Psikhushkas were already in use by the end of the 1940s (see Alexander Esenin-Volpin), continuing into the Khrushchev Thaw period of the 1960s. On April 29, 1969, the head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov submitted to the Central Committee of CPSU a plan for the creation of a network of specialized "psychiatric hospitals" run by the KGB.[5]
The official Soviet psychiatric science came up with the definition of sluggish schizophrenia, a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace on other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Moscow Serbsky Institute professors (a quote [6] from Vladimir Bukovsky's archives). Some of them had high rank in the MVD, such as the infamous Daniil Luntz, who was characterized by Viktor Nekipelov as "no better than the criminal doctors who performed inhuman experiments on the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps".[6]
The sane individuals who were diagnosed as mentally ill were sent either to a regular psychiatric hospitals or, those deemed particularly dangerous, to special ones, run directly by the MVD. The treatment included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, a range of drugs (such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin) that cause long-lasting side effects, and sometimes involved beatings. Nekipelov describes inhumane uses of medical procedures such as lumbar punctures.
^Эммануил Гушанский [Gushansky, Emmanuil] (1999). "Нужны ли правозащитники в психиатрии?" [Are defenders of human rights needed in psychiatry?]. Российский бюллетень по правам человека [Russian Bulletin on Human Rights] (in Russian) (13). Moscow: Изд-во Института прав человека [Publishing House of the Human Rights Institute]. Archived from the original on 19 January 2013. Retrieved 18 February 2013. The same article in another source:
Эммануил Гушанский [Gushansky, Emmanuil] (2010). "Нужны ли правозащитники в психиатрии?" [Are defenders of human rights needed in psychiatry?] (PDF). Адвокатская палата [Advocatory chamber] (in Russian) (8). Moscow: Адвокатская палата Московской области [The Advocatory chamber of the Moscow oblast]: 23–25. Retrieved 12 July 2013.
^See: Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway (1984). Soviet Psychiatric Abuse: The Shadow over World Psychiatry. Victor Gollancz, London.,
^Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future. 1994. ISBN0-374-52738-5.