Psychiatric evaluation for Yuri Dmitriev: they could sentence him to 15 years
Of Luigi Guelpa
It may be true that when one Stalin dies, another becomes, but questioning it is like touching an exposed high voltage cable.
Vladimir Bekhterev, the psychiatrist who the 22 December 1927, after visiting him in the Kremlin, confirmed the dictator's alleged paranoia, he was killed a few days later.
They poisoned him at the Bolshoi buffet, between the music of the theater and the unaware crowd pushing into the foyer. Ninety years later, the internationally renowned historian Yuri Dmitriev risks his life after making public some discoveries about the crimes committed by the Soviet leader. The story is surreal to say the least: the 61-year-old teacher is accused by the State Prosecutor of being mentally ill and a pedophile and for these reasons he will be subjected to a psychiatric evaluation in the next few days, yet another in a few months. Moscow magistrates claim he involved his daughter 11 years in child pornography, that he is in illegal possession of firearms and that he has committed acts of depravity with the involvement of a minor.
Some of the most accredited figures in the Russian cultural world are convinced that Dmitriev was framed because of his studies on the crimes perpetrated by Stalin. What put him in trouble was the discovery of a mass grave with 9,000 bodies dating back to the 1930s. A terrible episode which would confirm the great terror operation launched by Stalin and which would tarnish that sense of rebirth of Russian national pride built by Putin precisely around the figure of Stalin, indicated as the father of Nazi annihilation. Ahead of the March elections, where Putin will almost certainly get his fourth presidential term, Dmitriev's discoveries, which risks at least 15 years in prison, represent a discordant note.
The fury towards the unfortunate university professor is evident. A year ago the man had already undergone a compulsory psychiatric evaluation which had not highlighted any infirmity. Not only that, but a court-appointed expert found nothing pornographic in the daughter's nine photos, at the center of the case against him. Last 27 December the unexpected twist arrived: the court obtained that the offending photos were examined for the third time, ordering a new psychiatric evaluation to determine the man's possible sexual deviations. These days Dmitriev is in the Serbsky mental illness center in Moscow, the same one that in Soviet times hosted dissidents who were declared mentally ill. The mental suitability exams could last up to a month and the historian's lawyer, Viktor Anufriev, fears that his client may be "subjected to torture to extort something he certainly never committed". The Russian media, who follow the story almost blindly, they write that Dmitriev receives money, through the cover of a pro-Western NGO, to tell a false and distorted version of the history of the former Soviet Union, with the aim of discrediting Putin.
Source: http://m.ilgiornale.it/news/2018/01/11/storico-russo-documenta-le-stragi-di-stalin-rischia-il-manicomio-come-/1481865/