Communist Ideology and the Substance Abuser: A Peripatetic Look at the Use of the Medical Paradigm to Oppress Political Deviants

Abstract

In Russia, as in the United States, there has been such a whole-hearted acceptance of the medical model in regard to deviance in general and substance abuse in particular that it can be categorized as a Kuhnian paradigm. A Russian deviant is labeled as either sick, crazy, or a parasitic counter-revolutionary. In the United States, the deviant can be either sick, mentally ill, or a politically-active ethnic or minority group member. The difference in treatment varies only slightly with the political system. Yet in both the United States and Russia the various medical treatments have been generally found to be unproductive in reducing recidivism. And, just as in the United States, the Russians have developed their own aversion therapy, which to a certain extent is based on the moralistic belief that a “true” Soviet man or woman should not drink to excess, take drugs, or hunt the rare Amanita mushroom. There is a difference, however, in the approaches of the two countries: in the United States, with some exceptions, aversion therapy for substance abuse requires the prior permission of the patient. In Russia, it is often administered by the security police as part of the campaign against “parasites” and “hooligans.” Offenders who fail to respond to medical treatment may be sent to a mental institution, or-if truly unresponsive-may be deported to work on the state farms in frontier provinces. In the United States, they are often merely returned to the streets.