Viktor Nekipelov

{{Family name hatnote|Aleksandrovich|Nekipelov|lang=Eastern Slavic}}

{{Infobox person

| name = Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov

| native_name = Виктор Александрович Некипелов

| native_name_lang = ru

| image = Nekipelov.jpg

| caption = Nekipelov in Kameshkovo in 1978{{cite book |last=Некипелов |first=Виктор |date=2005 |title=Институт дураков |trans-title=Institute of Fools |url=https://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/5774318/ |language=ru |location=Барнаул |publisher=«Помощь пострадавшим от психиатров» |isbn=978-5-98550-022-6}}

| birth_date = {{birth date|1928|9|29|df=y}}

| birth_place = Harbin, Republic of China
(now People's Republic of China)

| death_date = {{death date and age|1989|7|1|1928|9|29|df=y}}

| death_place = Paris, France

| occupation = Medicine, pharmacy, literature, poetry

| movement = Dissident movement in the Soviet Union

| known_for = Human rights activism

| nationality = Russian

| alma_mater = Kharkiv Medical Institute, Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

| awards = File:LTU Order of the Cross of Vytis - Officer's Cross BAR.svg

| spouse = Nina Komarova

| criminal_charge = 1st term: spreading of known false fabrications that is damaging the Soviet political system (Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code), 2nd term: Anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda (Article 70 of the RSFSR Criminal Code)

| criminal_penalty = two years in a labour camp (1st term), seven years in a labour camp and five years in internal exile (2nd term)

| organization = Moscow Helsinki Group

| signature =

}}

Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov ({{langx|ru|Ви́ктор Алекса́ндрович Некипе́лов}}, 29 September 1928 – 1 July 1989{{cite journal|title=Писатели-диссиденты: биобиблиографические статьи (продолжение)|journal=Новое литературное обозрение [New Literary Review]|date=2004|issue=67|url=http://magazines.russ.ru/nlo/2004/67/diss25.html|trans-title=Dissident writers: bibliographic articles (continuance)|language=ru}}) was a Soviet Russian poet,{{cite journal|author=Lader, Malcolm|title=Prisoners of psychiatry|journal=The British Medical Journal|date=26 July 1980|volume=281|issue=6235|pages=298–299|pmc=1713856}}{{cite news|author=Mydans, Seth|title=Soviet human rights battle: only isolated voices remain|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1985/07/29/world/soviet-human-rights-battle-only-isolated-voices-remain.html|work=The New York Times|date=29 July 1985}} writer,{{cite book|author1=McCagg, William |author2=Siegelbaum, Lewis |title=The disabled in the Soviet Union: past and present, theory and practice|year=1989|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press|isbn=978-0-8229-3622-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/disabledinsovie00mcca/page/238 238]|url=https://archive.org/details/disabledinsovie00mcca|url-access=registration }}{{rp|238}} Soviet dissident,{{cite book|author=Sicher, Efraim|title=Beyond marginality: Anglo-Jewish literature after the Holocaust|year=1985|publisher=SUNY Press|isbn=978-0-87395-975-9|pages=85|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PRb0_YXfusIC&pg=PA85}}{{rp|85}} and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.{{cite news|title=Political prisoners seek Reagan's aid in urging inspection of Soviet camps|url=http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1983/128306.shtml|work=The Ukrainian Weekly|volume=LI|issue=12|date=20 March 1983|access-date=11 September 2015|archive-date=22 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160622065801/http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1983/128306.shtml|url-status=dead}}{{cite journal|author=Sakharov, Andrei|title=USSR: Sakharov's plea for poets|journal=Index on Censorship|date=December 1980|volume=9|issue=6|page=64|doi=10.1080/03064228008533146|s2cid=159662308}}{{cite book|author=Bergman, Jay|title=Meeting the demands of reason: the life and thought of Andrei Sakharov|year=2009|publisher=Cornell University Press|isbn=978-0-8014-4731-0|pages=265|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CPCOVp0Pq_YC&pg=PA265}}{{rp|265}} He spent about nine years in prison for his participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group.{{cite news|title=Soviets allowing dissident to leave|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1891&dat=19870927&id=_pBHAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CP4MAAAAIBAJ&pg=2368,5562190&hl=com|work=The Gadsden Times|date=27 September 1987}}

Early life

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. In 1950, he left the Omsk Army Medical School with honours.{{cite journal|author=Савенко, Юрий|title="Институт дураков" Виктора Некипелова|trans-title=Institute of Fools by Viktor Nekipelov|journal=Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal|year=2005|issue=4|url=http://www.npar.ru/journal/2005/4/fools.htm}} In 1960, he graduated from the army medical faculty of the Kharkiv Medical Institute with honours as well. In 1969, he graduated from an extramural faculty of the Moscow Literature Institute.{{cite web|url=http://www.mhg.ru/history/1B32856|title=Nekipelov Viktor Alexandrovich|format=Biography|publisher=Moscow Helsinki Group|language=ru|access-date=3 February 2011|archive-date=5 September 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160905052442/http://www.mhg.ru/history/1B32856|url-status=dead}} He worked as a pharmacist.{{cite journal|title=Olympics bring repression of Soviet scientists|journal=New Scientist|date=10 July 1980|volume=87|issue=1209|page=97|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vfQxekunC3QC&pg=PA97|issn=0262-4079|last1=Information|first1=Reed Business}}{{cite journal|author=Reddaway, Peter|title=Can the dissidents survive?|journal=Index on Censorship|date=August 1980|volume=9|issue=4|pages=29–34|doi=10.1080/03064228008533090|s2cid=144735407|doi-access=free}}

Dissident

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). 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.{{cite book |author=Сахаров, Андрей |script-title=ru:Воспоминания. В 2 томах |trans-title=Memoirs. In 2 volumes |date=1996 |publisher=Права человека |location=Moscow |pages=557–562 |url=http://www.sakharov-center.ru/asfcd/auth/?num=2107&t=page |volume=2 |isbn=978-5771200262 |language=ru |script-chapter=ru:Письмо М.С. Горбачеву |trans-chapter=Letter to M.S. Gorbachev}}{{rp|560}} 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. In 1976, he published in samizdat his book Institute of Fools: Notes on the Serbsky Institute{{cite book|author1=Bloch, Sidney |author2=Reddaway, Peter |title=Psychiatric terror: how Soviet psychiatry is used to suppress dissent|year=1977|publisher=Basic Books|isbn=978-0-465-06488-5|pages=[https://archive.org/details/psychiatricterro0000bloc/page/147 147]|url=https://archive.org/details/psychiatricterro0000bloc|url-access=registration }}{{rp|147}} based on his personal experience at Psychiatric Hospital of the Serbsky Institute{{cite book|author=Jena, S.P.K.|title=Behaviour therapy: techniques, research and applications|year=2008|publisher=Sage Publications|isbn=978-0-7619-3624-4|pages=86|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TATbAAAAMAAJ}}{{rp|86}} and translated into English in 1980.{{cite book|author=Nekipelov, Viktor|title=Institute of fools: notes from the Serbsky|year=1980|publisher=Farrar, Straus, Giroux|isbn=978-0-374-17703-4|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pdB0MAEACAAJ&q=0374177031}}{{cite book|author1=Keefer, Janice |author2=Pavlychko, Solomea |title=Two lands, new visions: stories from Canada and Ukraine|year=1998|publisher=Coteau Books|isbn=978-1-55050-134-6|pages=312|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c3BTRn9jausC&pg=PA312}}{{rp|312}}

In October 1977, Nekipelov joined the Moscow Helsinki Group. 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.{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |author2=Podrabinek, Alexander |script-title=ru:Из жёлтого безмолвия: Сборник воспоминаний и статей политзаключенных психиатрических больниц |date=1977 |location=Moscow |url=http://periodics.memo.ru/journal/show/journal_id/472 |trans-title=From yellow silence: the collection of memoirs and articles by political prisoners of psychiatric hospitals |language=ru}}

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. As Zavoisky and Krylovsky wrote, Nekipelov developed cancer caused by his permanent poisoning in a prison camp.{{cite journal |script-title=ru:Тайно приговоренные. Как убивали члена московской хельсинской группы Виктора Некипелова |journal=Mosty [Мосты] |date=2009 |issue=24 |page=219 |url=http://www.memo.ru/library/books/nekipelov/nekipelov.htm |author=Zavoisky, Konstantin |author2=Krylovsky, Vladimir |trans-title=The secretly sentenced. How member of the Moscow Helsinki Group Viktor Nekipelov was being killed |language=ru}} 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.{{cite news|title=Political prisoners seek Reagan's aid in urging inspection of Soviet camps|work=The Ukrainian Weekly|volume=LI|issue=12|date=20 March 1983|url=http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1983/128306.shtml|access-date=11 September 2015|archive-date=22 June 2016|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160622065801/http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/1983/128306.shtml|url-status=dead}}

Along with Arina Ginzburg, Malva Landa, Tatyana Velikanova and Andrei Sakharov he demanded a referendum in the Baltic republics to determine their political destiny.{{cite journal|author=Vardys, Stanley|title=Human rights issues in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania|journal=Journal of Baltic Studies|date=September 1981|volume=12|issue=3|doi=10.1080/01629778100000251|pages=275–298}}

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

In 1992, the selection of his verses was published by Memorial society.{{cite book |author=Некипелов, Виктор |script-title=ru:Стихи: Избранное |trans-title=Verses: selection |year=1992 |publisher=Издательство "Memorial" |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZSRgAAAAMAAJ}}

On his book

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. 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. 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.

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.{{cite journal|author=Пехтерев В.А.|script-title=ru:Ода Институту Сербского|trans-title=Ode to the Serbsky Institute|url=http://www.mif-ua.com/archive/article/36742|access-date=8 February 2014|journal=Новости медицины и фармации [Medicine and Pharmacy News]|language=ru|volume=14|issue=465|year=2013}} 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.{{cite journal|author=Ворен, Роберт ван|script-title=ru:Отзыв на статью об Институте Сербского|trans-title=The response to an article on the Serbsky Institute|journal=Вестник Ассоциации психиатров Украины [The Herald of the Ukrainian Psychiatric Association]|issue=5|url=http://www.mif-ua.com/archive/article/37545|language=ru|year=2013}} Their life was transformed to unimaginable horror with daily tortures by forced administration of drugs, beatings and other forms of punishment. 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). Many books and memoirs are written about the life in the psychiatric Gulag and every time when reading them a shiver seizes us.

References

Publications

Social and political journalism

{{cite book |author1=Khodorovich, Tatyana |author2=Nekipelov, Victor |title=Basket III: implementation of the Helsinki Accords. Hearings before the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Ninety-fifth congress. First session on implementation of the Helsinki Accords |volume=IV |date=1977 |publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office |location=Washington, D.C. |pages=27–28 |chapter-url=https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/402803/17-basket-iii-helsinki-accords-hearings-volume-iv.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151123063016/https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/402803/17-basket-iii-helsinki-accords-hearings-volume-iv.pdf |url-status=live |archive-date=23 November 2015 |chapter=Political reprisal by means of the Criminal Code (excerpts from an open letter)}}
{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |author2=Podrabinek, Alexander |script-title=ru:Из жёлтого безмолвия: Сборник воспоминаний и статей политзаключенных психиатрических больниц |trans-title=From yellow silence: the collection of memoirs and articles by political prisoners of psychiatric hospitals |date=1977 |location=Moscow |url=http://periodics.memo.ru/journal/show/journal_id/472 |language=ru}}
{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |title=Institute of Fools: Notes from the Serbsky |date=1980 |publisher=Victor Gollancz |isbn=978-0575028920 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J0brHAAACAAJ}}
{{cite journal |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |script-title=ru:Сталин на ветровом стекле |trans-title=Stalin on windshield |journal=Kontinent |year=2013 |orig-year=1979 |volume=152 |url=http://magazines.russ.ru/continent/2013/152/34n.html |language=ru}}
{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |author2=Serebrov, Feliks|script-title=ru:Факультет демократии. О зарубежных радиопередачах на русском языке: советы и пожелания |trans-title=The faculty of democracy. On foreign radio programs in Russian: advices and wishes |location=Moscow |date=November 1979 |language=ru}}

Poetry

{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |script-title=ru:Между Марсом и Венерой |trans-title=Between Mars and Venus |date=1966 |publisher=Karpaty |location=Uzhhorod |language=ru}}
{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |script-title=ru:Стихи |trans-title=Verses |date=1991 |publisher=La Presse Libre |location=Paris |language=ru}}
{{cite book |author=Nekipelov, Viktor |script-title=ru:Стихи: Избранное |trans-title=Verses: selection |date=1992 |publisher=Publishing House "Memorial" |location=Boston |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZSRgAAAAMAAJ |language=ru}}