Joint Session
A precursor of later abuses in psychiatry in the Soviet Union was the so-called "Joint Session" of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences and the Board of the All-Union Neurologic and Psychiatric Association in October 1951. Held in the name of Ivan Pavlov it considered the status of several leading neuroscientists and psychiatrists of the time, including Grunya Sukhareva, Vasily Gilyarovsky, Raisa Golant, Aleksandr Shmaryan, and Mikhail Gurevich, who were charged with practicing "anti-Pavlovian, anti-Marxist, idealistic reactionary" science that was damaging to Soviet psychiatry. During the Joint Session these eminent psychiatrists, motivated by fear, had to publicly admit that their scientific positions were in error and they also had to promise to conform Pavlovian doctrines. However, these public declarations of obedience proved insufficient as in the closing speech of the congress, the lead author of the event's policy report, Andrei Snezhnevsky stated that they "have not disarmed themselves and continue to remain in the old anti-Pavlovian positions", thereby causing "grave damage to the Soviet scientific and practical psychiatry". The vice president of the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences accused them of "diligently fall down to the dirty source of American pseudo-science". The congressional members who articulated these accusations, among them Irina Strelchuk, Vasily Banshchikov, Oleg Kerbikov, and Andrei Snezhnevsky, were characterized by careerist ambition and fears for their own positions. Not surprisingly, many of them were advanced and appointed to leadership positions shortly after the session. The Joint Session also had negative an impact on several leading Soviet academic neuroscientists, such as Pyotr Anokhin, Aleksey Speransky, Lina Stern, Ivan Beritashvili, and Leon Orbeli. They were labeled as anti-Pavlovians, anti-materialists and reactionaries and subsequently they were dismissed from their positions. In addition to losing their laboratories some of these scientists were subjected to torture in prison. The Moscow, Leningrad, Ukrainian, Georgian, and Armenian schools of neuroscience and neurophysiology were damaged for a period due to this loss of personnel. The Joint Session ravaged productive research in neurosciences and psychiatry for years to come. It was pseudoscience that took over.
After the joint session of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences on 28 June — 4 July 1950 and during the session of the Presidium of the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Board of the All-Union Society of Neuropathologists and Psychiatrists on 11–15 October 1951, the leading role was given to Snezhnevky's school. The 1950 decision to give monopoly over psychiatry to the Pavlovian school of Snezhnevsky was one of the crucial factors in the rise of political psychiatry. The Soviet doctors, under the incentive of Sneznevsky, devised a "Pavlovian theory of schizophrenia" and increasingly applied this diagnostic category to political dissidents.
Read more about this topic: Political Abuse Of Psychiatry In The Soviet Union
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