In the Soviet Union, activists were sent to state psychiatric wards. According to the state, any and all opposition to government policy was considered a form of mental illness. Stephanie Buck writes about the treatment of the “social parasite” Joseph Brodsky. In 1963, Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was seized and sent to a mental institution… Hospital workers pumped him with tranquilizers and repeatedly woke him during the night. He was given cold baths and wrapped in wet canvas that shrank...
