Requiescat in pace, Vladimir Bukovsky 1942 - 2019: Author, Activist, Dissident

“Power rests on nothing other than people’s consent to submit, and each person who refuses to submit to tyranny reduces it by one two-hundred-and-fifty-millionth, whereas each who compromises only increases it.” - Vladimir Bukovsky, To Build a Castle

HRF Mourns the Passing of Vladimir Bukovsky

By Human Rights Foundation

NEW YORK – The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) mourns the passing of Vladimir Bukovsky, the Russian author, dissident, and fearless critic of the Soviet Union and Putin's regime. Bukovsky was a founding member of HRF’s International Council and a frequent participant in HRF’s activities.

Bukovsky spent a total of 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps, and forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals for his outspoken opposition to the communist regime. Bukovsky was successful in smuggling documents detailing the Soviets’ political use of psychiatric institutions.

“With Bukovsky’s death, the world has suffered a terrible loss. He was a a man of gigantic moral stature, an icon to activists everywhere for his uncompromising commitment to human rights and for being an eloquent and categorical opponent of dictatorship in all its forms. He is an inspiration to anyone that defies tyranny against all odds,” said HRF President Thor Halvorssen. “Bukovsky will be deeply missed by the HRF community. He will always be remembered as a dear friend and beloved member of the Oslo Freedom Forum family.”

Born in 1942 in the Russian village of Belebey, Bukovsky began his activism at a young age. As a 19-year-old biology student enrolled in Moscow University, he declared the USSR an “illegal society” with “moribund” institutions. That year, Bukovsky was arrested for the making and possession of photocopies of anti-Soviet literature.

Soviet psychiatrists declared Bukovsky mentally ill and imprisoned him in the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Leningrad for two years. After his release, Bukovsky was arrested again and sent to another hospital in Dec. 1965 for helping to organize a demonstration in Pushkin Square. Bukovsky spent a total of twelve years in Soviet psychiatric hospitals, where he endured forced psychotropic drug treatment, isolation in KGB custody, and frequent torture.

While in prison, he co-authored A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissidents, to help other dissidents fight psychiatric torture. After his release, he published numerous anti-communist works, including his bestselling autobiography To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter.

In 1971, Bukovsky smuggled over 150 pages to the West, documenting his experiences and the punitive nature of Soviet psychiatric institutions in a letter to the global psychiatric community. His efforts prompted organizations everywhere to investigate and condemn the Soviet Union’s practices, eventually leading to the Soviet Union’s withdrawal from the World Psychiatric Association in 1977.

In 1983, he co-founded the international anti-communist organization Resistance International, which was instrumental in organizing protests in captive nations and opposing western financial aid to communist governments. In the last two decades, Bukovsky was active in a number of capacities, including successful opposition to the use of torture by the U.S. government and opposition to the tyranny of Vladimir Putin in Russia.

Bukovsky was a member of HRF's International Council, a director of the Gratitude Fund, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and a member of the international advisory council for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which honored him with the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom in 2001. Since 1976, he has lived in Cambridge, England, where he passed away from cardiac arrest on Oct. 27, 2019.

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization that promotes and protects human rights globally, with a focus on closed societies.