Vladimir Bukovsky was an author, activist, and former Soviet dissident. He spent a total of 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps, and forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals. Bukovsky was arrested and confined to a psychiatric hospital for possession of photocopies of anti-Soviet literature. After he successfully smuggled documents to the West detailing the Soviet authorities’ use of psychiatric institutions as a weapon against political prisoners, Bukovsky was again arrested and convicted of “slander of Soviet psychiatry.” While in prison, he co-authored “A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents” to help other dissidents resist forced psychiatric treatment. The Soviet government exchanged Bukovsky for the imprisoned Chilean communist leader Luis Corvalán; he later found refuge in the United Kingdom. He was a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Bukovsky was an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and an original signatory to the online anti-Putin protest “Putin Must Go.” He died on Oct. 27, 2019.
