Welcome to LTP Irina Popova Photography

Irina Popova Welcome to LTP 

Book “Welcome to LTP”
Author: Irina Popova
Published by: Dostoevsky Publishing, 2015
Price: 17 euros
Softcover, packed in a metal net
Size: 12x16cm
96 full colour pages, 45 colour photos, 4 loose postcards and 5 loose documents attached
Printed by Aeroprint, the Netherlands
ISBN: 978 – 90 821704-4-3 

Background storyThe first Labour Treatment Profilactoria appeared in the USSR in 1967 within the territory of Kazakhstan. In the future, the system of LTP was actively used for the forced isolation of persons suffering from alcoholism and drug addiction, or those who were disturbing public order and rules “of the socialist way of life.” Citizens were sent to LTP by order of the regional courts for a period of 6 months to 2 years. Their decision was final, with no right to appeal. Human rights activists in the Soviet Union called LTP part of the Soviet “punitive psychotherapy” system. On October 25th, 1990, the Committee of Constitutional Supervision of the USSR adopted a conclusion, according to which certain provisions of existing legislation were declared inconsistent with the Constitution of the USSR and international norms of human rights. The Constitutional Oversight Committee came to the conclusion that, under the law, obligatory treatment in LTP (i.e. restriction of freedom, which is close to a criminal sentence) had been applied to persons who have not committed any crimes. After the collapse of the USSR the LTP system was abolished in most former Soviet republics. In 1993, at the Decree of the President of Russia Boris Yeltsin, Labour Treatment Profilactoria were eliminated in Russia (with later discussions in the state duma to revive the system). At present, LTP exist only in Belarus, Turkmenistan and the unrecognized Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic. LTP is part of the system within the internal affairs agencies of the Republic of Belarus, established for the forced isolation, and medical and social rehabilitation of citizens through the obligation to work. It is directed towards citizens with chronic alcoholism, drug addiction and toxicomania, and those citizens obliged to reimburse the expenses paid by the state on the maintenance of children in public care, in the event of systematic violations of labor discipline by these citizens because the consumption of alcoholic beverages, drugs, psychotropic, toxic or other intoxicating substances.