Іі5Ьегі by the Ukrainian National Association Inc.. a frattrnal non-profit association| ШrainianWeekl Y Vol. LVI No. 9 THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1988 25 cents Ukraine's nuclear power program Soviet, U.S. expects to meet in D.C. attacked by academicians, writers to discuss abuse of psycliiatiy by Dr. David R. Marples further meeting about the three above- MOSCOW - Top Soviet and Ame­ many dissidents remain committed in mentioned nuclear stations took place rican officials agreed, during a visit to psychiatric wards and those officials In an issue of Literaturna Ukraina in the republic on August 25, 1987. the Soviet capital by Secretary of State and physicians responsible for such from January a group of Ukrainian The twin targets of the article are the George Shultz last week, to a March 18 abuses remain in their posts, according academicians has mounted the stron­ Ministry of Atomic Power Engineering meeting in Washington between Soviet to Sergei Grigoryants, a Moscow dis­ gest criticism thus far of the expansive of the USSR and "gigantomania" in and U.S. experts to discuss Soviet sident and chief editor of the unofficial program for constructing nuclear power nuclear plant building. The ministry is psychiatric practices, reported The New Glasnost magazine. plants in the republic. The article attacked with venom. The writers state York Times on February 23. The Soviets reportedly adopted a new appeared just before the Soviet an­ that it has taken a militant position on The announcement was viewed as a set of legal rights for mental patients at nouncement that a nuclear plant in the nuclear power development, pushing positive sign by Washington officials, the beginning of the year, including a Krasnodar area was being abandoned ahead with plans to build a further 6,000 who have long been concerned with new statute which gives patients and as a result of public protests. megawatts of electrical capacity at Soviet abuses of psychiatry, including their families the right to sue for release The article in the Ukrainian press, stations in the republic without due the incarceration of Soviet dissidents in and also gives the Health Ministry final however, goes much further in that it regard for the warnings of scientists and psychiatric hospitals to silence them, authority over the notorious special assails the entire nuclear program from scholars. wrote the Times. psychiatric hospitals that are now a variety of angles: ecological, geologi­ Deputy Minister O.L. Lapshin is Soviet abuse of psychiatry has long controlled by the Interior Ministry, cal, agricultural and from the viewpoint cited as stating that the existing pki/is been documented by former political according to a January 5 Times article. of the psychological impact of the Chor- can be expanded because those erec­ prisoners who served time in Soviet In addition, the Russian republic nobyl disaster upon Ukrainians. tions already have the necessary infra­ psychiatric institutions, among them reportedly also altered its legal code to Public protests against nuclear power structure, and that the building workers the late Petrb Grigorenko, Vladimir make it a crime to commifa "patently are not new in Ukraine. They have and operatives involved do not have to Bukovsky and Leonid Plyushch. healthy person" in a psychiatric hospi­ grown steadily over the past year, and worry about uprooting themselves from Despite the Soviet Union's apparent tal, the Times reported. have already had a serious impact on one area to another on a constant basis. attempts in the past several months at While Soviet and Western human the Ukrainian nuclear energy program, (Continued on page 11) psychiatric reform, abuses continue, which anticipates a proportionally rights monitors welcomed these changes much greater expansion than elsewhere they expressed skepticism about in the Soviet Union. Ogonyok's Viialiy Korotych: why some\ whether the revisions would bring an end to abuses. For example, Ukrainian writers have "It's good from the viewpoint of law," protested against the construction of a Ukrainian writers are not impressed by Bohdan Nahaylo ters and, in some cases, even political Aleksander Podrabinek, a Soviet dissi­ nuclear power plant on the Dnieper dent who has penned a book on Soviet River near Chyhyryn, in the Cherkassy prisoners, or else their being pro­ Oblast, on the grounds that the station Since Vitaliy Korotych moved scribed, Mr. Korotych chose to work psychiatric abuses, was quoted as constitutes a danger to the surrounding from Kiev to Moscow in the summer "within the system" and gradually saying on January 4. "Buthowit will be environment and also because it will of 1986 to take over as editor of the rose through the ranks. Thus, in 1966 in practice is absolutely unknown. So isolate from citizens an area of great weekly magazine Ogonyok he has — the year in which a series of far, the practice has not changed at importance in the history of Ukraine. transformed this publication into political trials took place in Ukraine all." one of the flagships of glasnost and of nationally minded intellectuals, he Similar skepticism was voiced by Mr. Following an outspoken statement Grigoryants, head of Press Club Glas­ by the Ukrainian writer Oles Honchar gained international fame for himself was made a secretary of the board of as a daring and outspoken champion the UWU. nost, in an op-ed article on "Soviet to a writers' conference in Leningrad Psychiatric Prisoners" that appears in regarding the ecological damage being of the Gorbachev leadership's ''new Mr. Korotych seems to have expe­ caused to the Ukrainian environment course." Inevitably, through his bold rienced something of a rough patch the Times on February 23. by the building of numerous nuclear role in destroying taboos and probing in his literary career in the early 1970s "It is also well known that in the plants, it was revealed that the plans to the limits of glasnost, he has created when his poetry was criticized by Soviet Union no laws protecting human construct a new nuclear power and many enemies among conservative ideological watchdogs. Nevertheless, rights are executed," he wrote. heating plant in the western district of and reactionary forces and his maga­ he managed to weather the storms "Those who have sent healthy people the city of Kiev had been abandoned in zine has become a prime target of and in time even to advance his to psychiatric hospitals by a wave of mid-course.Instead of the nuclear plant, their attacks. career with the help of some all- their hands are keeping their posts. The it was proposed to build yet another At the beginning of this year, union publications in Moscow, by doctors who betrayed their medical unit at the local thermal electric station. however, Mr. Korotych has come turning to journalistic publicism. duty and even violated existing instruc­ tions by putting healthy people in In November 1987, Valeri Legasov, under fire from an unexpected quar­ From about the mid 1970s onwards, first deputy director of the Kurchatov ter — from some of his former the poet — who had already fre­ hospitals and torturing them remain on Institute of Atomic Energy with the colleagues in the Ukrainian Writer's quently been allowed to travel the job. These people work as they did Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Union (UWU) who know him per­ abroad — became in effect a propa­ before, they have the same acquain­ stated that public protests had also haps better than anyone else. gandist for the Brezhnev leadership's tances as before and will offer each delayed work on nuclear power and But first, a few details about Mr. line and a prominent critic of the other little favors as before. No law heating stations near the cities of Korotych's literary career as a Ukrai­ West's attitudes towards the Soviet frightens them as long as they are the Odessa and Minsk. The Odessa station nian poet and writer. Before he left Union. ones looking after its implementation." was thought to be close to the start of the Ukrainian capital, he had for While he was doing this, from 1978 Mr. Grigoryants also pointed to a operations. long been a leading figure in the Mr. Korotych also edited the Ukrai­ January 24 meeting between the direc­ The current protest concentrates on Ukrainian literary establishment. nian equivalent of Innostrannaya tor of the notorious Serbsky Institute of the proposed expansion of three Ukrai­ A physician by profession who Literatura — the monthly Vsesvit, Forensic Psychiatry, where numerous nian nuclear plants: Rivne, Khmelnyt- turned to poetry, he was one of the which until then had been perhaps dissidents were incarcerated and hun­ sky and South Ukraine. It cites as a original group of Shestydesiatnyky, the most interesting Ukrainian lite­ dreds of thousands were declared in­ precedent the fact that there was a high- or "Sixtiers," that is, the young rary publication during the difficult sane and thus spent many years in level discussion in the republic about literati who reinvigorated Ukrainian period that had followed the crack­ mental hospitals, and representatives of the question of going ahead with the literature in the early 1960s with their down on Ukrainian national-cultural the International Helsinki Federation building of the "third stage" (units 5 and talent, new approaches, and civic life and the removal of the Ukrainian for Human Rights. 6) of the Chornobyl plant, which firmly courage. party leader Petro Shelest in 1972- Dr. Georgi V. Morozov, the director rejected the idea. The meeting about Unlike some of the Shestydesiat­ 73. Mr. Korotych remained a com­ of the Institute, that incidentally has Chornobyl took place in late March nyky whose uncompromising spirit plex figure - an opportunist, skilled always been under the authority of 1987, and the new article notes that a led either to their becoming dissen­ (Continued on page 13) (Continued on page 3) THE UKRAINIAN WEEKLY SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1988 No.