Viktor Nekipelov

Template:Short description Template:Family name hatnote Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov (Template:Langx, 29 September 1928 – 1 July 1989<ref name=Writers>Template:Cite journal</ref>) was a Soviet Russian poet,<ref name="Lader">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> writer,<ref name="McCagg">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Soviet dissident,<ref name="Sicher">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name="Bergman">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp He spent about nine years in prison for his participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early lifeEdit

Nekipelov was born to a Soviet family of workers of the Chinese Eastern Railway. In 1937, he and his mother came to the Soviet Union. In 1939, his mother was arrested and died in imprisonment. He left a high school in Omsk. From 1947 to 1950, he studied at the Omsk Army Medical School.<ref name=Writers/> In 1950, he left the Omsk Army Medical School with honours.<ref name="Институт">Template:Cite journal</ref> In 1960, he graduated from the army medical faculty of the Kharkiv Medical Institute with honours as well.<ref name="Институт"/> In 1969, he graduated from an extramural faculty of the Moscow Literature Institute.<ref name=MHG>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He worked as a pharmacist.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

DissidentEdit

In 1973, he was arrested for "spreading of known false fabrications that is damaging the Soviet political system" (Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code).<ref name="Институт"/> According to Sakharov's letter to Gorbachev of 19 February 1986, Nekipelov was convicted for his philosophical verses that were considered defamatory by a court.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp Nekipelov was sent to the Section 4 of the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry for psychiatric evaluation, which lasted from 15 January to 12 March 1974, was judged sane (which he was), tried, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment.<ref name="Lader"/> In 1976, he published in samizdat his book Institute of Fools: Notes on the Serbsky Institute<ref name="Bloch 1977">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp based on his personal experience at Psychiatric Hospital of the Serbsky Institute<ref name="Jena">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp and translated into English in 1980.<ref name="Nekipelov">Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Keefer">Template:Cite book</ref>Template:Rp

In October 1977, Nekipelov joined the Moscow Helsinki Group.<ref name=MHG/> In 1977, the joint book From Yellow Silence: The Collection of Memoirs and Articles by Political Prisoners of Psychiatric Hospitals by Nekipelov and Alexander Podrabinek was completed.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

After publishing Institute of Fools, he was sentenced to the maximum punishment for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" of seven years in a labour camp and then five years in internal exile.<ref name="Lader"/> As Zavoisky and Krylovsky wrote, Nekipelov developed cancer caused by his permanent poisoning in a prison camp.<ref name="Zavoisky, Krylovsky">Template:Cite journal</ref> On 20 March 1983, Nekipelov and 9 other political prisoners in their letter to US President of Ronald Reagan sought his aid in urging inspection of Soviet camps.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Along with Arina Ginzburg, Malva Landa, Tatyana Velikanova and Andrei Sakharov he demanded a referendum in the Baltic republics to determine their political destiny.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

Released in 1987, he emigrated to France where he died in 1989.

In 1992, the selection of his verses was published by Memorial society.<ref name="Стихи">Template:Cite book</ref>

On his bookEdit

In his book Institute of Fools, he wrote compassionately, engagingly, and observantly of the doctors and other patients; most of the latter were ordinary criminals feigning insanity in order to be sent to a mental hospital, because hospital was a "cushy number" as against prison camps.<ref name="Lader"/> According to the President of the Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia Yuri Savenko, Nekipelov's book is a highly dramatic humane document, a fair story about the nest of Soviet punitive psychiatry, a mirror that psychiatrists always need to look into.<ref name="Институт"/> However, according to Malcolm Lader, this book as an indictment of the Serbsky Institute hardly rises above tittle-tattle and gossip, and Nekipelov destroys his own credibility by presenting no real evidence but invariably putting the most sinister connotation on events.<ref name="Lader"/>

After reading the book, Donetsk psychiatrist Pekhterev concluded that allegations against the psychiatrists sounded from the lips of a negligible but vociferous part of inmates who when surfeiting themselves with cakes pretended to be sufferers.<ref name=Pekhterev>Template:Cite journal</ref> According to the response by Robert van Voren, Pekhterev in his article condescendingly argues that the Serbsky Institute was not so bad place and that Nekipelov exaggerates and slanders it, but Pekhterev, by doing so, misses the main point: living conditions in the Serbsky Institute were not bad, those who passed through psychiatric examination there were in a certain sense "on holiday" in comparison with the living conditions of the Gulag; and all the same, everyone was aware that the Serbsky Institute was more than the "gates of hell" from where people were sent to specialized psychiatric hospitals in Chernyakhovsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kazan, Blagoveshchensk, and that is not all.<ref name=Voren>Template:Cite journal</ref> Their life was transformed to unimaginable horror with daily tortures by forced administration of drugs, beatings and other forms of punishment.<ref name=Voren/> Many went crazy, could not endure what was happening to them, some even died during the "treatment" (for example, a miner from Donetsk Alexey Nikitin).<ref name=Voren/> Many books and memoirs are written about the life in the psychiatric Gulag and every time when reading them a shiver seizes us.<ref name=Voren/>

ReferencesEdit

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PublicationsEdit

Social and political journalism

Poetry