The first official condemnation of political abuse of psychiatry in the USSR to be made by an international psychiatric organization came on August 30, 1977. On that date, the General Assembly, governing body of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA), adopted a resolution of Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists against “the systematic abuse of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR.” Subsequently passed by a vote of 122 to 66 was a resolution submitted by the American Psychiatric Association, to set up a committee monitoring “The misuse of psychiatric skills, knowledge and facilities for the suppression of dissent wherever it occurs.”

Zhores Medvedev (1925—2018) was a Russian agronomist, biologist, historian, and dissident. He was the author of numerous books including Nuclear Disaster in the Urals, Legacy of Chernobyl, and Khrushchev: The Years in Power.