Semyon Gluzman

Semyon Fishelevich Gluzman is a psychiatrist, president of the Association of Psychiatrists of Ukraine, director of the Ukrainian-American Bureau for the Protection of Human Rights and the International Medical Rehabilitation Center for War Victims.

Brief biography

Semyon Gluzman was born in Kiev, September 10, 1946.

He received his higher education at the O.O. Bogomolets National Medical University, where he graduated in 1970.

After the university, Semyon Gluzman worked as a psychiatrist in Zhytomyr, Korosteni and Kiev until 1972.

In 1972, the KGB arrested Semyon Gluzman on charges of "anti-Soviet agitation" and "illegal propaganda", "distribution of samizdat" and "misuse of psychiatry for political purposes". The reason for the arrest was an independent psychiatric examination written by Semyon Gluzman on the case of the well-known political prisoner Pyotr Grigorenko.

The court sentenced Gluzman to seven years in the ITL, followed by three years of exile.

In prison Semyon Gluzman went on hunger strike several times, took an active part in the struggle for the rights of political prisoners, several times was in the punishment cell.

Even in prison he continued to work. He wrote several scientific articles. He regularly provided the Western press with information about the state of affairs in Soviet camps for political prisoners.

From 1979 to 1982 he was in exile in Tyumen.

In 1982 Semyon Gluzman returned to Kiev, but he got the opportunity to work in his specialty only after a scandalous letter to Andropov, in which Gluzman openly asked for permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union.

He worked as a pediatrician for several years, but during perestroika he went into the "private sector" and started writing scientific articles and scripts for cinema.

After the establishment of independent Ukraine, Semyon Gluzman became the Executive Secretary of the Association of Psychiatrists of Ukraine.

In 1998 he was one of the developers of the Law of Ukraine "On Psychiatry".

Semyon Gluzman's books

In addition to a huge number of scientific articles, Semyon Gluzman is the author of a number of books. Of these, two were published immediately in English: "Soviet Totalitarian Psychiatry" and "Instruction on Psychiatry for Dissidents".In addition, Semyon Gluzman's book "An Inconvenient Truth", which is a collection of his blog posts about the situation in Ukraine, is very popular.

Online activity

In addition to Semyon Gluzman's author blog on OBOZREVATEL, online he can be found on Facebook. As of 2019, Semyon Gluzman's Facebook page is subscribed by more than ten thousand users.