The modern techniques of brainwashing and menticide- those perversions of psychology- can bring almost any man into submission and surrender. Many of the victims of thought control, brainwashing, and menticide that we have talked about were strong men whose minds and wills were broken and degraded. But although the totalitarians use their knowledge of the mind for vicious and unscrupulous purposes, our democratic society can and must use its knowledge to help man to grow, to guard his freedom, and to understand himself.
Joost A. M. Meerloo, MD, Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, 1966
After World War II, Michael Shiplov, a Bulgarian citizen, worked as a translator at the American Legation in Sofia, Bulgaria. The Bulgarian secret police arrested him in 1949 on suspicion of espionage for the Americans, and, under the force of the secret police, he "confessed" to being an American spy. He was not immediately jailed and released from custody. He went directly to the American Legation and wrote down what had happened to him. The Bulgarian secret police rearrested him, and after a show trial, he was sentenced to prison.
Here are excerpts from Shipkov's full report that was published verbatim in the U.S. Department of State Bulletin, March 13, 1950::
I was ordered to stand facing the wall upright at a distance, which allowed me to touch the wall with two fingers of my outstretched arms. Then to step back some twelve inches, keep my heels touching the floor, and maintain balance only with the contact of one finger on each hand. And while standing so, the interrogation continued ... I recall that the muscles on my legs and shoulders began to get cramped and to tremble, that my two fingers began to bend down under pressure, to get red all over and to ache, I remember that I was drenched with sweat and that I began to faint, although I had not exerted myself in any way. If I tried to substitute [fingers], I would be instantly called to order . . . And when the trembling increased up to the point when I collapsed, they made me sit and speak. I did get several minutes respite, catching my breath and wiping my face, but when I had uttered again that I was innocent, it was the wall again.
After a time of this, I broke down. I told them I was willing and eager to tell them all they wanted. And if I were to stop and plead fatigue, or poor memory, or ask to rest -- the wall again, and the slaps, and the blows in the nape [of the neck]. And I remembered I would come up gasping and talk and talk and feel utterly broken.
Out of the jumbled memories, some impressions stand out vividly. One: they are not overly interested in what you tell them. It would appear that the ultimate purpose of this treatment is to break you down entirely and deprive you of any willpower or private thought or self-esteem, which they achieve remarkably quickly. And they seem to pursue a classic confession, well round off in the phraseology, explaining why you were induced by environment and education to enter the services of the enemies of Communism, how you placed your capacities in their services, what ultimate goad did your pursue -- the overthrow of the people's government through foreign intervention. And they appear to place importance on the parallel appearance of repentance and self-condemnation that come up with the breaking down of their prisoner.
The March 13, 1950 issue of Time magazine carried a story "COMMUNISTS: How They Do it," which, in part, read:
The U.S. State Department last week published a remarkable document. It was one answer to a question that has interested the West since the famous Moscow purge trials of 1936-38, a question which has become increasingly urgent with such postwar trials as that of Hungary's Cardinal Mindszenty, Bulgaria's 15 Protestant leaders, and the U.S.'s Robert Vogeler: How do Communist secret police extort "confessions?? The Communists' first victim to tell his first-hand story is Michael Shipkov.
Psychiatrist Joost A. M. Meerloo Joost, in the Journal of Psychiatry, February 1951, coined the term "menticide" when he wrote that an "organized system of judicial perversion and psychological intervention, in which a powerful tyrant transfers his own thoughts and words into the minds and mouths of the victims he plans to destroy or to use for his own propaganda."
He presented Nazi propaganda as "social menticide," and the Cardinal Mindszenty case mentioned in the Time magazine article as an example of "individual menticide." We will look at the case of Mikhail Shipkov and "individual menticide."
In April 1950, the National Committee for Free Europe (parent organization of Radio Free Europe) reprinted, in the "public interest," a 31-page pamphlet entitled Breakdown: The Story of Michael Shipkov in the Hands of the Secret Police, which told, "How the Communist secret police are able to pry confessions of treason out of men and women who love their country, a story courageously laid bare for the first time in March 1950."
President DeWitt Poole described the pamphlet in a cover letter to the NCFE Directors as part of the "campaign to reach the American public." DeWitt Poole wrote, "I am sure you will agree that these pamphlets will prove useful in our struggle for victory in the contest of ideas." The back cover of the pamphlet informed the American public.
The Committee's members are convinced that the danger of the present crisis cannot be exaggerated. Freedom is at stake. At this very moment, it is being decided what kind of world our grandchildren are going to live in.
The ultimate decision lies in the contest of ideas. Only a world relieved of totalitarian despotism and held together by the tested ideals of freedom and democracy can live in peace. In the struggle for this consummation, the National Committee for Free Europe offers every single citizen the opportunity to throw in his weight.
Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt would later write about the NCFE pamphlet in her June 2, 1950, national syndicated column, My Day:
A little booklet I have just read, published by The National Committee for Free Europe, Inc., called: "Breakdown. The story of Michael Shipkov in the hands of the secret police." This pamphlet will give you a picture of how, under authoritarian regimes, confessions are finally extorted. One shudders to think what horrors confront people where justice no longer exists, where they live under constant espionage, and where freedom is something they may once have dreamed of but no longer know as a reality.
It seems impossible for people ever to free themselves under the circumstances described in this pamphlet. Neither is it conceivable for a nation to go forward and develop economically, spiritually, or socially under this type of government. Living must become so utterly futile. Even under the lash of fear, one must cease working and producing because life is so completely valueless. No one could want to bring children into a world where people are no longer allowed any personal freedom and must face moral and mental domination.
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