On 8 February 1983 the World Psychiatric Association received a letter of resignation from the Soviet All-Union Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists. The resignation was a preemptive move in order to forestall expulsion of the Soviet body from the WPA over Soviet abuse of psychiatry for political and punitive purposes. The letter of resignation was apparently sent on 31 January 1983. The Soviet Union’s Society of Neurologists and Psychiatrists was subsequently permitted to rejoin the WPA in 1989.
Sources:
‘Soviet Psychiatrists, faced with censure, leave world group,’ The New York Times, Friday, 11 February 1983: ‘The Soviet Union has quit an international psychiatric group that had been expected to consider whether to expel Moscow on the ground that it was using psychiatry to silence dissidents. Officers of the World Psychiatric Association said a letter of withdrawal from the Soviet Society of Psychiatrists and Neuropathologists was received Tuesday at the association’s headquarters here, and copies were sent to the 77 other national member associations. The text of the letter was not available here because the association’s secretary general, Dr. Peter Berner, was out of town until Friday.’
‘Struggle against political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union,’ Wikipedia: ‘On 31 January 1983, the All-Union Society officially resigned from the World Psychiatric Association under threat of expulsion. In their letter of resignation, the Soviets complained about a “slanderous campaign, blatantly political in nature… directed against Soviet psychiatry in the spirit of the ‘cold war‘ against the Soviet Union” and, being especially angry about the memorandum of the American Psychiatric Association of August 1982, charged the WPA leadership with complicity by not having spoken out against this mailing.’
