Petro Grigorenko Explained

Native Name:Петро Григоренко
Petro Hryhorenko
Native Name Lang:uk
Birth Name:Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko
Birth Place:Borysivka, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire
Death Place:New York City, New York, United States
Burial Place:St. Andrew Memorial Church in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, United States
Alma Mater:Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute
Military Engineering-Technical University
Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy
Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia
Nationality:Ukrainian
Citizenship:
(1917–1918)
(1918–22)
(1922–77)
(1977–87)
Party:Bolshevik
Movement:dissident movement in the Soviet Union
Occupation:commanding officer, military scientist, cyberneticist
Employer:Frunze Military Academy
Known For:human rights activism with participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, the Working Commission to Investigate the Use of Psychiatry for Political Purposes, struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
Spouse:Zinaida Hryhorenko
Children:5
Module:
Embed:yes
Serviceyears:1939–1945
Rank:Major General
Branch:Red Army
Battles:Battles of Khalkhin Gol
Second World War
Awards:Order of Lenin
Order For Courage 1st class

Petro Grigorenko or Petro Hryhorovych Hryhorenko (Ukrainian: Петро́ Григо́рович Григоре́нко, – 21 February 1987) was a high-ranking Soviet Army commander of Ukrainian descent, who in his fifties became a dissident and a writer, one of the founders of the human rights movement in the Soviet Union.[1]

For 16 years, he was a professor of cybernetics at the Frunze Military Academy[2] and chairman of its cybernetic section[3] [4] before joining the ranks of the early dissidents. In the mid-1970s Grigorenko helped to found the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, before leaving the USSR for medical treatment in the United States. The Soviet government barred his return, and he never again returned to the Soviet Union.[5] [6] In the words of Joseph Alsop, Grigorenko publicly denounced the "totalitarianism that hides behind the mask of so-called Soviet democracy."[7]

Early life

Petro Grigorenko was born in Borysivka village[8] in Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire (in present-dayZaporizhzhia Oblast, Ukraine).

In 1939, he graduated with honors from the Kuybyshev Military Engineering Academy and the Military Academy of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia.[9] He took part in the battles of Khalkhin Gol, against the Japanese on the Manchurian border in 1939, and in the Second World War.[10] He commanded troops in initial battles following 22 June 1941.[11] During the war, he also commanded an infantry division in the Baltic for three years.[12]

He went on a military career and reached high ranks during World War II. After the war, being a decorated veteran, he left active career and taught at the Frunze Military Academy, reaching the rank of a Major General.

In 1949, Grigorenko defended his Ph.D. thesis on the theme "Features of the organization and conduct of combined offensive battle in the mountains."[13]

In 1960, he completed work on his doctoral thesis.[14] Over 70 of his scientific works on military science were published.[15]

Dissident activities

In 1961, Petro Grigorenko started to openly criticize what he considered the excesses of the Khrushchev regime.[16] He maintained that the special privileges of the political elite did not comply with the principles laid down by Lenin. Grigorenko formed a dissident group—The Group for the Struggle to Revive Leninism. Soviet psychiatrists sitting as legally constituted commissions to inquire into his sanity diagnosed him at least three times—in April 1964, August 1969, and November 1969.[17] When arrested, Grigorenko was sent to Moscow's Lubyanka prison, and from there for psychiatric examination to the Serbsky Institute where the first commission, which included Snezhnevsky and Lunts, diagnosed him as suffering from the mental disease in the form of a paranoid delusional development of his personality, accompanied by early signs of cerebral arteriosclerosis. Lunts, reporting later on this diagnosis, mentioned that the symptoms of paranoid development were "an overestimation of his own personality reaching messianic proportions" and "reformist ideas." Grigorenko was not responsible for his actions and was thereby forcibly committed to a special psychiatric hospital. While there, the government deprived him of his pension despite the fact that, by law, a mentally sick military officer was entitled to a pension. After six months, Grigorenko was found to be in remission and was released for outpatient follow-up. He required that his pension be restored. Although he began to draw pension again, it was severely reduced.

Grigorenko took part in the defense of Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel and sharply protested against the arrests of young writers Alexander Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov, Alexey Dobrovolsky, and others.[18] During the closed political trials of 1965–1969, he was often present at the courthouses, demanding to open the doors of the courtrooms for everyone, explained to the people gathered around the goals of the defendants, expressed his dissatisfaction with the distortions in the internal political life of the country, a demanded a return to "true Leninism".[19]

He became much more active in his dissidence, stirred other people to protest some of the State's actions and received several warnings from the KGB. In 1968, after Grigorenko protested the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, arrested and ultimately committed to a mental hospital[20] until being freed on 26 June 1974 after 5 years of detention.[21] [22] As Grigorenko had followers in Moscow, he was lured to the far-away Tashkent. While there, he was again arrested and examined by a psychiatric team. None of the manifestations or symptoms cited by the Lunts commission were found there by the second examination conducted under the chairmanship of Fyodor Detengof. The diagnosis and evaluation made by the commission was that "Grigorenko's [criminal] activity had a purposeful character, it was related to concrete events and facts... It did not reveal any signs of illness or delusions." The psychiatrists reported that he was not mentally sick, but responsible for his actions. He had firm convictions which were shared by many of his colleagues and were not delusional. Having evaluated the records of his preceding hospitalization, they concluded that he had not been sick at that time either. The KGB brought Grigorenko back to Moscow and, three months later, arranged a second examination at the Serbsky Institute. Once again, these psychiatrists found that he had "a paranoid development of the personality" manifested by reformist ideas. The commission, which included Lunts and was chaired by Morozov, recommended that he be recommitted to a special psychiatric hospital for the socially dangerous. Eventually, after almost four years, he was transferred to a regular mental hospital. On 17 January 1971 Grigorenko was asked whether he had changed his convictions and replied that "Convictions are not like gloves, one cannot easily change them".[23]

In 1971, Dr. Semen Hluzman wrote an in-absentia psychiatric report on Grigorenko.[24] [25] Hluzman came to the conclusion that Grigorenko was mentally sane and had been taken to mental hospitals for political reasons. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Hluzman was forced to serve seven years in labor camp for defending Grigorenko against the charge of insanity.[26] Amnesty International declared Grigorenko a prisoner of conscience.[27]

Grigorenko became the key defender of Crimean Tatars deported to Soviet Central Asia.[28] He advised the Tatar activists not to confine their protests to the USSR, but to appeal also to international organizations including the United Nations.[29]

Grigorenko was one of the first who questioned the official Soviet version of World War II history. He pointed out that just prior to the German attack on June 22, 1941, vast Soviet troops were concentrated in the area west of Białystok, deep in occupied Poland, getting ready for a surprise offensive, which made them vulnerable to be encircled in case of surprise German attack. His ideas were later advanced by Viktor Suvorov.

After publishing Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov's book Stalin and the Soviet Communist Party: A Study in the Technology of Power, Grigorenko made and distributed its copies by photographing and typewriting.[30] In 1976, Grigorenko helped found the Moscow Helsinki Group and the Ukrainian Helsinki Group.

In the United States

On 20 December 1977, Grigorenko was allowed to go abroad for medical treatment.[31] His health was ruined during forcible confinement in KGB-run mental hospitals.[32] On 30 November 1977, Grigorenko arrived in the United States[33] and was stripped of his Soviet citizenship.[34] In Grigorenko's words, Leonid Brezhnev signed the decree of depriving Grigorenko of Soviet citizenship on the ground that he was undermining the prestige of the Soviet Union.[35] The 1970s marked a peak in the use of external exile as a punitive measure by the Soviet Union (as opposed to the internal type, which was highest between the mid-1930s and early 1950s); often the pattern was that a trip abroad for work or medical treatment was transformed into permanent exile.[36] In the same year, Grigorenko became a U.S. citizen.[37]

Being in USA since 1977, Grigorenko took an active part in the activities of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group foreign affiliate.[38] On 23 July 1978, Grigorenko made a statement condemning the trials of Soviet dissidents Anatoliy Shcharanskyi, Alexander Ginzburg and Viktoras Petkus.[39]

In 1979 in New York, Grigorenko was examined by the team of psychologists and psychiatrists including Alan A. Stone, the then President of American Psychiatric Association.[40] The team could find no evidence of mental disease in Grigorenko and his history consistent with mental disease in the past.[40] Their findings were drawn up and publicized by Walter Reich.[41] [42] [43] [44] [45] Grigorenko's case confirmed accusations, Stone wrote, that psychiatry in the Soviet Union was at times a tool of political repression.[46]

Petro Grigorenko described his life and views, and his assessment by Soviet psychiatrists and periods of incarceration in prison hospitals in his 1981 memoirs V Podpolye Mozhno Vstretit Tolko Krys… (In the Underground One Can Meet Only Rats…).[30] In 1982, the book was translated into English by Thomas P. Whitney under the title Memoirs[47] and reviewed by Alexander J. Motyl,[48] Raymond L. Garthoff,[49] John C. Campbell,[50] Adam Ulam,[51] Raisa Orlova and Lev Kopelev.[52]

In 1983, he said he considered the American political-economic system to be "the best that mankind has found to date."[53] In 1983, a stroke he suffered left him partially paralyzed.[54] Grigorenko died on 21 February 1987 in New York City.[4]

In 1991, a commission, composed of psychiatrists from all over the Soviet Union and led by Modest Kabanov, then director of the Bekhterev Psychoneurological Institute in St Petersburg, spent six months reviewing Grigorenko's patient files. They drew up 29 thick volumes of legal proceedings,[1] and in October 1991 reversed the official Soviet diagnosis of Grigorenko's psychiatric condition.[24] In 1992, an official post-mortem forensic psychiatric commission of experts met in Ukraine. They removed the stigma of being a mental patient and confirmed that there were no grounds for the debilitating treatment he underwent in high security psychiatric hospitals for many years.[55] The 1992 psychiatric examination of Grigorenko was described by the Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal in its numbers 1–4 of 1992.[56] [57]

Family

Petro Grigorenko was married to Zinaida Mikhailovna Grigorenko[58] and they had five sons: Anatoliy, Heorhiy, Oleh, Viktor and Andrew.[12] Two of them died as children.[31]

In 1975, Andrew, an electrical engineer,[59] was declared to have inherited his father's insanity. He was expelled from the USSR to the US, two years before Petro and Zinaida Hryhorenko themselves travelled to the United States.[60] Andrew was repeatedly told that since his father was mentally ill, then he was also mad. If he did not stop speaking out in defense of human rights and his father, they told him, he would also be sent to the psikhushka.[15] Subsequently, Andrew Grigorenko became the founder and president of General Petro Grigorenko Foundation, dedicated to the study of his father's legacy.[61]

Name spelling versions

The different Latin spellings of Grigorenko's name exist due to the lack of uniform transliteration rules for the Ukrainian names in the middle of the 20th century, when he became internationally known. The correct modern transliteration would be Petro Hryhorenko. However, according to the American identification documents of the late general the official spelling of his name was established as Petro Grigorenko. The same spelling is engraved on his gravestone at the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of St. Andrew in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, USA. The same spelling is also retained by his surviving American descendants: son Andrew and granddaughters Tetiana and Olga.

Honours and awards

Soviet Union
Ukraine

In Kharkiv the local Georgy Zhukov Avenue was renamed to Petro Hryhorenko Avenue to comply with decommunization laws (this was several times undone by the Kharkiv city council).[62]

Books, interviews, letters

Further reading

Video

External links

Notes and References

  1. Rich, Vera. Soviet Union admits to abuses of psychiatry. New Scientist. 16 November 1991. 132. 1795. 13. 16041887.
  2. Book: Dornberg, John. The new tsars: Russia under Stalin's heirs. 1972. Doubleday. 61. 978-0385052733.
  3. Book: Hertzen, Gustav von. The spirit of the game: Navigational Aids for the next century. 2011. Eetos kustannus. 978-1461117704. 160.
  4. News: Turning the pages back…. The Ukrainian Weekly. LIX. 41. 13 October 1991. 6, 11.
  5. News: Petro Grigorenko, 79 human rights activist. Ocala Star-Banner. 23 February 1987.
  6. News: Grigorenko, rights activist, dies at 79. The Free Lance-Star. 23 February 1987.
  7. Chomsky, Noam. A reply to Joseph Alsop. The New York Review of Books. 21 August 1969.
  8. Book: Abuse of psychiatry for political repression in the Soviet Union: hearing, ninety-second congress, second session . 1975 . 2 . . . 46.
  9. News: Gluzman, Semyon [Семён Глузман]. ru:Расширенная судебно-психиатрическая заочная экспертиза по делу Григоренко Петра Григорьевича, 1907 г.р., украинца, жителя г. Москвы (восстановлено на основании копии Самиздата). A comprehensive in absentia psychiatric opinion on the case of Grigorenko Pyotr Grigoryevich, b. 1907, a Ukrainian, Moscow resident (restored on the basis of a Samizdat copy). http://www.mif-ua.com/archive/issue-13928/article-13953/. 28 January 2013. Новости медицины и фармации [Medicine and Pharmacy News]. ru. 329. 2010.
  10. Book: Reddaway, Peter. Uncensored Russia: protest and dissent in the Soviet Union. 1972. New York. American Heritage Press. 978-0070513549. 127.
  11. Book: Weeks, Albert. Stalin's other war: Soviet grand strategy, 1939–1941. 2002. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. 978-0742521919. 95.
  12. News: Barron, James. Petro Grigorenko dies in exile in US. The New York Times. 23 February 1987.
  13. Book: Казнимые сумасшествием: Сборник документальных материалов о психиатрических преследованиях инакомыслящих в СССР / Редакторы: А. Артемова, Л. Рар, М. Славинский . Executed by insanity: A collection of documentary materials on psychiatric persecution of dissidents in the USSR / Editors: A. Artemova, L. Rahr, M. Slavinsky . 1971. Посев. Франкфурт-на-Майне. 118. https://web.archive.org/web/20100203040936/http://www.antisoviet.imwerden.net/samizdat_kaznim.pdf. 3 February 2010. live. ru.
  14. Web site: Григоренко Пётр Григорьевич (1907-1987). The Sakharov Center. 20 July 2011. ru. (The biography of Grigorenko on the website of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center)
  15. News: Толстой, Иван . Гаврилов, Андрей . Генерал Григоренко. Радио Свобода . General Grigorenko. Radio Liberty. ru. 14 December 2014.
  16. Book: Bursten, Ben. Psychiatry on trial: fact and fantasy in the courtroom. 2001. McFarland. 978-0-7864-1078-1.
  17. Book: Stone, Alan. Law, Psychiatry, and Morality: Essays and Analysis. 1985. American Psychiatric Pub. 978-0-88048-209-7. registration. 8.
  18. Book: Executed by insanity: Collection of documentary materials on psychiatric persecution of dissidents in the USSR . https://web.archive.org/web/20100923133309/http://antisoviet.narod.ru/samizdat_kaznim.pdf . 23 September 2010 . . Posev . 1971 . 508 . ru.
  19. Gluzman . Semen . Semen Gluzman . Extended forensic psychiatric correspondence examination in the case of Grigorenko Petr Grigorievich, born in 1907, Ukrainian, resident of Moscow (restored on the basis of a copy of Samizdat) . News of medicine and pharmacy . 2010 . 329 . 2020-09-19 . https://web.archive.org/web/20200919065718/http://www.mif-ua.com/archive/issue-13928/article-13953/. ru .
  20. News: Gen. Petro Grigorenko seriously ill. The Ukrainian Weekly. LII. 7. 12 February 1984. 4.
  21. News: Russia Frees Dissident General— Grigorenko Confined Five Years . Los Angeles Times . June 27, 1974 . I-1.
  22. News: Grigorenko thanks those who worked for his release from a Soviet mental asylum. Amnesty International Newsletter. IV. 8. August 1974. 2. https://web.archive.org/web/20151026095408/https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/204000/nws210081974en.pdf. 26 October 2015. live.
  23. Book: Barron, John. KGB: the secret work of Soviet secret agents. 1974. Reader's Digest Press. 978-0-88349-009-9. 2. registration.
  24. Book: Medicine betrayed: the participation of doctors in human rights abuses. 1992. Zed Books. 978-1-85649-104-4. 73.
  25. Book: Voren, Robert van. On Dissidents and Madness: From the Soviet Union of Leonid Brezhnev to the "Soviet Union" of Vladimir Putin. 2009-01-01. Rodopi. 978-9042025851. 194. en.
  26. Book: Sabshin, Melvin. Changing American psychiatry: a personal perspective. 2009. American Psychiatric Pub. 978-1-58562-307-5. 95.
  27. Book: Prisoners of conscience in the USSR: Their treatment and conditions. 1975. Amnesty International Publications. London. 978-0-900058-13-4. 118. PDF, immediate download.
  28. News: Глузман, Семён. О чем не написал самиздат. About what samizdat did not write. Mirror Weekly. 14 December 2007. ru.
  29. Redlich, Shimon. Jewish appeals in the USSR: An expression of national revival. Soviet Jewish Affairs. 1974. 4. 2. 24–37. 10.1080/13501677408577192.
  30. Book: Григоренко, Пётр. В подполье можно встретить только крыс…. In Underground One Can Meet Only Rats…. 1981. Детинец. Нью-Йорк. ru.
  31. News: Алещенко, Владимир. Обреченный говорить правду. One doomed to tell the truth. Mirror Weekly. 24 October 1997. ru.
  32. Knight, Amy. The fate of the KGB archives. Slavic Review. Autumn 1993. 52. 3. 582–586. 10.2307/2499726. 2499726. 159741660 .
  33. News: Dlaboha, Ihor. Grigorenko arrives in U.S.. The Ukrainian Weekly. LXХXХIV. 267. 1, 8. 4 December 1977.
  34. Book: Saul, Norman. Historical dictionary of Russian and Soviet foreign policy. 2014. Rowman & Littlefield. 978-1442244375. 148.
  35. Интервью с Петром Григорьевичем Григоренко. Kontinent. 2013. 1978. 152. Interview with Pyotr Grigoryevich Grigorenko. ru.
  36. Book: Medvedev, Zhores . Andropov . Penguin Books . 1984 . 978-0140073164 .
  37. Web site: Soviet dissident Pyotr G. Grigorenko, a World War II general. UPI. 31 December 1986.
  38. "Права человека в России", Human rights network, in Russian
  39. News: Gen. Grigorenko condemns trials (a statement by Gen. Petro Grigorenko condemning the trials of Soviet dissidents Anatoly Shcharansky, Aleksandr Ginzburg and Viktoras Petkus). The Ukrainian Weekly. LXXXV. 165. 23 July 1978. 2.
  40. Book: Abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union: hearing before the Subcommittee on Human Rights and International Organizations of the Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, House of Representatives, Ninety-eighth Congress, first session, September 20, 1983. 1984. U.S. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.C.. 74.
  41. Reich, Walter. The case of General Grigorenko: a psychiatric reexamination of a Soviet dissident. Psychiatry: Interpersonal and Biological Processes. November 1980. 43. 4. 303–323. 6999519. 10.1080/00332747.1980.11024079.
  42. Reich, Walter. The case of General Grigorenko: a second opinion. Encounter. 1980. 54. 4. 9–24. 11634905.
  43. News: Reich, Walter. Grigorenko Gets a Second Opinion. The New York Times Magazine. 13 May 1979.
  44. Reich, Walter [Уолтер Рейч]. ru:Иное мнение. A Second Opinion. Kontinent. 2013. 1979. 152. http://magazines.russ.ru/continent/2013/152/32r.html. ru.
  45. Book: Implementation of the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe: findings and recommendations five years after Helsinki: report submitted to the Congress of the United States by the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. 1980. U.S. Government Printing Office. Washington, D.С.. 154. https://web.archive.org/web/20160406202251/http://csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.Download&FileStore_id=470. 6 April 2016. dead. PDF, immediate download.
  46. News: Americans say Soviet dissident is sane. The Argus-Press. 2. 16 May 1979.
  47. Book: Grigorenko, Petr. Memoirs (translated by Thomas P. Whitney). 1982. Norton. New York. 978-0-393-01570-6.
  48. Motyl, Alexander. Memoirs by Petro G. Grigorenko. Harvard Ukrainian Studies. December 1984. 8. 3/4. 534–536. 41036232.
  49. Garthoff, Raymond. Memoirs by Petro G. Grigorenko; Inside the Soviet Army by Viktor Suvorov. Political Science Quarterly. Spring 1984. 99. 1. 93–94. 10.2307/2150260. 2150260.
  50. Campbell, John. Memoirs by Petro Grigorenko. Foreign Affairs. Spring 1983. 61. 4. 984. 10.2307/20041606. 20041606.
  51. Ulam, Adam. Review: the lives of Peter Grigorenko. The Russian Review. April 1983. 42. 2. 197–200. 10.2307/129646. 129646.
  52. News: Orlowa, Raissa . Kopelew, Lew . Die Erinnerungen Pjotr Grigorenkos : Der Hauptheld ist die Wahrheit. Memoirs by Pyotr Grigorenko: the main hero is the truth. Die Zeit. 28 May 1982. de.
  53. News: Ex-Soviet General favors buildup of US military. The Gainesville Sun. 8 January 1983.
  54. News: Soviet dissident dies in New York. UPI. 23 February 1987.
  55. Book: Коротенко, Ада . Аликина, Наталия . ru:Советская психиатрия: Заблуждения и умысел. 2002. Издательство «Сфера». Киев. 978-966-7841-36-2. 23. https://books.google.com/books?id=OFEeAQAAIAAJ. ru.
  56. Савенко, Юрий. 20-летие НПА России . 20th anniversary of the NPA of Russia . Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal. 2009. 1. 5–18. 20 July 2011. 1028-8554.
  57. Савенко, Юрий. Отчетный доклад о деятельности НПА России за 2000-2003 гг. . Report on the activities of the NPA of Russia for 2000-2003. . Nezavisimiy Psikhiatricheskiy Zhurnal. 2004. 2. 20 July 2011. 1028-8554.
  58. In the psychiatric hospitals . . 59 . 1976 . 32, 33 .
  59. News: Nadler, Gerald. Dissident paints grim view of Russia. Ottawa Citizen. 26 April 1978. 66.
  60. Web site: Сулькин, Олег . ru:Сын генерала Петра Григоренко готовит сборник памяти отца . General Petro Grogorenko's son is preparing a collection in memory of his father . http://www.golos-ameriki.ru/content/grigorenko/1212997.html . . ru . 19 July 2012.
  61. Web site: HOME. 2021-10-10. www.grigorenko.org.
  62. Kharkiv City Council returned Zhukov Avenue to Hryhorenko Avenue for the third time, LB.ua (24 February 2021)

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