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Bukovskii (Vladimir Konstantinovich) papers
2017C22  
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Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Access
  • Use
  • Acquisition Information
  • Preferred Citation
  • Biographical Note
  • Scope and Content of Collection

  • Title: Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovskiĭ papers
    Date (inclusive): 1928-2011
    Collection Number: 2017C22
    Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
    Language of Material: Russian and English
    Physical Description: 53 manuscript boxes, 4 card file boxes, 1 oversize box (24.7 Linear Feet)
    Abstract: Correspondence, writings, notes, reports, Soviet government documents, printed matter, and photographs relating to civil liberties in the Soviet Union, post-Soviet Russia and elsewhere, political conditions in post-Soviet Russia, and promotion of international democracy.
    Creator: Bukovskiĭ, Vladimir Konstantinovich, 1942-
    Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives

    Access

    The collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.

    Use

    For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

    Acquisition Information

    Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2017.

    Preferred Citation

    [Identification of item], Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovskiĭ papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

    Biographical Note

    1942 Born, Belebey, Bashkir ASSR, Soviet Union.
    1960 Entered Moscow University to study biology.
    1961 Wrote his critical notes on the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) and was expelled from the university.
    1963-1965 Arrested, charged with "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda," and sent for treatment at the Special Psychiatric Hospital in Leningrad.
    1965 Helped to organize a demonstration on Pushkin Square in central Moscow to protest against the trial of the writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel (Glasnost rally).
    1965-1966 Arrested, charged with organizing the demonstration, and kept in various psychiatric hospitals.
    1967-1970 Advocated for the right to organize demonstrations and other public protests, arrested, and sentenced to three years in an "ordinary regime" corrective-labor camp.
    1971 Managed to smuggle to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of political prisoners in psychiatric institutions in the Soviet Union.
    1972 Accused of slandering Soviet psychiatry, contacts with foreign journalists, and the possession and distribution of Samizdat. Sentenced to two years in prison, five in a labor camp, and five more in internal exile.
    1976 Deported from the USSR and exchanged by the Soviet government for the imprisoned general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile, Luis Corvalán, at Zürich airport. Settled in Great Britain, Cambridge.
    1978 Gained a master's degree in Biology at Cambridge University.
    1978 Author, To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter.
    1983 Co-founded Resistance International, along with Cuban dissident Armando Valladaresand, and was later elected a president of the organization.
    1985 Resistance International expanded into the American Foundation for Resistance International.
    1987 Author, To Choose Freedom
    1991 Visited Moscow for the first time since his deportation fifteen years prior. His Soviet-era convictions were annulled by a decree of the RSFSR Supreme Court and his Russian citizenship was restored.
    1992 Nominated aa a candidate for elections of Mayor of Moscow.
    1996 Author, Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Hypocrisy
    1998 Director of the Gratitude Fund.
    2006 Accused Vladimir Putin of the assassination of Aleksander Litvinenko.
    2004 Co-founded the Committee 2008 for free and fair presidential elections in 2008, with Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir V. Kara-Murza, and others.
    2001 Received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom.
      Elected President of the Comitatus pro Libertatibus – Comitati per le Libertà – Freedom Committees in Florence.
    2007 Officially nominated to run for president in the 2008 Russian presidential election.
    2009 Joined the council of the new Solidarnost' coalition.
    2014 Author, Putin's Secret Empire: Will There Be a "Palace Coup"?
    2015 Accused Vladimir Putin of the assassination Boris Nemtsov.
    2018 Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
      Member of the International Council of the Human Rights Foundation
      Director of the Gratitude Fund
      Member of the international advisory council for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation

    Scope and Content of Collection

    The papers of Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovskiĭ (Bukovsky) document his activities from 1983 to 2004 and include biographical material; correspondence; writings by Bukovskiĭ, among them his conference papers; materials concerning publication of his books with related correspondence; and photographs depicting Bukovskii with other dissidents, political figures, family, and friends.
    The correspondence is mostly legal, relating to Bukovskiĭ's legal cases and in defense of other human rights activists (not only Russian/Soviet), and includes letters from Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and others, and Bukovskii's letters to Boris Yeltsin.
    The International Human Rights Organizations File document Bukovskiĭ's involvement in various human rights organizations concerned with the treatment of dissidents. It includes materials from various organizations, such as Resistance International, National Endowment for Democracy, Center for Democracy, Freedom of Communication, Andrei Sakharov Institute, and Komitet soldatskikh materei (Committee of Soldiers' Mothers). The materials reflect the advocacy in defense and educational work by these groups, including statements and letters supporting dissident movements.
    In 1992, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, President Yeltsin's government invited Bukovskiĭ to serve as an expert witness at the trial of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) before the Constitutional Court. Russia's communists were suing Yeltsin for banning their Party and confiscating its property. To prepare his testimony, Bukovskiĭ was granted access to the documents from the CPSU Central Committee archives. He managed to scan many documents (some with high security clearance) secretly, including KGB reports to the Central Committee. The copies were then smuggled to the West and now they are available online at http://www.bukovsky-archives.net/ . A number of documents were extensively quoted and cited in Bukovskiĭ's Judgment in Moscow. The collection also includes copies of these archival materials.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Russia (Federation) -- Politics and government -- 1991-
    Democracy
    Dissenters -- Soviet Union
    Civil rights -- Soviet Union
    Civil rights