Viktor Aleksandrovich Nekipelov (, 29 September 1928 – 1 July 1989) was a Soviet Russian poet, writer, Soviet dissident, and a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. He spent about nine years in prison for his participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group. Early life Nekipelov was born to a Soviet family of workers of the Chinese Eastern Railway. In 1937, he and his mother came to the Soviet Union. In 1939, his mother was arrested and died in imprisonment. He left a high school in Omsk. From 1947 to 1950, he studied at the Omsk Army Medical School. In 1950, he left the Omsk Army Medical School with honours. In 1960, he graduated from the army medical faculty of the Kharkiv Medical Institute with honours as well. In 1969, he graduated from an extramural faculty of the Moscow Literature Institute. He worked as a pharmacist. Dissident In 1973, he was arrested for "spreading of known false fabrications that is damaging the Soviet political system" (Article 190-1 of the RSFSR Criminal Code). According to Sakharov's letter to Gorbachev of 19 February 1986, Nekipelov was convicted for his philosophical verses that were considered defamatory by a court. Nekipelov was sent to the Section 4 of the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry for psychiatric evaluation, which lasted from 15 January to 12 March 1974, was judged sane (which he was), tried, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. In 1976, he published in samizdat his book Institute of Fools: Notes on the Serbsky Institute based on his personal experience at Psychiatric Hospital of the Serbsky Institute and translated into English in 1980. In October 1977, Nekipelov joined the Moscow Helsinki Group. In 1977, the joint book From Yellow Silence: The Collection of Memoirs and Articles by Political Prisoners of Psychiatric Hospitals by Nekipelov and Alexander Podrabinek was completed. After publishing Institute of Fools, he was sentenced to the maximum punishment for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda" of seven years in a labour camp and then five years in internal exile. As Zavoisky and Krylovsky wrote, Nekipelov developed cancer caused by his permanent poisoning in a prison camp. On 20 March 1983, Nekipelov and 9 other political prisoners in their letter to US President of Ronald Reagan sought his aid in urging inspection of Soviet camps. Along with Arina Ginzburg, Malva Landa, Tatyana Velikanova and Andrei Sakharov he demanded a referendum in the Baltic republics to