Expect upticks in illegitimate calls for 'mental health checks' for anyone to the right of Marx.

This is where punitive medicine comes into play. Those abroad should not know that there is resistance in the USSR, our fellow citizens should not be inspired by the example of these units, and the truth about the USSR should not be heard either abroad or within the country. But organizing trials is too noisy, killing without trial is too scandalous. And another way out was found - to declare political opponents mentally ill.

Accusing dissidents of mental inferiority is to some extent subconscious and a priori in nature. Who among us has not, upon seeing the action of a person whose motives are not clear to us, exclaim: “Crazy!” The social behavior of dissidents goes beyond the strictly defined norms of social behavior of Soviet people. This behavior is dictated by other moral categories that are not normal by Soviet standards. The Soviet authorities and, it must be admitted, a significant part of our society, if they do not consider dissidents to be violent madmen, then in any case regard them as unusual, strange people, deviating from the norm. Here lies the possibility of a subtle transition from the concept of unusualness or non-triviality to the concept of madness. If crazy people are assessed by medical categories, then unusualness and abnormality are assessed by universal human, everyday ones. With the light hand of the Snezhnevskys and Luntsy, these criteria, and the concepts themselves, became almost adequate and equivalent.

During the revolution of 1917, governments did not need such a sophisticated punitive measure as isolation in mental hospitals. If the tsarist government did not abuse punitive psychiatry, then under the Provisional Revolutionary Government (March-October 1917) this was unthinkable. Democracy in Russia then reached the highest level, which was not seen either before or since. Terror began only after the October Revolution with the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, more precisely, in the spring of 1918, and from September 5 it was legalized as “mass”. The communists dealt with political opponents simply and quickly. Those dissatisfied with the regime were executed administratively. The revolutionary tribunals handed down death sentences without lengthy judicial delays and formalities, guided by revolutionary legal consciousness. The idea of isolating someone in a mental hospital, apparently, could not even come to mind, the punitive measures against dissidents were so harsh and unambiguous.

Any indignation, protests and resentment over forced hospitalization will be regarded by psychiatrists as evidence of mental illness. The situation here is truly hopeless. This machine grinds everyone. It is impossible to defend yourself because you are declared mentally ill, or to protest because you are not arrested, or to appeal because you are not convicted.

— Alexander Podrabinek, “Punitive Medicine”, 1979