda“. This „of­fence“ was presumably committed when he was serving the second part of his previous sentence of six years’ „special regime“ im­prisonment (the most severe form in the USSR) and three years’ „banishment“. The previous sentence had been imposed some while after his arrest in October, 1976. He had been found guilty of „slanderous fabrications“ and stealing State property — electricity and materials. What he had in fact done was to make a wooden book-cover bear­ing a carving of the American eagle. He did this at his place of work, using small pieces of wood. He was intending the book-cover to be a bicentennial gift to the people of the United States. Ruban had two previous long terms in prison camps. He was first arrested at the end of the 1950s for alleged criminal activity in support of Ukrainian nationalists. He was born in 1940. He and his wife have a daughter, bbrn in 1968, and a son, born in 1975, who is paralysed from the waist down because of accident injuries. AN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOUR FRIENDS: IF YOU HAVE friends who you think would be interested in THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY (Nemzetőr) we will glodiy send specimen copies free of charge. All you need do is to fill in names addresses below and send them to us. We will do the rest. 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JULY-AUGUST, 1986 ILL PRIEST DOES HARD LABOUR A seriously ill Polish Catholic priest, Father Jozef Swidnicki, is being forced to do hard labour in a Soviet penal labour camp, accord­ing to the latest issue of the privately-circulat­ed Chronicle of the Lithuanian Catholic Church. Friends who visited him in the Novosibirsk comp last February have reported that he was in good spirits but "looked as though he had just been taken down from the Cross". The camp food was bad, and food parcels address­ed to him had been stolen by criminals. He had recently had a heart attack. Father Swidnicki is serving a three-year sen­tence for "religiously indoctrinating young people".

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