Vladimir Bukovsky

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Vladimir Bukovsky early photo

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Russian: Влади́мир Константи́нович Буко́вский; b. December 30, 1942) is a notable former Soviet dissident, author and a human rights activist. He was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the USSR. He spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and in psikhushkas, forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used by the regime as special prisons.

1 Early life
2 Activism and arrests
3 Deportation
4 In the United Kingdom
5 Judgement in Moscow
6 Post-1992
7 Torture's Long Shadow
8 References
9 Publications
10 External links

[edit] Early life

Vladimir Bukovsky was born in the town of Belebey, Bashkirian ASSR, Russia (now Bashkortostan), where his family was evacuated from Moscow during World War II. In 1959 he was expelled from his Moscow school for creating and editing an unauthorized magazine.

[edit] Activism and arrests

From June 1963 to February 1964, Bukovsky was convicted (Article 70-1 of the Penal Code of the RSFSR) and sent to a psikhushka for organizing poetry meetings in the center of Moscow (next to the Mayakovsky monument).

In January 1967 he was arrested for organizing a demonstration in defense of Alexander Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov and other dissidents (Article 190-1, 3 years of imprisonment); released in January 1970.

In 1971, Bukovsky managed to smuggle to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of psychiatric institutions for political reasons in the USSR. The information galvanized human rights activists worldwide (including inside the country) and was a pretext for his subsequent arrest in January 1972, officially for contacts with foreign journalists and possession and distribution of samizdat (Article 70-1, 7 years of imprisonment plus 5 years in exile).

Together with fellow inmate in Vladimir prison, psychiatrist Semyon Gluzman, he coauthored A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents^[1] in order to help other dissidents to fight abuses of the authorities.

[edit] Deportation

The fate of Bukovsky and other political prisoners in the USSR, repeatedly brought to attention by Western human rights groups and diplomats, was a cause of embarrassment and irritation for the Soviet authorities.

In December of 1976, while imprisoned, Bukovsky was exchanged for former Chilean Communist leader Luis Corvalán. In his autobiographical novel And the Wind Returns, Bukovsky describes how he was brought to Switzerland handcuffed.

[edit] In the United Kingdom

Since 1976 Bukovsky has lived in Cambridge, England, focusing on neurophysiology and writing. He received a Masters Degree in Biology and has written several books and political essays. In addition to criticizing the Soviet regime, he also picked apart what he calls "Western gullibility", a lack of a tough stand of Western liberalism against Communist abuses.

In 1983, together with Vladimir Maximov and Eduard Kuznetsov he cofounded and was elected president of international anti-Communist organization Resistance International (Интернационал сопротивления).

[edit] Judgement in Moscow

In April 1991 Vladimir Bukovsky visited Moscow for the first time since his forced deportation. In the run-up to the 1991 presidential election Boris Yeltsin's campaign considered Bukovsky as a potential vice-presidential running-mate (other contenders included Galina Starovoitova and Gennady Burbilis). In the end, the vice-presidency was offered to Alexander Rutskoi.

In 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, President Yeltsin's government invited Bukovsky to serve as an expert to testify at the trial conducted by the Constitutional Court of Russia to determine whether the CPSU had been a criminal institution. To prepare for his testimony, Bukovsky requested and was granted access to a large number of documents from Soviet archives. Using a small handheld scanner and a laptop computer, he managed to secretly scan many documents (some with high security clearance), including KGB reports to the Central Committee, and smuggle the files to the West.^[2] The event that many expected would be another Nuremberg Trial and the beginnings of reconciliation with the Communist past, ended up in half-measures: only the central organs of the party were outlawed. Bukovsky expressed his deep disappointment with this in his writings and interviews:

“

Having failed to finish off conclusively the communist system, we are now in danger of integrating the resulting monster into our world. It may not be called communism anymore, but it retained many of its dangerous characteristics... Until the Nuremberg-style tribunal passes its judgement on all the crimes committed by communism, it is not dead and the war is not over.^[3]

”

It took two years and a team of assistants to compose the scanned pieces together and publish it. The book, Judgement in Moscow, was translated to many languages and attracted international attention.

[edit] Post-1992

In 1992 a group of liberal deputies of the Moscow City Council proposed Bukovsky's candidacy for elections of the new Mayor of Moscow, following the resignation of the previous Mayor, Gavriil Popov. Bukovsky refused the offer.

In early 1996 a group of Moscow academics, journalists and intellectuals suggested that Vladimir Bukovsky should run for President of Russia as an alternative candidate to both incumbent President Boris Yeltsin and his Communist challenger Gennady Zyuganov. No formal nomination was initiated. In any case, Bukovsky would not have been allowed to run, as the Russian Constitution stipulates that any presidential candidate must have lived in the country continuously for ten years prior to the election.

In 2002 Boris Nemtsov, a member of the Russian Duma (parliament) and leader of the Union of Right Forces, and former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, visited Vladimir Bukovsky in Cambridge to discuss the strategy of the Russian opposition. Bukovsky told Nemtsov that, in his view, it is imperative that Russian liberals adopt an uncompromising stand toward the authoritarian government of President Vladimir Putin.

In January 2004, together with Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir V. Kara-Murza and others, Vladimir Bukovsky co-founded the Committee 2008, an umbrella organization of the Russian democratic opposition, whose purpose is to ensure free and fair presidential elections in 2008.

In 2005 Bukovsky participated in They Chose Freedom, a four-part TV documentary on the Soviet dissident movement.

Vladimir Bukovsky is a member of the Board of Directors of the Gratitude Fund, and a member of the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation.

[edit] Torture's Long Shadow

Also in 2005, with the revelations about U.S. torture, or "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, of captives in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and the secret CIA prisons throughout the world, he wrote a devastating critique of the rationalization of torture in the Washington Post, Torture's Long Shadow, ^[4].

[edit] References

^ (Russian)A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents ("Пособие по психиатрии для инакомыслящих")
^ Many of these scanned documents are available as the "Soviet Archives" (INFO-RUSS)
^ The Cold War and the War Against Terror By Jamie Glazov (FrontPageMagazine) July 1, 2002
^ Torture's Long Shadow (2005)

[edit] Publications

See detailed list at The Gratitude Fund

EUSSR: The Soviet Roots of European Integration, 2004. ISBN 0-9540231-1-0
And the Wind Returns, 1978 (И возвращается ветер, in Russian)
Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1979. ISBN 0-89633-029-X
To Build a Castle: My Life As a Dissenter, 1979. ISBN 0-670-71640-5
Soviet Hypocrisy and Western Gullibility, 1987. ISBN 0-89633-113-X
Judgement in Moscow (Московский процесс) based on his 1992 visit to Russia and the "Soviet Archives".
To Choose Freedom Hoover Institution, Stanford University, 1987. ISBN 0-8179-8442-9