Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes

The Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes (Russian: Рабо́чая коми́ссия по рассле́дованию испо́льзования психиатри́и в полити́ческих це́лях) was an offshoot of the Moscow Helsinki Group[1][2] and a key source of information on psychiatric repression in the Soviet Union.

[3] The commission was established on 5 January 1977 on the initiative of Alexandr Podrabinek[4] along with a 47-year-old self-educated worker Feliks Serebrov, a 30-year-old computer programmer Vyacheslav Bakhmin and Irina Kuplun[5]: 148  and was composed of five open members and several anonymous ones, including a few psychiatrists who, at great danger to themselves, conducted their own independent examinations of cases of alleged psychiatric abuse.

[5]: 148  The Working Commission also gathered information about relevant international events and published reports on the Honolulu Congress of the World Psychiatric Association, including the texts of the key resolutions, and printed translations of long letters by Professor Peter Berner about the course of establishing the Review Committee on abuse.

[12]: 81 Over fifty victims examined by psychiatrists of the Moscow Working Commission between 1977 and 1981 and the files smuggled to the West by Vladimir Bukovsky in 1971 were the material which convinced most psychiatric associations that there was distinctly something wrong in the USSR.

[17] The charge was anti-Soviet activities for having corresponded with the British medical journal The Lancet, which published an article by Koryagin critical of the Soviet government's use of involuntary psychiatric confinement for political reasons.