Soviet


Dec. 28, 2023

The KGB Roughly Compared to Modern Day

January’s issue of the History Today has a great article on the creation and changing attitudes of the KGB after Stalin’s death. One fact which leapt out was the large number of persons being followed by the KGB in 1967; almost 6,750, according to a leaked report.

That sounds an awful lot, but is it?

By 1967 the population of the USSR was almost 241,720,000 (the rough figure for 1970), 6,750 people is just 0.000028% of the population, or 7 in 25,000,000 people being followed.

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Dec. 10, 2022

Transcription: Lobotomy banned in Soviet as Cruel

Below is a hand-digitisation of the New York Times article reporting the outlawing of lobotomies by the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

The United States and Europeans continued the practice for decades after, as late as 1980 in France.

The history of Mental Health institutions, or asylums, are a keen interest of mine and I’ll be posting more with regards to them in future. The artist Louis Wain, who’s artwork is used for the site logo (the two fencing cats), and other artwork around the site was himself sadly a patient of several mental hospitals.

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