Protesting Spiritual Murder

The incarceration of freethinking, healthy people in madhouses is spiritual murder. It is a variant of the gas chamber, but it is an even more cruel variation, for the tortures of those being held are more vicious and prolonged.

With those words, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russia's greatest living novelist, last week lashed out at what has become perhaps the most sinister aspect of the current Soviet crackdown on internal dissent: the confinement of dissidents in mental institutions on the grounds that they are mentally unbalanced. Said Solzhenitsyn in his protest statement, which was circulated to Western newsmen in Moscow: "If this were only the first case! But it has become a fashion, a devious method of reprisal without determining guilt when the real cause is too shameful to be stated."

Solzhenitsyn's protest was prompted by the case of Dr. Zhores Medvedev, a prominent Soviet geneticist who last month was locked up in a mental institution. Nine months ago Medvedev lost his job as head of a radiological institute in Obninsk. Reason: the publication in the West of a book, in which he charged that Stalin's pet scientist, Trofim Lysenko, had thwarted the advancement of Soviet biological research. Medvedev attacked Lysenko for distorting facts for political reasons, and for imposing "demagoguery and intimidation" on Soviet science, leading to "scientific bankruptcy." In line with Communist ideology, Lysenko taught that environmental surroundings have greater significance in the development of an organism than heredity. In addition, Medvedev has criticized Soviet mail censorship, travel restrictions and the lack of free exchange of scientific ideas with the West. Wrote Solzhenitsyn: "It is precisely his sensitivity to injustice and to stupidity that are made to seem a sick deviation--poor adjustment to the social milieu. If you do not think as you are supposed to think, that means you are insane! And well-adjusted people? They should all think alike."

Chalked Appeal. Other outstanding Russian scientists and intellectuals shared Solzhenitsyn's outrage. The day after Medvedev's incarceration four well-known Russian scientists--Andrei Sakharov, Pyotr Kapitsa, Vladmir En-gelgardt and Boris Astaurov--sent protest telegrams to the mental institution. In front of a classroom of students, Sakharov, the author of a brilliant essay on the inevitability of the convergence of American and Russian systems, who lectures at the Lebedev Institute of Physics in Moscow, chalked on the blackboard a plea for signatures on a protest petition. Other intellectuals, including Alexander Tvardovsky, the ousted editor of Novy Mir, Roy Medvedev, Zhores' twin brother, and Igor Tamm, Nobel-prizewinning physicist, also protested Medvedev's imprisonment.

Their concern was well founded. Former Major General Pyotr Grigorenko, a Russian political dissident who is currently reported being held in a mental institution in Tashkent, managed to send out notes that his wife has made public. "They decided to break me immediately," he wrote. "They put me into a strait jacket, beat me and choked me." When he went on a hunger strike, the attendants brutally inserted an expander into his mouth. Scribbled Grigorenko, "Force-feeding every day. I resist as much as I can. They beat me and choke me again. They twist my hands, hit my crippled leg." Earlier this month, Vladmir Bukovsky, a writer who spent 21 years in a mental institution, declared that drugs are used to keep patients in line. According to Bukovsky, a Soviet drug called Sulfazin, which induces fever and temperature, is administered as a punishment, while one called Aminazin, which causes stomach cramps as a side effect, is given to bring about a state of torpor. Soviet intellectuals estimate that some 250 Soviet citizens are being held in Russian asylums purely for political reasons.

Doubtful Tactics. In the past, protests against the incarceration of dissidents have, in Solzhenitsyn's words, "bounced back like peas off a wall." But this time the authorities seemed to take some heed of the remonstrances. In a surprise move, Soviet authorities last week told Medvedev that he was free to go home. His release, however, was only a temporary reprieve, for he was warned that he might be recalled at any time for further observation.

How can Solzhenitsyn get away with his brave and outspoken protest? Dissenters in Russia today walk a highly precarious line. Solzhenitsyn, who served eight years in Stalinist labor camps, was summarily dismissed from the Soviet Writers' Union only last year. More recently, it has been rumored that his persistent protests might cause the state to declare him, too, mentally unbalanced, thus inflicting on him the very punishment he denounced. His latest protest may be a straightforward act of great courage, in disregard of consequences. But it may also be a last-ditch effort at self-preservation since, in view of the worldwide attention drawn by Solzhenitsyn's outcry, Russia's rulers might hesitate to move against him. To what extent such tactics might work is doubtful, as is suggested by the case of the brilliant young author Andrei Amal-ric. He was allowed to protest publicly for so long that some intellectuals actually suspected that he was a KGB agent. Last May he was imprisoned.

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