Welcome to LTP Book “Welcome to LTP” Author: Irina Popova Published by: Dostoevsky Publishing, 2015 Softcover, packed in a metal net Size: 12x16cm 96 full colour pages, 45 colour photos, 4 loose postcards and 5 loose documents attached Created on occasion of the exhibition in de PUNT/TAAK, Amsterdam, curated by Katia Krupennikova, as a part of Unseen Festival Printed by: Aeroprint, the Netherlands ISBN: 978 – 90 821704-4-3 Edition: 500, out of which 50 last ones are signed + extra 100 special edition, each book has an individual intervention.
Prices: Book: 17 euro Book with Dostoevsky canvas bag: 19.50 Signed copy: 25 euro, Signed copy with Dostoevsky bag: 27.50 Special edition: 55 euro, Dostoevsky bag free For buying, contact: dostoevskypublishing@gmail. com
Welcome to LTP It is a book about alcoholism. Most of us drink regularly, without any acknowledgement of our little habit as an addiction. This book will transport you to the bottom of this issue – to a strange place called the Labour Treatment Profilactorium for the Alcohol and Drug addicted. Before you can begin you must open a real metal cage, with the risk that you might damage yourself. Once inside you can open the tattooed skin of the front cover and begin your journey! The book is a surreal voyage, taking you through a closed space filled with artistic Soviet propaganda while also witnessing the occupants with their lost faces. You will read their postcards of postmodernist monologues and insane collages and get a taste of the endless set of rules that govern this place (including all the details of how to dispose of your body should the worst happen). Before you can leave the nightmare behind you must fill in the release form, where you will need to describe your own behaviour. And finally your journey is complete.
Welcome to LTP The 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. the restriction of freedom that is close to that of a criminal sentence) had been applied to persons who had not committed any crime.
Welcome to LTP 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 or drug addiction and these citizens are obliged to reimburse the expenses paid by the state on the maintenance of children in public care as a result of their incarceration. LTP sentencing is made in the event of systematic violations of labor discipline by these citizens because the consumption of alcoholic beverages, drugs, psychotropic agents, poisons or other intoxicating substances.