Vladimir Bukovsky

Vladimir Bukovsky - neuropsychologist by profession, member of the 1960-1970 dissident movement, writer and a political activist. He was one the first people to publicly denounce political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union over political prisoners. Bukovsky spent 12 years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric clinics. He is a member of the international advisory council of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. In 1965, Bukovsky helped organize a demonstration in Moscow held as a response to the trial of writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel. Bukovsky was arrested three days prior to the planned demonstration without trial until July 1966. In 1971, Bukovsky managed to smuggle to the West over 150 pages documenting abuse of psychiatric institutions for political reasons in the Soviet Union. In 1972 Bukovsky was accused of slandering Soviet psychiatry, contacts with foreign journalists and possession and distribution of samizdat.

Since 1976 Bukovsky has lived in Cambridge, England. In 1983, he cofounded and was elected president of the international anti-Communist organization Resistance International, which had a primary role in the coordination of the opposition that was instrumental in the demise of communism. In 1992 a group of liberal deputies of the Moscow City Council proposed Bukovsky's candidacy for elections of the new Mayor of Moscow, however Bukovsky refused the offer. In 1997, during the General Meeting in Florence, Bukovsky has been elected General President of the Freedom Commettee, the international movement aimed to defend and empower everywhere the culture of liberties. Together with other writers and historians, Bukovsky promoted Memorial Day devoted to the victims of communism, to be held each year, on 7 November. In 2002, together with Boris Nemtsov, a member of the Russian Duma and leader of the Union of Rightist Forces, Bukovsky co-founded the Committee 2008, an umbrella organization of the Russian democratic opposition, whose purpose is to ensure free and fair presidential elections in 2008.

On the 28th May 2007, Bukovsky agreed to become a candidate in the Russian presidential election. He was nominated by the well-known political activists and writers. Over 800 participants supported Bukovsky's candidacy, however, Russia's Central Election Commission declined his candidacy due to the fact that he had not lived on the territory of Russia for the past last 10 years.

Bukovsky is the author of many publications. Among them: "USSR: From Utopia to Disaster "," Judgment in Moscow", "Russia's Other Writers" and more. In his renown book - "Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters", Bukovskydiscoursedabout potential future victims of political psychiatry with instructions on how to behave during inquest in order to avoid being diagnosed as mentally ill.