Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Russian: Владимир Константинович Буковский; 30 December 1942 – 27 October 2019) was a Soviet and Russian human rights activist and writer. From the late 1950s to the mid-1970s, he was a prominent figure in the Soviet dissident movement, well known at home and abroad. He spent a total of twelve years in the psychiatric prison-hospitals, labour camps, and prisons of the Soviet Union during Brezhnev's rule. After being expelled from the Soviet Union in late 1976, Bukovsky remained in vocal opposition to the Soviet system and the shortcomings of its successor regimes in Russia. An activist, a writer, and a neurophysiologist, he is celebrated for his part in the campaign to expose and halt the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union. A member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a director of the Gratitude Fund (set up in 1998 to commemorate and support former dissidents), and a member of the International Council of the New York City-based Human Rights Foundation, Bukovsky was a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. In 2001, Vladimir Bukovsky received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom, awarded annually since 1993 by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. In 2015, British authorities charged Bukovsky with multiple counts of production and possession of child pornography. He formally denied the charges, filed unsuccessful libel suits related to them, and alleged that Russian hackers had remotely planted the illicit material on his computer, though this possibility was excluded by a court expert. His trial was adjourned several times on grounds of his poor health, and was eventually halted indefinitely, with no verdict or sentencing.