Valery Tarsis
Valery Yakovlevich Tarsis | |
---|---|
Bern, Switzerland | |
Occupation |
|
Nationality | Russian |
Citizenship | Rostov-on-Don State University |
Valery Yakovlevich Tarsis (
Biography
Valery was born in
He translated thirty four books into Russian.[3]: 193
During World War II Tarsis was twice severely wounded.
As a young man Tarsis joined the
The publication abroad of his scathing 1962 novel The Bluebottle earned him an eight-month stay in a Soviet mental hospital,[6] an experience he described in his autobiographical novel Ward 7: "All around him were faces exposed by sleep or distorted by nightmares ... it is always hard to be the only one awake, and it is almost unbearable to stand the third watch of the world in a madhouse..."[7]
Tarsis' Ward No. 7 is a personal account of the use of psychiatry to stifle dissidence.[8] The book was one of the first literary works to deal with political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.[9]: 208 Tarsis based the book upon his own experiences in 1963–1964 when he was detained in the Moscow Kashchenko psychiatric hospital for political reasons.[10]: 140 In a parallel with the story Ward No. 6 by Anton Chekhov, Tarsis implies that it is the doctors who are mad, whereas the patients are completely sane, although unsuited to a life of slavery.[9]: 208 In ward No. 7 individuals are not cured, but persistently maimed; the hospital is a jail and the doctors are gaolers and police spies.[9]: 208 Most doctors know nothing about psychiatry, but make diagnoses arbitrarily and give all patients the same medication — the anti-psychotic drug aminozin or an algogenic injection.[9]: 208 Tarsis denounces Soviet psychiatry as pseudo-science and charlatanism.[9]: 208
Among all the victims of Soviet psychiatry, Tarsis was the sole exception in the sense that he did not emphasised the 'injustice' of confining 'sane dissidents' to psychiatric hospitals and did not thereby imply that the psychiatric confinement of 'insane patients' was proper and just.[11]
In 1966, Tarsis was permitted to emigrate to the West, and was soon deprived of his Soviet citizenship.
Works
- The Bluebottle (1962)
- Ward 7 (1965)
- The Pleasure Factory (1967)
- The Gay life (1968)
Further reading
- Khazova, Margarita [Маргарита Хазова] (March–April 2015). "В. Тарсис и В. Максимов о судьбе человека в тоталитарном государстве ("Палата № 7" — "Семь дней творения")" [Valery Tarsis and Vladimir Maximov on the human fate in what is called a totalitarian state ("Ward 7" vs "Seven Days of Creation")] (PDF). Вестник Костромского государственного университета им. Н.А. Некрасова [Vestnik of Nekrasov Kostroma State University] (in Russian). 21 (2): 92–96. Archived (PDF) from the original on 15 August 2015.
References
- ^ Perrucci, Robert; Pilisuk, Marc (1968). The triple revolution: social problems in depth. Little, Brown. pp. 325.
- ^ ISBN 0-575-02318-X.
- ^ Artyomova, A.; Slavinsky, M.; Rar, L. [А. Артёмова, М. Славинский, Л. Рар] (1971). Казнимые сумасшествием: Сборник документальных материалов о психиатрических преследованиях инакомыслящих в СССР [The executed by madness: a collection of documentary materials about psychiatric persecutions of dissenters in the USSR] (PDF) (in Russian). Frankfurt am Main: Посев [Seeding]. p. 193.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b "Students to hear Russian on Wednesday". The Gettysburg Times. 3 October 1966.
- ^ "Alive now, says Russian novelist". The Tuscaloosa News. 10 May 1966.
- ISBN 978-0-8156-0256-9. Retrieved 6 January 2011.
- ^ Tarsis, Valeriy (Trans. Katya Brown, 1965) (1963). Ward 7: An Autobiographical Novel. London & Glasgow: Collins and Harvill Press.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - S2CID 44975416.
- ^ ISBN 0-7099-1776-7.
- ^ ISBN 978-90-420-3046-6.
- PMID 11665013. Archived from the originalon February 23, 2014.
- The Montreal Gazette. 11 February 1966.
- ^ "Soviet critic draws crowd". The Gettysburg Times. 6 October 1966.
- Toledo Blade. 7 February 1966.
- ISBN 978-1317484448.
- ^ "Смотрели за каждым… "Палата № 7"" [They watched anyone… "Ward 7"]. Вопросы литературы [Questions of Literature] (in Russian) (2). 1996.
- Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union No. 238/132 of 8 April 1966 in response to the note by Nikolai Zakharov and Roman Rudenko of 14 February 1966 and in response to the note by Andrei Gromyko of 5 April 1966] (PDF) (in Russian). Soviet Archives, collected by Vladimir Bukovsky. 8 April 1966.)
{{cite web}}
: External link in
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- ^ "Valery Tarsis is dead; Soviet emigre novelist". The New York Times. 4 March 1983.