Viktor Nekipelov

Who was Viktor Nekipelov?

Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov was a Russian poet, writer, Soviet dissident, member of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

Pharmacist by occupation, in 1968, he participated in protest against the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Nekipelov was arrested in 1973, sent to the Section 4 of the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry for psychiatric evaluation, which lasted from 15 January to 12 March 1974, was judged sane, tried, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. In 1976, he published in samizdat his book Institute of Fools: Notes on the Serbsky Institute based on his personal experience at Psychiatric Hospital of the Serbsky Institute and translated into English in 1980. After publishing his book, he was sentenced to the maximum punishment for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" of seven years in a labour camp and then five years in internal exile. As Zavoisky and Krylovsky wrote, Nekipelov developed cancer caused by his permanent poisoning in a prison camp.

Released in 1987, Nekipelov emigrated and died in France.