Ivy, Leonid Ivanovich

Born into a working-class family in the city of Naryn in Kyrgyzstan . Father died at the front at the beginning of World War II . Later, with his family, Leonid moved to Odessa . He graduated from high school with a silver medal and entered the Physics and Mathematics Department of Odessa University . Then he transferred to the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics of Kiev University , which he graduated in 1962 .

Until 1968, he served as a mathematical engineer at the V. M. Glushkov Institute of Cybernetics of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in the Laboratory of Mathematical Methods in Biology and Medicine, which was headed by Yu.G. Antomonov. He was engaged in scientific research at the intersection of mathematics and biology, modeling biosystems, published several scientific articles.

As an active participant in the sixties movement, Leonid Plusch contributed to the dissemination of human rights ideas in Ukraine. He was a link between Moscow and Ukrainian dissidents , introducing Muscovites to the latest Ukrainian samizdat and bringing home Moscow samizdat circulations, which then diverged across the republic.

In 1964, after the resignation of Nikita Khrushchev from the post of First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Ivy sent a letter to the Central Committee with proposals on the democratization of the Soviet system. Since 1966, he begins to write for samizdat his articles on the nature of the Soviet system, the national question in the USSR , ideology and the need to renew the country. At that time, Ivy was convinced of the possibility of “ socialism with a human face ” and defended these ideas. In 1968, Leonid Plyushch sent a letter to Komsomolskaya Pravda with a sharp protest against the unreliable, in his opinion, coverage of the trial of Alexander Ginzburg and Yuri Galanskov . According to Leonard Ternovsky , “the answer came quickly - Ivy was fired from the Institute with a wolf ticket and since then he hasn’t been hired anywhere” ^[1] .

True, in 1969, Leonid Plyushch got a job as a stitcher. At the same time, he began to collect information on the human rights movement in the Soviet Union and transmit it to the editors of the Chronicle of Current Events . Since the formation in 1969 of the Initiative Group for the Protection of Human Rights in the USSR, he became a member of it. Since Leonid lived permanently in Kiev , he could not take direct direct part in the work of the group operating in Moscow . Therefore, his signature on some of her documents was put by proxy.

On January 15, 1972, after several apartment searches, Ivy was arrested and charged under Art. 62 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR in anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda in order to undermine the existing system. Leonid Plyushch was detained in the pre-trial detention center of the Kiev KGB , from where he was sent for psychiatric examination to the forensic psychiatric department of the Kiev regional hospital, but was recognized as responsible. Then he was sent to Moscow, where at the V.P. Serbsky Central Institute of Forensic Psychiatry he was twice recognized as a patient with so-called "sluggish schizophrenia" (a diagnosis often made to dissidents ). An expert commission chaired by A. V. Snezhnevsky , with the participation of G. V. Morozov , D. R. Lunts andA.K. Anufrieva conducted an examination of Leonid Ivy in September 1972 and confirmed the previous conclusion - a chronic mental illness in the form of schizophrenia ^[2] .

In January 1973, at a closed trial in the Kiev Regional Court, Ivy was accused of signing letters to the UN as a member of the Initiative Group, of storing and distributing anti-Soviet literature, and of conducting anti-Soviet conversations. By court ruling, he was sent to compulsory treatment in a special (prison) type psychiatric hospital. Then, the Supreme Court of Ukraine softened the determination for compulsory treatment in a general psychiatric hospital, but after a protest by the prosecutor of the Ukrainian SSR, the regional court reinstated the decision “in view of the special social danger of its anti-Soviet actions”.

Since July 15, 1973, Ivy was forcibly placed in a special psychiatric hospital in Dnepropetrovsk . According to Leonard Ternovsky , since August 1973 Ivy is prescribed large doses of haloperidol .

During a meeting with his wife, Ivy speaks with difficulty, with stops, in his eyes longing, he suffocates, writhes in convulsions. Warns that letters are not able to write. And he asks ahead of time to end the meeting ... For 2 and a half years, Ivy was "treated" (I want to say - poisoned) alternately with haloperidol (without the necessary corrections), insulin in increasing dosage, trifthazine - in tablets and injections , complex - with insulin and tryptazine, again with large doses of triftazine. After injections of insulin (apparently expecting insulin shock and seizures) Ivy was tied to a bed for 4 hours ... ^[1]

Calls for the release of Ivy were made by Academician A. D. Sakharov , Corresponding Member I. R. Shafarevich and other human rights defenders. In 1974, Tatyana Khodorovich published in her samizdat the book “The History of Leonid Plyushch Disease”, which was published in Amsterdam the same year ^[3] .

In 1974, an international committee was formed in defense of L.I. Plusch, who was especially active in France and the United States and held protests. The International Congress of Mathematicians in Vancouver published an open letter in defense of Ivy. In France, mathematicians Henri Cartan and Laurent Schwartz , as well as Trotskyists , Lambertists , including Michel Bruet, the son of a Marxist historian and also a mathematician, conducted solidarity campaigns with him. In March 1975, Tatyana Khodorovich wrote and published articles “Ivy is made crazy. Why? ”(Together with Yuri Orlov ) and“ Escalation of Despair ”. On April 23, 1975 , International Ivy Day was held. In defense of the dissident, the Central Committee of the French Communist Party addressed the Soviet leadership. In 1975, V. Bukovsky and S. Gluzman dedicated their work “A Handbook of Psychiatry for Dissenters” to Leonid Plyushch, writing on its title page “Dedicated to Lena Plyushchu - a victim of psychiatric terror” ^[4] .

Wife Tatyana Ilyinichna Zhitnikova shared her husband’s views, distributed samizdat literature with him. To release Leonid Ivy from the hospital, she wrote letters to the highest state authorities, appealed to Western human rights organizations.

As a result of an active international campaign, Leonid Ivy was released.

On January 10, 1976, he and his wife and sons Dmitry and Oles left the USSR. In Austria, he underwent a psychiatric examination, which recorded his full sanity, but found him to have severe nervous exhaustion. In exile he settled in France. Since 1977, Ivy has become the foreign representative of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group. In the West, Ivy published the book "At the Carnival of History" ^[5] .

Since the late 1970s, he has been gradually moving from socialist positions to anti-communism and nationalism , and his interests are shifting from politics to cultural studies and literary criticism. Ivy is a member of the association of Ukrainian writers Slovo, the author of a monograph on Taras Shevchenko . In 1986, Leonid Ivy published an article about the death of the poet Vasil Stus ^[6] . In October 1990, he signed the Roman appeal . In 1991, he released the author's documentary and analytical video film “From Little Russia to Ukraine” and a series of articles on the formation and prospects of Ukrainian culture.

In 2006 he was awarded the Order of Courage of the I degree for civic courage, dedication in the struggle for the establishment of the ideals of freedom and democracy and on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the creation of the Ukrainian public group to promote the implementation of the Helsinki Agreements ^[7] .

Married, has two children.

He died on June 4, 2015 in France at the age of 77 years ^[8] .

• The use of psychiatry for political purposes in the USSR
• Tatyana Khodorovich
• Orlov, Yuri Fedorovich
• Ternovsky, Leonard Borisovich

• Memoirs of L.Plyushch “At the Carnival of History”