1960s up to 1986, political abuse of psychiatry was reported to be systematic in the Soviet Union, and to surface on occasion in other Eastern European countries such as Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Yugoslavia, as well as in Western European countries, such as Italy. An example of the use of psychiatry in the political field is the "case Sabattini", described by Giorgio Antonucci in his book Il pregiudizio psichiatrico. A "mental health genocide" reminiscent of the Nazi aberrations has been located in the history of South African oppression during the apartheid era. A continued misappropriation of the discipline was later attributed to the People's Republic of China. K. Fulford, A. Smirnov, and E. Snow state: "An important vulnerability factor, therefore, for the abuse of psychiatry, is the subjective nature of the observations on which psychiatric diagnosis currently depends." In an article published in 1994 by the Journal of Medical Ethics, American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz stated that "the classification by slave owners and slave traders of certain individuals as Negroes was scientific, in the sense that whites were rarely classified as blacks. But that did not prevent the 'abuse' of such racial classification, because (what we call) its abuse was, in fact, its use." Szasz argued that the spectacle of the Western psychiatrists loudly condemning Soviet colleagues for their abuse of professional standards was largely an exercise in hypocrisy. Szasz states that K. Fulford, A. Smirnov, and E. Snow, who correctly emphasize the value-laden nature of psychiatric diagnoses and the subjective character of psychiatric classifications, fail to accept the role of psychiatric power. He stated that psychiatric abuse, such as people usually associated with practices in the former USSR, was connected not with the misuse of psychiatric diagnoses, but with the political power built into the social role of the psychiatrist in democratic and totalitarian societies alike. Musicologists, drama critics, art historians, and many other scholars also create their own subjective classifications; however, lacking state-legitimated power over persons, their classifications do not lead to anyone's being deprived of property, liberty, or life. For instance, a plastic surgeon's classification of beauty is subjective, but the plastic surgeon cannot treat his or her patient without the patient's consent, so there cannot be any political abuse of plastic surgery. The bedrock of political medicine is coercion masquerading as medical treatment. In this process, physicians diagnose a disapproved condition as an "illness" and declare the