Ion Vianu
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Ion Vianu (15 April 1934 – 20 June 2024) was a Romanian writer and psychiatrist, who lived in Switzerland from 1977. He was the son of literary critic Tudor Vianu and his wife, Elena.
Vianu first studied classical philology for two years (1952–1954) as a kind of "self-imposed exile into another world", as he called it, before studying medicine.[1]
Ion Vianu was one of those who signed Paul Goma's 1977 open letter that expressed solidarity with the Charter 77 movement in Czechoslovakia.[2] This was done, partly, to put the Romanian communist authorities under pressure to allow him to emigrate.[3] As a result, he was interrogated by the Romanian's secret police, the Securitate, harassed, fired from his University job, and eventually allowed to emigrate to Switzerland.[4] After settling down in Switzerland, he joined the "Geneva Initiative Against Political Psychiatry" and collaborated with Radio Free Europe, discussing attempts to use psychiatry as a form of repression.[5]
After the 1989 Revolution, he became actively involved in the reform of the system of psychiatric treatment in Romania to bring it up to world standards. Vianu, together with his friend Matei Călinescu, published an autobiographical volume, Amintiri în dialog ("Remembrances in Dialogue").[citation needed] He died on 20 June 2024, at the age of 90.[6]
