Sane, and Called Insane: Psychiatric Repression and the Ukrainian Human Rights Movement

In this paper, we examine the use of punitive medicine against dissidents in the USSR in 1970–1980, particularly in the Ukrainian context, where fighters for human rights and opponents of the regime became some of the main targets of repression. While the Helsinki Accords opened space for human rights advocacy, the Soviet Union responded with systematic repression, imprisonment, and terror, using psychiatric institutions as instruments of control and intimidation. Through examination of three case studies: Pyotr Grigorenko, Leonid Plyushch, and Mykola Plakhtniuk, the paper highlights quotes from biographies, records, and reports about their stays in hospitals to better illustrate what they went through. Drawing on samizdat sources, international reports, and diaspora activism, the study shows how punitive medicine became widely recognized as a violation of human rights, sparking global condemnation through organizations such as Amnesty International and drawing criticism conferences in Belgrade (1977) and Madrid (1980). By showing the international reaction, we aimed to observe the dual role of dissidents and transnational advocacy networks in challenging Soviet repression and shaping the broader human rights discourse of the late Cold War.