The Soviet system used psychiatry as a weapon by diagnosing political opponents as mentally ill in order to confine them as patients instead of trying them in court. Anyone who challenged the state such as dissidents, writers, would-be emigrants, religious believers, or human rights activists could be branded with fabricated disorders like sluggish schizophrenia. This turned normal political disagreement into supposed medical pathology and allowed the state to present dissent as insanity.
Once labeled in this way, people were placed in psychiatric hospitals where they could be held for long periods without legal protections. Harsh treatments were often used to break their resolve. The collaboration between state security organs and compliant psychiatrists created a system where political imprisonment was disguised as medical care, letting the Soviet regime suppress opposition while pretending it was addressing illness rather than silencing critics.
Oh yeah man, the 1930s brought some real prosperity. But I’ve already gathered that you believe Soviet Union to be a tragically lost utopia, so you needn’t bother make up another wall of text in response.
It was bad that the Nazis invaded Ukraine, I agree. Postwar, they saw more economic growth in a decade than they’d experienced in the prior century.
Every industrial era country gets it’s golden age. The question is whether you’re allowed to enter the industrial era or you’re trapped in subsistence for the benefit of your neighbors.
Soviet governments prioritized industrialization, which is what made them rapidly improve in the postwar era.
That upsets a lot of anarchist diehards, because they are convinced the mean old Leninists simply cheated them out of an equivalent heyday