 Tarsis denounces Soviet psychiatry as pseudo-science and charlatanism and writes that, firstly, it has pretenses of curing the sickness of men's souls, but denies the existence of the soul; secondly, since there is no satisfactory definition of mental health, there can be no acceptable definition of mental disease in Soviet society.In 1966, Tarsis was permitted to emigrate to the West, and was soon deprived of his Soviet citizenship.The KGB had plans to compromise the literary career of Tarsis abroad through labelling him as a mentally ill person.