The case of General Grigorenko: a psychiatric reexamination of a Soviet dissident.

Pyotr Grigorievich Grigorenko was the perfect realization of the Bolshevik dream. Emerging from the humblest soil of Czarist Russia, he rose to the highest precincts of Soviet power. An ardent patriot, a committed communist and effective leader, he became a Major General in the Red Army, exercised a deep and seminal influence on Soviet military theory, and was showered with medals, honors and promotions through five loyal decades of his Soviet life. In the early nineteen-sixties, at the height of his career, he turned dissident. Arrested, he was psychiatrically examined, declared mentally ill, and committed to prison hospitals for the criminally insane. Two years ago, after reaching the West, he asked for a second opinion on his psychiatric condition. This is a report on the examinations and the findings.