There are people whose condition of life in different time periods allows making judgment of general tends and general state of the country. In soviet time, the teenager Andrei Novikov protested against Komsomol and was engaged in samizdat. Of course, that time he got diagnosed psychiatrically like other dissidents of that time.
In the Russia of perestroika period, starting from 1991, the articles by 23-year-old Andrei Novikov were published by all authoritative central press of that time. Television and radio invited the talented journalist to take part in their programs, presenting him as an eminent writer of political essays and a political scientist.
In today’s Russia the independent journalist Andrei Novikov is declared to be mad again. It has been eight months that he receives the compulsory treatment in the City of Rybinsk.
Soviet psychiatrists have not lost their experience. The name of the country changed, but they did not. The story of Larisa Arap was the perfect example of the reanimated punitive psychiatry. Though, few doubted that she would be released from the mental hospital, being supported with civil rights advocates and the press. The story of Andrei Novikov is much more complicated, as some people just get numbed with his name mentioned.
“He suggested bombing Russian towns, even his native town of Rybinsk!” they told me.
Well, that is too close for comfort. Journalist Andrei Novikov suggesting bombing the City of Rybinsk? Whom did he suggest that?
The answer to the question can be found in the letter handed by the “patient” from the mental hospital through his friends to the judge Solntseva from the city’s court of Rybinsk. He wrote: “Your Honor! I consider it that I just made use of freedom of speech - being a writer and political scientist – for making clear my point of view. Sharp words using is part of my profession. What am I judged for? Is it real physical extremism, giving orders and appealing to violence, or is it just my tough stance? Is it my political essays? I can adduce an example from the press. In March 2000 the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda published my open letter to President Clinton entitled “Bomb Russian troops!” Everyone understood it was just a tough and extravagant stance, though it was an appeal in form!”
Imperative mood in the emotion expressed in political essays, making the topic look absurd with the purpose of more distinctive representation of the state of the affairs was characteristic of style by many leading home journalists of the 90-s. Looking at the newspaper headings of that time one may see just a mass extremist appeal. It was considered normal that time. With only seven years passed after 2000 (they say it’s critical point for a marriage) is it possible that for the country it is critical point too?
The Novaya received a letter form the father of Andrei Novikov saying that his son got prosecuted for his political essays written in the form of grotesque and startler. They had been allegedly published in the Internet after which a criminal case was started against him based on the clause of criminal code about “public appeal to extremist action”.
The texts were taken from his personal computer and they are not published, said the lawyer Vladimir Noskov. “Andrei Novikov is a talented, tough and daring person. He doesn’t make any threat to the community. He just expressed his own point of view. He didn’t have any malicious intent. But when you deal with psychiatry, it is very hard to get someone out of it”, the lawyer said.
6 December 2006 the journalist was brought to psychiatric examination. We have a copy of the medical report. Here is a quotation from there. ”No impairment of consciousness was found. Normal orientation in one’s bearings and time was established. The examined tells correctly his personal details, but he signs the medical documents with the name Allah Akbar”.
Well, this is the argument, of course. But these two words only mean “God is most great”. I specify it because I suppose that the psychiatrists, who signed the medical report, seem not to know that. They probably think these words mean some extremist appeal.
Andrei Novikov has always startled the public like that in his texts and in his life. For example, when the General Secretary of Communist Party was the Head of the State, Novikov signed as Genius Secretary. Yes, he has always called to one thing, and it’s not extremism, but “experimental thinking”.
“People have said from my childhood that I’m always in the clouds. Bu I just stand in my full height” Novikov says about himself.
Novikov’s father tells that during the psychiatric examination Novikov was placed in the common ward with bandits, murderers and rapists. Feeling themselves “patriots”, they mocked at him because of his bug on the Muslim religion and wearing of beard. The roommates burnt his beard and didn’t let him sleep. On the New Year night they beat him up and attempted to rape. He spent 43 days in custody till the expertise was finished.
“When he came back to Rybinsk from Yaroslavl, where the examination was done, he looked like a robot or a mummy. He said that he had been overdosed with medicines”, Novikov’s mother said.
Such was the examination resulted in a report saying that A.V.Novikov may pose threat for the society and he needs to receive compulsory treatment in an in-patient psychiatric facility.
The father says that after the examination he was told that his son would be placed in a mental hospital in Rybinsk. The father decided to make repairs in the son’s flat where everything had been messed up after the search done by the investigators. He stripped off the wallpaper and threw all the papers that were lying on the floor. By mistake some Andrei’s manuscripts got thrown away too. Suddenly, 19 January Andrei Novikov was released from the local mental hospital till the court day. He came back home in a great stress and in a deferred condition after all the medicines he had been forced to take. It took him a while to come to himself. Then he found that his manuscripts had been thrown away by the father and got furious. Father called the police but it was the ambulance that came. It was 14 February. Andrei was put in mental hospital again and he hasn’t been released since then. Even the court proceedings were done in his absence. The court was held only on 4 May 2007. Compulsory treatment is considered to be started since the moment of the court’s decision is announced. Minimal period of the treatment is 6 months. 43 days of medical examination in Yaroslavl and three months in the local mental hospital cannot be counted as treatment period. Novikov’s father said he was retired and didn’t have means for carrying out independent psychiatric examination.
The Novaya Gazeta applied to the chair of the Independent Psychiatric Association Yuri Savenko with a written request for examination of Andrei Novikov again. Savenko and his colleagues came to a conclusion that Andrei Novikov is in sound mind and he doesn’t need any treatment. Commenting the case, Savenko said the following:
“Novikov’s texts that prompted FSB to start a criminal case look very interesting. Although they are very tough and may seem to be written in insulting manner, I would be grateful to the author, if I were a special service agent. These texts are paradox analytics describing different scenarios of possible political events seen by an uncommon person. It’s neither special service nor psychiatrists who should judge the journalistic articles. The previous examination was done with a poor text expertise. My opinion is that charging Novikov of extremism is groundless. The today’s law about extremism creates opportunity for bringing a lot of the discordant and annoying the authorities people to mental hospitals. The concept of posing a threat for the community is rather wide and it can be interpreted differently. The case with the journalist Andrei Novikov is common in this sense.”
We asked Savenko if Novikov would be released after this repeated examination. He said it’s very hard to do before the court proceedings that would be held after month and a half. He said Novikov is very tired of staying in a ward where there are other 15 patients. General attitude by the doctors is to submit to the court the report that Novikov doesn’t need a psychiatric treatment. Savenko also said that it is practically impossible to bring the court proceeding forward.
Well, it seems that the prison is a more humane institution. When it is proved that an inmate is not guilty, he gets released. But when it is proved that a psychiatric patient is not ill, he is still “treated”. Psychiatry seems to be the perfect tool of reprisal over the discordant. Andrei Novikov just got into this perfect and classical mechanism of repression where the press publications go before the court stigmatizing and persecuting the victim like it was done in soviet time.
Someone, hiding under a pseudonym Mephody Skuratov published in January (and the court was held in May) an article about Novikov. Here is the quotation from there. “Such kind of self-perception is characteristic of the deepest stage of paranoid schizophrenia called by specialists paraphrenic syndrome…One needn’t be a prophet to suppose with a certain degree of confidence that the author of these wild works is not going to be fined for 300,000 rubles or arrested for 6 months, or sentenced to three years. He is most likely to be put in the Rybinsk city mental hospital till the moment he poses no threat to society”.
I imagine a waiter with white-shining cuffs. He serves not everyone but only high ranked elite. And he says not “What would you like to order?” He asks “Who would you like to order?” There was time of independent journalism when the local newspaper Zolotoe koltso (fittingly, Golden Ring) reprinted articles by Novikov from Moscow press presenting its fellow-townsman as “a rising star of the Russian journalism”.
The other time has come. There’s nothing personal in all what happened. Just an order.
