Freedom and Later Life
Eventually he was allowed to leave the Soviet Union together with his family in 1976. His arrival in the West increased the friction between Western and Soviet psychiatrists leading eventually to a condemnation of Soviet practices by the World Psychiatric Association at the Sixth World Congress of Psychiatry. At a press conference in Paris, Plyushch gave a memorable account of the effects of his detention and medications:
| “ | I noted with horror the daily progression of my degradation. I lost interest in politics, then in scientific problems, finally in my wife and children. My speech became blurred; my memory worsened. In the beginning, I reacted strongly to the sufferings of other patients. Eventually I became indifferent. My only thoughts were of toilets, tobacco and the bribes to the male nurses to let me go to the toilet one more time. Then I began to experience a new thought: 'I must remember everything I see here, I told myself, so that I can tell about it afterwards.' | ” |
In 1979, with the contribution of his wife, Leonid Plyushch published his book History's Carnival: A Dissident's Autobiography in which he described how he and other dissidents were committed to psychiatric hospitals. At the same year, the book was translated into English. In 1980, Andrei Snezhnevsky, who was a Corresponding Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry, was invited by his British colleagues to answer criticism relating to Plyushch and other dissidents. He refused to do so, and instead resigned his Fellowship.
Later in life, although he retained communist convictions, Plyushch supported anti-totalitarian publications in other communist countries, including Vietnam.
Read more about this topic: Leonid Plyushch
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