Alexander Pinkhosovich Podrabinek (; born 8 August 1953) is a Soviet dissident, journalist and commentator. During the Soviet period he was a human rights activist, being exiled, then imprisoned in a corrective-labour colony, for publication of his book ''Punitive Medicine'' in Russian and in English. In 1987, while still forced to live outside Moscow in internal banishment, Podrabinek became the founder and editor-in-chief of the ''Express Chronicle'' weekly newspaper. In the 1990s he set up and ran the Prima information agency. Over the past ten years he has worked, variously, for the ''Novaya gazeta'' newspaper, the ''Yezhednevny Zhurnal'' website and the Russian Services of

Radio France Internationale Radio France Internationale, usually referred to as RFI, is the State media, state-owned international radio news network of France. With 59.5 million listeners in 2022, it is one of the most-listened-to international radio stations in the world ...

and Radio Liberty.

Biography

Alexander Podrabinek was born on 8 August 1953 in Elektrostal, a large provincial town in the Moscow Region to which his parents moved from Moscow in the early 1950s, to avoid the campaign against rootless cosmopolitans, i.e. Jews. He and his younger brother Kirill were brought up there by their Jewish father Pinkhos after his Russian wife died. At secondary school, aged ten, they joined the Young Pioneers, but later Alexander and Kirill did not apply to join the Komsomol, the only two non-members in their respective classes: the only explanation the school administration could find was that they were either

Baptists Baptists are a Christian denomination, denomination within Protestant Christianity distinguished by baptizing only professing Christian believers (believer's baptism) and doing so by complete Immersion baptism, immersion. Baptist churches ge ...

or open enemies of the regime. Alexander enrolled in the Department of Pharmacology of a medical institute in 1970 and worked as an assistant in a biology laboratory at Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry. From 1971 to 1974 Alexander studied at a college for medical auxiliary staff and received certification as a paramedic. He went on to work in the Moscow ambulance service.

Dissent under Brezhnev and Gorbachev

For political reasons, Podrabinek was denied entrance to medical school, and, at the age of 20, began working for the ambulance service instead. At an early age, Podrabinek became acquainted with

dissident A dissident is a person who actively challenges an established political or religious system, doctrine, belief, policy, or institution. In a religious context, the word has been used since the 18th century, and in the political sense since the 2 ...

circles in Moscow and began to take part in their activities. (His medical father, himself the son of an "

Enemy of the People The terms enemy of the people and enemy of the nation are designations for the political opponents and the social class, social-class opponents of the Power (social and political), power group within a larger social unit, who, thus identified, ...

" shot in 1937, did not discourage him.) After reading the notes that dissident poet

Vladimir Gershuni Vladimir Lvovich Gershuni (, 18 March 1930, Moscow – 17 September 1994, Moscow) was a Soviet dissident and poet. He was a nephew of Grigory Gershuni, a founder of the Socialist Revolutionary Party. He grew up in Soviet children's homes. Childh ...

's smuggled out of the

Oryol Oryol ( rus, Орёл, , ɐˈrʲɵl, a=ru-Орёл.ogg, links=y, ), also transliterated as Orel or Oriol, is a Classification of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Oryol Oblast, Russia, situated on the Oka Rive ...

Special Psychiatric hospital, Alexander became interested in the

political abuse of psychiatry Political abuse of psychiatry, also known as punitive psychiatry, refers to the misuse of psychiatric diagnosis, detention, and treatment to suppress individual or group human rights in society. This abuse involves the deliberate psychiatric dia ...

in the USSR. Soon he was a contributing editor to the '' Chronicle of Current Events'' (1968-1982), covering psychiatric issues. In January 1977, he also travelled to Siberia as a courier for the Relief (Solzhenitsyn) Fund, delivering money to the needy families of political prisoners, held in the camps or forced to live in exile.

Punitive Psychiatry

On 5 January 1977, Podrabinek launched the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes. The Commission at first had three other members (Vyacheslav Bakhmin, Irina Kaplun and Felix Serebrov), and its consultant psychiatrist was A.A. Voloshanovich. Around the Commission formed a circle of supporters "without whom we could have done nothing," comments Podrabinek. "The volume of work was too great.". They visited psychiatric hospitals, wrote appeals to hospital doctors, and published information on psychiatric abuse in their own information bulletins, and in other samizdat publications like the Chronicle of Current Events. In 1977, Podrabinek published ''Punitive Medicine'' �арательная медицина the Russian edition of his book on the systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR. In December 1977, the KGB approached Podrabinek's father Pinkhos, and threatened to arrest and imprison both his sons (Kirill was suffering from TB) if the three of them did not agree to emigrate to Israel. (In an essay circulated in samizdat Kirill had criticized the treatment of conscripts in the

Soviet army The Soviet Ground Forces () was the land warfare service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. It was preceded by the Red Army. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991, the Ground Forces remained under th ...

.) They discussed their predicament with other dissidents, notably Tatyana Velikanova, at the apartment of

Andrei Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet Physics, physicist and a List of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Alt ...

. Sakharov's wife, Yelena Bonner, urged the three to take the opportunity to leave the USSR. Alexander, supported by Velikanova, rejected the proposal and later held a press conference at the home of

, publicly asserting his refusal to given in to such blackmail. On 15 August 1978, Alexander Podrabinek was convicted of " anti-Soviet slander", sentenced to five years' banishment or internal exile, and was first transported to the Irkutsk Region, Siberia. (His brother Kirill, meanwhile, was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon and was sent to a camp for ordinary criminals.) After the English edition of ''Punitive Medicine'' appeared, Podrabinek was again charged with political offences — he was by then exiled to

Yakutia Sakha, officially the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), is a republics of Russia, republic of Russia, and the largest federal subject of Russia by area. It is located in the Russian Far East, along the Arctic Ocean, with a population of one million ...

in the Soviet Far East — and at his trial in Ust-Nera on 6 January 1981, he was sentenced to three years in a local corrective-labour camp.

Return from the Far East

In autumn 1986, prompted by Anatoly Marchenko's hunger strike in , Podrabinek, veteran dissident

Larisa Bogoraz Larisa Iosifovna Bogoraz (, full name: Larisa Iosifovna Bogoraz-Brukhman, Bogoraz was her father's last name, Brukhman her mother's, August 8, 1929 – April 6, 2004) was a Soviet dissidents, dissident in the Soviet Union. Biography Born in ...

, and lawyer Sophia Kalistratova launched a campaign for the release of the Soviet Union's hundreds of political prisoners. They sent letters requesting a wide amnesty to the presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet and to

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

, the new leader of the Soviet Communist Party. There was no response. Then they began sending their two letters to prominent members of the artistic and technical intelligentsia: to writers, poets and artists; and to scientists and scholars. The result was disheartening. With notable exceptions, e.g. the world-famous animé artist Yury Norstein, very few would put their name to such a document. In 1987, Podrabinek founded the weekly samizdat newspaper ''Express Chronicle'', which appeared in Russian and English between 1987 and 2000. As the first uncensored media outlet in the USSR, with the ''

Glasnost ''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...

'' journal of Sergei Grigoryants, the ''Chronicle'' drew the interest of Western journalists in Moscow . The ''Chronicle'' circulated in a hundred major Soviet cities. In March 1989, Alexander participated in the founding of the

Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia The Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia (IPA) () is the sole Russian non-governmental professional organization that makes non-forensic psychiatric expert examination at the request of citizens whose rights have been violated with the us ...

Career as a journalist

Podrabinek started working as a journalist during the Gorbachev years. From 1987 to 2000 he was editor-in-chief of the weekly human right magazine ''Express Chronicle'' («Экспресс Хроника»). In 2000, he became editor-in-chief of the Prima information agency, which specialized in human right issues. In 2004, Alexander Podrabinek became involved in the distribution of '' Blowing up Russia: Terror from within'', the exposé written by

Alexander Litvinenko Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko (30 August 1962 ( at WebCite) – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised in tackling organized crime, ...

and Yuri Felshtinsky. Unable to find a publisher in Russia, the authors printed an early draft in Latvia, intending to distribute it in Moscow. On 29 December 2003, however, units of the Russian Interior Ministry and the FSB seized 4,376 copies of the book purchased by Podrabinek's Prima information agency. The books had passed customs and were being driven by truck from Latvia to Moscow to be sold there. Podrabinek was summoned by the FSB for questioning on 28 January 2004, but he refused to answer their questions. In certain articles for ''Novaya gazeta'', and comments on Radio Liberty, Podrabinek expressed concern that the use of psychiatry for political repression was reviving in Russia, in the enforced hospitalization of Larisa Arap, for instance. In 2009, Podrabinek was targeted by the nationalist youth movement Nashi after writing on the Yezhednevny Zhurnal website about a

Moscow Moscow is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Russia by population, largest city of Russia, standing on the Moskva (river), Moskva River in Central Russia. It has a population estimated at over 13 million residents with ...

eating place opposite the "Soviet" Hotel which had renamed itself the "Anti-Soviet" Restaurant and put up a sign using its popular nickname. Local officials said the title was offensive to " Soviet veterans and should be removed." (In early 2014 new legislation enabled the Communications Oversight Agency (or Rozkomnadzor) to block the Yezhednevny Zhurnal and Kasparov.ru websites.) Since 2014, Podrabinek has been host of the "Déjà vu" programme on Radio Liberty and his articles have been published by the Institute of Modern Russia.

Activism

Podrabinek has been interviewed, talking about his past as a Soviet dissident, in two documentaries: '' They Chose Freedom'' (2005) and '' Parallels, Events, People'' (2013). His contributions, past and present, were acknowledged in 2015 by the award of the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom. Podrabinek remains active and vocal as an opposition figure today. In March 2006 Podrabinek was briefly arrested in

Minsk Minsk (, ; , ) is the capital and largest city of Belarus, located on the Svislach (Berezina), Svislach and the now subterranean Nyamiha, Niamiha rivers. As the capital, Minsk has a special administrative status in Belarus and is the administra ...

for involvement in peaceful protests against the re-election of the

Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

ian president

Alexander Lukashenko Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko (also transliterated as Alyaksandr Ryhoravich Lukashenka; born 30 August 1954) is a Belarusian politician who has been the first and only president of Belarus since the office's establishment in 1994, making hi ...

for the third term. In 2008 he supported the campaign to gain the admission of

Vladimir Bukovsky Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (; 30 December 1942 – 27 October 2019) was a Soviet and Russian Human rights activists, human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissid ...

to the presidential elections. On 3 June 2008, he became a founding signatory of the Prague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism. In March 2010 Alexander Podrabinek signed the online anti-Putin manifesto of the Russian opposition " Putin must go". On 25 September 2013, he held a protest in support of imprisoned Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of

Pussy Riot Pussy Riot is a Feminism in Russia, Russian feminist protest and performance art group based in Moscow that became popular for its provocative punk rock music which later turned into a more accessible style. Founded in the fall of 2011 by the th ...

band. On 4 May 2016, Podrabinek published ''An Open Letter to the Prosecutor of Crimea''. In October 2017 Podrabinek drafted and launched a petition, calling on Russia's citizens not to support the hypocrisy of the Russian authorities who, on the one hand, unveiled the massive Wall of Sorrow a monument in Moscow to the victims of political repression, and, on the other, were responsible for the re-appearance of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners in post-Soviet Russia. The petition was signed by many former Soviet dissidents from Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, Armenia, Georgia, the USA and France."Do not support their hypocrisy!"
30 October 2017
Original, Kasparov.ru

Works

Books

* * Russian text: *

Articles

(in English, French and Russian) * * * *

Interviews

* * * * * *

References

External Sources

*
«Вести из СССР» (Vesti iz SSSR, Munich)
1978-1987.

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Podrabinek, Alexander 1953 births Living people People from Elektrostal Soviet Jews Russian Jews Paramedics Soviet dissidents Soviet human rights activists Soviet psychiatric abuse whistleblowers Amnesty International prisoners of conscience held by the Soviet Union Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes Independent Psychiatric Association of Russia Solidarnost politicians Russian activists Soviet non-fiction writers Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers Russian non-fiction writers Russian political writers 20th-century Russian journalists 21st-century Russian writers Writers from Moscow Russian memoirists Russian male journalists Russian editors Russian radio personalities Soviet prisoners and detainees Russian prisoners and detainees Male non-fiction writers