After 20 years in the camps, the psychiatrist and writer Semen Gluzman places his energy and his professional qualities in the reconstruction of a now independent Ukraine. His story and his approach are an example of the underground but no less effective work of what is called civil society.
Since the formation of the Ukrainian state in 1991, opponents, former political prisoners or reformers, had found themselves in front of a dilemma: it was necessary to pact with the new power directly from the old system, or stay in opposition ? There “ dissent Would Ukrainian become a moral posture or would she seek to find the professionalism that was after 10 or 25 years of Goulag ? Power was also eager to give this form of resistance a status legitimizing its own accession to the highest functions. Thus leading characters served as a deposit, depriving civil society of their moral experience.
The construction of the State resulting from the breakup of the Soviet Union had, even more cruelly than elsewhere, need new elites ; The old ones had been partly sucked in by Moscow, partly eliminated by successive waves: “ Fusible Renaissance “(Liquidation of intellectuals in the 1920s), purges of the 1930s, great famine, extermination of the Jewish community, liquidation of” supporters “, Repression of the 1960s, then a new wave of terror in the 1970s.
The last Ukrainian political prisoners were released after the perestroika and those who survived the deportation returned “ at home In 1987. Semen Gluzman was one of them.
Born just after the war, a youth rather brought to literature, growing up in contact with Hermann Hesse, Camus, Rilke and Apollinaire, the young gluzman was in no way a revolutionary, just a teenager who instinctively wary mass gatherings and songs that we take up in choir. A guy like the others, who dreams – he is surprised today – rather girls and a life “ normal “That when this” Totalitarian state He now calls by tracking down his feelings of youth. After solid studies, he became a doctor, specializing in psychiatry.
Neither major speeches nor spectacular actions: it was enough to whisper that “ The king is naked “For the sanctions to fall on the” children of Andersen ». In May 1972, Gluzman was arrested by the Kgb For “ Antisoviet agitation and propaganda ». The main reason is the help he provided to General Grigorenko locked up for “ paranoid schizophrenia », A diagnosis to which the young psychiatrist opposes. It then cost an average of it on average for having denounced psychiatric abuses.
Destination Perm, Siberia. Gluzman is 25 years old.
Hunger, cold, a horror so daily that it becomes trivial, to which only the superhuman efforts which must be deployed to send some samizdats to this “ Free Europe so far from us “Give meaning:” This activity avoided us the destruction of the personality and, even if it was then in an unreal way, prepares our Soviet future ». The gulag, “ the area “Becomes the place where individuals meet, where unthinkable exchanges stand elsewhere. Paradoxically, the camp is the place where a certain form of freedom can be exercised, not to mention the permanent intellectual exercise to which it obliges. “” In this country strangled by fear, writes Gluzman, we said in the face of our jailers all about their “ naked kings ».
The area brews cultures, promotes exchanges. Gluzman learns the history of Ukraine, taboo in the Soviet Union, rubs shoulders with supporters who had fought both against the Germans and against the Soviets, observes how the repression does not strike in the same way the different populations that make up theUSSR : “ When in Russia we took ‘three years of camp, in Ukraine it was six or seven ».
The intellectual affinities help to bring together certain characters. With Vladimir Boukovski, Gluzman writes a “ Psychiatry manual for the use of non-conformists And studies survival psychology under extreme conditions.
After having “ do His ten years of camp, he finds this strange freedom to which it is a question of giving a new meaning. There is no question of having this experience called dissent ; Writer and doctor, this double activity will now be his: it is necessary to testify and treat.
But “ One fine day, he wrote as if it were the beginning of a tale, the Soviet Union died. She broke out like a rotten fruit. Without explosion of a nuclear rocket or intervention of extraterrestrials. (…) Unlike Nazi Germany, no one defeated it. The system was killed itself. His feelings are then ambiguous: it is an unexpected and largely undeserved miracle. “” This time, I was afraid of my free country, he wrote. I knew him too well. kyiv’s cruel power, always ready to prove his dedication to central power (in Moscow), his brilliant anti -Semitism, his Kgb Lots of initiatives when it was a question of repressing (…) and at the same time, the Soviet people dissident the best represented in the political camps. »»
Gluzman does not feel the vocation of a human rights defender, in the ordinary sense of the term ; The main thing for him is to rebuild a normal state, if only in tribute to the victims of the gulag.
In the early 1990s, great confusion reigned in the psychiatric environment: it is a question of decriminalizing this sector particularly marked by repression. He meets the Minister of Health of the New State who offers him this task, immediately felt as “ A historic chance ». A commission is created by which a thousand people spend, some demanding sanctions against doctors who have been accomplices in the system. Gluzman refuses to enter this vicious circle, considering that the important thing is “ not to demolish or punish, but to build a new building ». Thus was born the association of psychiatrists in Ukraine bringing together Ukrainian and foreign professionals, representatives of various disciplines, doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists or social workers. A international medical rehabilitation center for victims of the Second World War and Totalitarianism is also set up with the help of the Ukraino-American office for the defense of human rights. As for the idea of an international tribunal for communism, he declares himself not very favorable to it: it seems more urgent to treat society than to take revenge.
From the experience of samizdats to the publication “ free There is only one step. Three volumes appear, titled The last addressto pay tribute to the dead of the Solovki Islands, listing the name, identity and documents on the victims. In what looks like a hangar is a modest publishing house, “ Sfera “, A way of staying in the” area While changing orbit. She publishes testimonies, legal or medical texts, by also exploiting the most recent technical possibilities: on the association’s website, public health documents, the consequences of Chernobyl or the disorders due to alcoholism are put free “ online »At the disposal of professionals.
Semen Gluzman walks the Ukrainian campaigns to visit these specialized hospitals to which he gradually gave a more human if not more comfortable existence. He introduces family psychotherapy to Donetsk – the region most affected by misery, alcoholism and drugs – according to a method that will be a school. We must sow and rebuild this barely born state, abused, who needs doctors, jurists and even police that he defends if necessary “ Because the company is entitled to wait for their help without collaborating with them ».
Because this state which considers itself free, when it is only “ independent This time is sick of his new status, of these elites propelled to positions for which they are neither professionally nor morally prepared. In 2004, at the time of “ Orange revolution “, Gluzman stands in the place of independence,” Not that we are fanatical idiots: we stayed there for us, for them. It was the first awakening of society, when the voice of the people was heard ». With however this regret: “ We then learned to control the elections, but not the power ». Marked by the ideology of a radiant future which would not claim its intervention, the population too often imagines that a new president or a new Prime Minister will be enough to establish democracy.
According to Gluzman, it is not the policy at the top which can induce, according to him, real reforms. Unlike a “ vertical power “Who would make orders, good or bad, from top to bottom of a hypothetical scale, is to leave” Small towns and villages That initiatives are supposed to express themselves and impose themselves, there too that mentalities must change. Whoever travels the country notes one by one the battles won against and against everything by society when it is mobilized. Local officials, he demands transparency, in particular for medical and social services on which everyone’s life depends directly. This is what he calls democracy “ in a short step », Also made up of seized opportunities.
From circles to circles, the psychiatrist approaches the Green Party – without being subject to it – through a committee where philosophers find themselves, former managers of the secret services, jurists or famous conductor. And with the Ministry of Labor, a “ Advice “Independent who draws the attention of civil servants to the situation of orphanages and the elderly or on the ravages of drugs, and tries to help the constitution of a medical insurance system.
If Professor Gluzman can understand corruption “ ordinary Which is often the setback of misery and the absence of state structures, it denounces that which is practiced at the top all domains combined, as in the help of the patients of AIDS, the sums of which are sometimes diverted. He does not hesitate to say that the deputies will begin to think of medicine the day when they are prohibited from going to treat themselves abroad.
There is something of Czekhovian in his approach which describes and examines Ukrainian society as a living being, anxious not to do worse than evil. Its reflections also provide a diagnosis of the change of system in a country where nothing is now extraordinary “ Except perhaps, he specifies, the elimination of fear “, And even if it is now the absence of standards that can generate tyranny, transforming the one who benefits into” king, liar, capricious or absolute criminal tyrant ».
This fable form is not only valid for Ukraine, as this sentence from Thomas Mann recalls that Gluzman never forgot after having read it in captivity: it is difficult to satisfy the truth and people simultaneously.