Vladimir Bukovsky

Who is Vladimir Bukovsky?

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky is a leading member of the dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s, writer, neurophysiologist, and political activist.

Bukovsky was one of the first to expose the use of psychiatric imprisonment against political prisoners in the Soviet Union. He spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and in psikhushkas, forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used by the government as special prisons.

In 1976, after negotiations between the governments of the USSR and the USA, Bukovsky was exchanged for the Chilean political prisoner, communist Luis Corvalán, imprisoned by Augusto Pinochet. After that, Bukovsky moved to the UK.

He is a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. In 2001, Vladimir Bukovsky received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom.