'Punitive psychiatry': in Russia, people are sent for compulsory treatment who do not agree with the regime

In modern Russia, there are cases when objectionable people are sent for compulsory treatment in a psychiatric hospital, as was the case in the USSR. One of the victims told his story to the publication “Present Tense".

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“The police kept me for more than an hour and they called a mental health team there. I later found out: in the report, the police indicated that I allegedly behaved aggressively and inappropriately. I sketched strange drawings, although I was writing down important information for myself,” says activist from Novokuznetsk Ingvar Gorlanov about what happened to him in 2019.

Ingvar stood with a picket in front of the presidential administration building in Moscow. I wanted to achieve a personal meeting with Vladimir Putin in order to tell the head of state where the money allocated to provide for orphans and the needy disappears. He was taken to the police station and a psychiatric team was called there, which arrived and immediately tied up the activist.

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“He asked those who communicated with him to introduce themselves. I copied their badges in response to their refusal to introduce themselves. They perceived this behavior as a whole as inadequate and sent him to a mental hospital,” explains Gorlanov’s lawyer Alexey Pryanishnikov.

Housing for the orphan

Ingvar Gorlanov is an activist from Novokuznetsk who lived in orphanage No. 74 from the age of four. He is now 25 years old. According to the law in Russia, children from orphanages must be provided with housing from the state. But after graduating from a state institution, Invar did not receive an apartment.

“The reason that I so ardently sought the implementation of the law in order to provide an apartment is the difficulties with housing, of course. But I also decided to force him to fulfill the law, because I have a mother. She is also a former orphan,” says an activist from Novokuznetsk.

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Ingvar found out that in Russia, only according to official data, about 300 thousand orphans have been on the waiting list for years. Thanks to resonant protests, he achieved his goal - an apartment laid down according to the laws of Russia. Later, the activist began to speak out in defense of political prisoners and held pickets against torture. But he also did not leave the topic of providing housing for orphans. So, after a picket at the presidential administration, he ended up in a psychiatric clinical hospital No. 4 in Moscow.

Compulsory treatment of a healthy person

“They examined me first or didn’t examine me, in my opinion, they talked to me. I don't remember. The fact is that I was injected with a drug that severely affected my memory, which, by the way, is illegal before the trial,” recalls Gorlanov. From Moscow, Ingvar was sent first to Kemerovo and then to Novokuznetsk psychiatric hospital. He was given drugs that treat symptoms such as delusions and hallucinations. If Ingvar refused to take the pills himself, then, according to him, they were broken and forcibly poured down his throat with water.

“It was hard to experience the influence of drugs that constrain you and prevent your speech apparatus from expressing and thinking. You are tired and constrained, you cannot figure out what position you are in and what is happening,” says Ingvar. Once free, the man continued to engage in activism. In December 2021, he went to the FSB building. He was again hospitalized in the Novokuznetsk Clinical Psychiatric Hospital.

Not isolated cases

Ingvar Gorlanov's lawyer Alexey Pryanishnikov defends people subject to forced treatment. In total he had seven such cases. His most famous client is Alexander Gabyshev, known as the “Yakut shaman.” In 2019, he traveled from Yakutsk to Moscow on foot to perform a ritual to oust Vladimir Putin. The shaman was detained and a case of extremism was opened. The court sentenced Gabyshev to compulsory treatment. Now he is in a specialized mental hospital in the city of Ussuriysk.

In total, the shaman spent about two and a half years in compulsory treatment, with breaks for stages and a pre-trial detention center when changing hospitals.

Among the defendants of lawyer Pryanishnikov there was also a citizen of Ukraine. The woman was taken from the Kharkov region of Ukraine to the Russian Belgorod. She was forced to issue a Russian passport. She spent the period from May 2022 to February 2023 in a mental hospital in the city of Engels. With the help of a lawyer, she managed to return to Ukraine.

“This is one of the methods of putting pressure on suspects and accused, which are used by the investigation so that, having kept a person for a month in the hospital, surrounded by people with different diagnoses, they can put pressure on him, try to get him to change his position on the case,” - explains lawyer Alexey Pryanishnikov.

There are no official statistics on how many people in Russia are subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment against the backdrop of the war.

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But according to information published in the media, in several regions of Russia the methods of punitive psychiatry are used in connection with the “SVO” and its criticism. For example, 22-year-old Nizhny Novgorod State University student Alexei Korelin was placed in a psychiatric hospital for a month after his anti-war statements.

Ingvar Gorlanov now lives in Novokuznetsk. In March 2023, he was charged with inciting hatred for criticizing the local police on social media. Because of this, he was again assigned a psychiatric examination: from March 29 to May 2, he was in a psychiatric hospital.

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