Psychiatrist: "Lukashenko, like Stalin, suffers from a paranoid personality disorder..."

The Radio Liberty website published an interview with Minsk psychiatrist Dmitry Shchigelsky, who was forced to leave Belarus after in 2001 he published the results of his research “The Case History of Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko” on Lukashenko's mental health.

It is known that before the second round of elections, which made Lukashenko the now permanent president of the country in 1994, his medical card was stolen from a psychiatric hospital in Mogilyov. It turns out that he was observed there since the mid-1970s, when, as a graduate of the pedagogical institute, he came to the secretary of the regional committee and demanded that he be appointed chairman of the collective farm. The diagnosis of "mosaic psychopathy" was made to Lukashenko during his military service, from which Lukashenko was discharged in 1982 for this reason.

Shchigelsky writes in his work:

“Analysis of Lukashenko’s personality reveals a number of signs characteristic of both paranoid and dissocial personality disorders in the presence of a core overvalued idea of self-importance, affective logic, a tendency to explain world events on the basis of “conspiratorial” intentions without sufficient grounds, suspicion, indifference to the feelings of others, a tendency to manipulate them, a low tolerance for frustration and a low threshold for aggressive behavior, including violence, an inability to experience guilt and benefit from adverse experiences. These features are total and determine the entire mental appearance of a given personality".

Now, observing Lukashenko's behavior, the psychiatrist only confirms his conclusions. Here are some excerpts from his interview:

“All his (Lukashenko’s, ed.) Life confirms. It's just that in recent days everyone has seen it. Everything has become so grotesque, obvious even for a layman, that now it has become a commonplace.

His attitude towards people has not changed since his youth. He just began to hide it less. A person's personality manifests itself in several circumstances - this is war, prison, power, money, extreme situations, natural disasters. The rest of the time, the essence of a person is disguised as superficial: upbringing, accepted norms in society. Until a person is in a stressful situation, his personality is not revealed. Lukashenko's attitude to people, lack of empathy for specialists was always noticeable, just now the PR plaster, the makeup of the political strategists who worked with him have collapsed. Nothing new happened to him.

(...)

Such personalities can develop, especially in the later period, a rather strong emotional attachment. As a rule, this is one object. Emotional connections with other people are not sustainable. Women flicker next to him, there are many of them, they change, but no one is left next to him. He had a wife, he always had many mistresses, but he never really liked women. I lived with my wife because it was necessary - the party, the director of the state farm, the farm - but there was no deep emotional relationship. As soon as he became president, he left for Minsk, and she stayed. He still had a deep emotional attachment, oddly enough, to his mother-in-law. His wife's mother was his teacher at school.

(...)

I talked with his fellow villagers. They listed (Lukashenko's mistresses, ed.): With that then, with that then, then look how they made a career when he became president. It is interesting that in the folk mentality it is rather a plus they say to him: he did not forget one and raised everyone.

(...)

I was assigned to the Mogilev regional hospital, and there were doctors who took him (Lukashenko, editor's note). They described this situation to me. The secretary of the regional committee was a little scared: a patriotic man comes to him, convinced of the ideals of communism, but he is a graduate of the history department of the pedagogical institute and demands to appoint him chairman of the collective farm. In the Soviet system, this requirement looks like absolute nonsense. The doctor who treated him then says that Leonov just went nuts and tried to explain to him that you should work at school or something related to history. But Lukashenko could not calm down, and Leonov simply called the guards, and the guards did not know what to do with him. He does not shout anti-Soviet slogans, for the CPSU, for the Soviet Union, but he wants to be the chairman of a collective farm. They acted logically, it seems to me, not to send him to prison, you must agree.

Why are the people hypnotized? A number of historical characters have had similar personality disorders. There is a whole area in psychiatry that studies such people. Many believe that Adolf Hitler had a similar picture, who also had charisma, was an excellent orator, and the Germans fell under his hypnosis. Psychopathy is a competitive advantage in a power struggle. If nothing restrains a person, he does not feel sorry for anyone in order to go upstairs by any means, if a person does not trust anyone and is ready to suspect anyone - this is a plus, not a minus. People from Lukashenko’s inner circle told me that he had an animal flair for competitors. Often, even before a person has thoughts about competing for a higher post, Lukashenko feels it. This is good for retaining power, because it cuts out all competitors even before they become competitors.

(...)

I think he has no supernatural powers, just heightened suspicion. He reacts to certain changes in how a person holds himself, how he intones speech, how he moves. He himself has not yet realized that he has political ambitions, but they already exist within him, and this is manifested in external signs. Lukashenka, as an observant person with a wonderful, simply phenomenal memory, looks at everyone and, according to the smallest signs, reads like an open book.

What diagnosis did Bekhterev make to Stalin? Paranoid. And here we have paranoid personality disorder, that is, in fact, it is the same diagnosis. If Stalin had not got rid of all competitors, he would never have been able to concentrate such power in his hands. It's the same story with Lukashenko. We are now looking at Lukashenka in 2020, but we need to remember Lukashenka in 1994, when he had no such power. There was the Supreme Council, there was an independent judicial system, there was the Central Election Commission.

(...)

He is unambiguously sane under Belarusian law. In Belarus, I do not know of a single case where a personality disorder was recognized as a sufficient basis for declaring a person insane. If a person is sane, realizes the nature of his actions, can understand the consequences, accordingly, he is subject to court.

(...)

Lukashenko is not quite the same as, for example, Yanukovych. He will go all the way. Power, its attributes are the most important thing in Lukashenko's life. He is ready to fight, he has a paranoid picture of the world. He believes that he is fighting aggression: all sorts of incomprehensible telegram channels that, with the help of the latest technologies, influence the subconscious of people, program, make them puppets. These puppets, in the interests of foreign forces, are fighting the unfortunate Belarus, and he is such an epic hero who must protect her. His environment often begins to share his picture of the world, begins to believe in it, completely falls under his influence. In our country, part of the country lives in a fictitious reality, where super-trained specialists, using all sorts of techniques, hypnosis, neurolinguistic programming, brainwash Belarusians via the Internet and make them pawns that are used in the fight against the country, and the country is protected by Lukashenko and his regime ...