Alexander Podrabinek | |
|---|---|
Александр Подрабинек | |
 Podrabinek in 1980 | |
| Born | (1953-08-08)8 August 1953 (age 71) |
| Citizenship |  Soviet Union (1953–1991) → Russian Federation (1991–present) |
| Alma mater | I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University |
| Occupation(s) | paramedic, human right activist, journalist, writer |
| Known for | human rights activism in USSR in theWorking Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes andstruggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union; the post-1991 founding of theIndependent Psychiatric Association of Russia |
| Notable work | Punitive Medicine (1979),Dissidents (2014) |
| Movement | dissident movement in the Soviet Union,Solidarnost |
| Spouse | Alla[1] |
| Children | sons Mark and Daniil, daughter Anna |
| Awards | Znamya magazine award 2013,Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, 2015 |
Alexander Pinkhosovich Podrabinek (Russian:Алекса́ндр Пи́нхосович Подраби́нек; born 8 August 1953) is aSoviet dissident, journalist and commentator.[2][3] During the Soviet period he was a human rights activist, being exiled, then imprisoned in a corrective-labour colony, for publication of his bookPunitive Medicine in Russian and in English.[4]
In 1987, while still forced to live outside Moscow in internal banishment, Podrabinek became the founder and editor-in-chief of theExpress Chronicle weekly newspaper. In the 1990s he set up and ran thePrima information agency.[5][6] Over the past ten years he has worked, variously, for theNovaya gazeta newspaper, theYezhednevny Zhurnal website[7] and the Russian Services ofRadio France Internationale[8][9] andRadio Liberty.[10]
Alexander Podrabinek was born on 8 August 1953 inElektrostal, a large provincial town in the Moscow Region to which his parents moved from Moscow in the early 1950s, to avoid the campaign againstrootless cosmopolitans, i.e. Jews.
He and his younger brother Kirill were brought up there by their Jewish father Pinkhos after his Russian wife died.[11] At secondary school, aged ten, they joined the Young Pioneers, but later Alexander and Kirill did not apply to join theKomsomol, the only two non-members in their respective classes: the only explanation the school administration could find was that they were eitherBaptists or open enemies of the regime.[12]
Alexander enrolled in the Department of Pharmacology of a medical institute in 1970 and worked as an assistant in a biology laboratory atMoscow 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.[13]
For political reasons, Podrabinek was denied entrance to medical school,[14] and, at the age of 20, began working for the ambulance service instead. At an early age, Podrabinek became acquainted withdissident circles in Moscow and began to take part in their activities.[15][16] (His medical father, himself the son of an "Enemy of the People" shot in 1937, did not discourage him.)
After reading the notes that dissident poetVladimir Gershuni's smuggled out of theOryol Special Psychiatric hospital, Alexander became interested in thepolitical abuse of psychiatry in the USSR.[17][14] Soon he was a contributing editor to theChronicle of Current Events (1968-1982),[18][19] covering psychiatric issues.
In January 1977, he also travelled to Siberia as a courier for the Social Fund, delivering money to the needy families of political prisoners, held in the camps or forced to live in exile.[20]
On 5 January 1977, Podrabinek launched theWorking 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.[21] Around the Commission formed a circle of supporters "without whom we could have done nothing," comments Podrabinek. "The volume of work was too great.".[22] 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 theChronicle of Current Events.[13][23]
In 1977, Podrabinek publishedPunitive Medicine [Карательная медицина], the Russian edition of his book on the systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR.[24][25] 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.[13] (In an essay circulated in samizdat Kirill had criticized the treatment of conscripts in theSoviet army.) They discussed their predicament with other dissidents, notablyTatyana Velikanova, at the apartment ofAndrei Sakharov. 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 ofAndrei Sakharov, publicly asserting his refusal to given in to such blackmail.[26]
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.[27][28] (His brother Kirill, meanwhile, was convicted of possessing an offensive weapon and was sent to a camp for ordinary criminals.[29]) After the English edition ofPunitive Medicine appeared, Podrabinek was again charged with political offences — he was by then exiled toYakutia 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.[30]
In autumn 1986, prompted byAnatoly Marchenko's hunger strike in Chistopol Prison, Podrabinek, veteran dissidentLarisa Bogoraz, and lawyerSophia 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 theUSSR Supreme Soviet and toMikhail Gorbachev, 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 artistYury Norstein, very few would put their name to such a document.[31]
In 1987, Podrabinek founded the weeklysamizdat newspaperExpress Chronicle, which appeared in Russian and English between 1987 and 2000. As the first uncensored media outlet in the USSR, with theGlasnost journal ofSergei Grigoryants, theChronicle drew the interest of Western journalists in Moscow . TheChronicle circulated in a hundred major Soviet cities.[32][33]
In March 1989, Alexander participated in the founding of theIndependent Psychiatric Association of Russia.[34]
Podrabinek started working as a journalist during the Gorbachev years. From 1987 to 2000 he was editor-in-chief of the weekly human right magazineExpress Chronicle («Экспресс Хроника»).[32][35] In 2000, he became editor-in-chief of thePrima information agency, which specialized in human right issues.[36]
In 2004, Alexander Podrabinek became involved in the distribution ofBlowing up Russia: Terror from within, the exposé written byAlexander Litvinenko andYuri 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 theRussian Interior Ministry and theFSB seized 4,376 copies of the book purchased by Podrabinek'sPrima information agency. The books had passed customs and were being driven by truck from Latvia to Moscow to be sold there.[37] Podrabinek was summoned by the FSB for questioning on 28 January 2004, but he refused to answer their questions.[5][38][39][40][41][42][43]
In certain articles forNovaya gazeta, and comments on Radio Liberty, Podrabinek expressed concern that the use of psychiatry for political repression was reviving in Russia,[44][45] in the enforced hospitalization ofLarisa Arap, for instance.[46]
In 2009, Podrabinek was targeted by the nationalist youth movementNashi after writing on theYezhednevny Zhurnal website about aMoscow 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."[47][48][49] (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 onRadio Liberty[10] and his articles have been published by the Institute of Modern Russia.[50]
Podrabinek has been interviewed, talking about his past as a Soviet dissident, in two documentaries:They Chose Freedom (2005) andParallels, Events, People (2013). His contributions, past and present, were acknowledged in 2015 by the award of theTruman-Reagan Medal of Freedom.[51]
Podrabinek remains active and vocal as an opposition figure today.
In March 2006 Podrabinek was briefly arrested inMinsk for involvement in peaceful protests against the re-election of theBelarusian presidentAlexander Lukashenko for the third term.[52]
In 2008 he supported the campaign to gain the admission ofVladimir Bukovsky to the presidential elections. On 3 June 2008, he became a founding signatory of thePrague Declaration on European Conscience and Communism.[53]
In March 2010 Alexander Podrabinek signed the online anti-Putin manifesto of the Russian opposition "Putin must go".[citation needed]
On 25 September 2013, he held a protest in support of imprisonedNadezhda Tolokonnikova ofPussy Riot band.[54]
On 4 May 2016, Podrabinek publishedAn Open Letter to the Prosecutor of Crimea.[55]
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 massiveWall 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.[56]
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