[2] The Serbsky Center is now headed by Zurab Kekelidze (ru), the chief psychiatrist of the Ministry of Health and Social Development of the Russian Federation,[3] whose dissertation was on sluggish schizophrenia.
Gen. Pyotr Grigorenko was determined as insane in the Serbsky Institute because he "was unshakably convinced of the rightness of his actions" and held "reformist ideas.
"[8] In the 1960s Soviet psychiatry, particularly Serbsky Institute Director Dr. Andrei Snezhnevsky, introduced the concept of "sluggish schizophrenia", a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only social behavior, with no effect on other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure", according to the Serbsky Institute professors.
Spurious diagnoses declared symptom-free individuals to be mentally ill (for example, Budanov or General Pyotr Grigorenko), and the reverse (for example, major D. Evsyukov, actor F. Yalovega and diplomat Platon Obukhov).
You see, human rights activists are people who, due to their mental pathology, are unable to restrain themselves within the standards of society, and the West encourages their inability to do so.
[13] The Independent Psychiatric Journal (Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal) edited by Savenko documented such trials, claiming that the charges of “gross harm to mental health” were not substantiated.
[16] Savenko's Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia repeatedly accused Kondratyev's activities and statements as the author of the pseudo-scientific theory of "sectomania", and reported the false charges for which he was allegedly responsible.
[16] Kondratyev's special department at the Serbsky Center “for studying destructive cults” closely collaborated with the anti-cult activist Alexander Dvorkin, who enjoyed some approval within the Russian Orthodox Church.
Dvorkin ranks as “totalitarian sects" both the followers of the painter and Theosophist Nikolai Rerikh (1874-1947) and the religious communities of liberal Orthodox priests Yakov Krotov and Georgy Kochetkov.
[citation needed] In Yury Savenko's words, “when a psychiatrist-academician (Dmitrieva, Sidorov) or an expert-psychologist of the Institute of Psychology of the Russian Academy of Sciences relies on the works of Dvorkin and Hassan, which are not scientific in nature, it is a symptom of degradation.”[16] In 2014, experts of the Serbsky Center received medical documents from a psychoneurological out-patients' clinic about the mental health condition of Alexander Dvorkin.
[21] In 2012, Ukrainian psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman said that the Serbsky Institute still remained a leading service for Russian forensic psychiatric examinations.
[27] With other witnesses, Alexander Podrabinek, former Soviet dissident and Radio France Internationale commentator, testified that Kosenko had stood next to him and had not scuffled with police.
This conclusion ignored both his previous treatment over many years and his diagnosis by other psychiatrists, and the fact that he was not once cited for aggressive or suicidal behavior during the 16 months of his pretrial detention in Butyrka prison.
"There were protests from international and local NGOs and human rights organisations against the unlimited term of in-patient treatment imposed on Mikhail Kosenko.
[28] According to Russian psychiatrist Emmanuil Gushansky, the Serbsky Center exercises undue administrative and corporate influence on its young and insufficiently qualified staff.
During a drunken household brawl he managed to find a shotgun in his basement, shoot his victim, clean and hide the weapon, removing his fingerprints, and then flee the scene.
[16] According to Savenko, the Serbsky Center has long labored to institutionalize its monopolistic position as the country's main psychiatric institution.
The letter added that courts made no attempt to assess the expert report for coherence and consistency and do not check findings for accuracy, completeness and objectivity.
In the spring of 2009, IPA attacked an expert report whose descriptive part was distorted, paving the way for other falsifications; four of the case's six examinations were carried out in the Serbsky Center.
[30] In 2010, when the outpatient forensic-psychiatric examination of Yulia Privedyonnaya was carried out in the Sebsky Center, its experts asked her the question “What do you think of Putin?”.
[46] According to Robert van Voren, Pekhterev misses the main point: while living conditions in the Serbsky Institute were not bad compared with living conditions of the Gulag, the Serbsky Institute was the departure point for "patients" who were dispatched to specialized psychiatric hospitals in Chernyakhovsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Kazan and Blagoveshchensk where they experienced forced administration of drugs, beatings and other forms of arbitrary punishment.
[48] In the 1998 TV series Seven Days, episode 16 "There's something about Olga", the FSB recruits a female patient of the Serbsky Center (incorrectly located in the city of Minsk, Belarus).