Bukovskij, Vladimir Konstantinovič

Autor: Bukovskij, Vladimir Konstantinovič
Rok: 1942-2019
Oblast působnosti: neurofyziologové, disidenti, spisovatelé

Biogr./Hist. údaje: Ruský politický lidskoprávní aktivista, neurofyziolog a spisovatel. Žil ve Velké Británii.
Zdroj: Autoritní databáze Národní knihovny ČR

Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky (Russian: Влади́мир Константи́нович Буко́вский; born 30 December 1942) was prominent in the Soviet dissident movement of the 1960s and 1970s and has remained in active opposition to the Soviet regime and its successors in Russia since being expelled from the country in late 1976. A writer, neurophysiologist, and activist, he is celebrated for his part in the campaign to expose and halt the political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union.From May 1963 to July 1966, with a few brief months of release in 1965, the young Bukovsky was confined to psychiatric hospitals because of his opposition activities. One of the first to alert human rights activists to the growing use of indefinite psychiatric imprisonment against opponents of the regime, Bukovsky would spend a further 12 years of periodic confinement in Soviet psychiatric hospitals, labor camps and prisons.After months of negotiation between the Soviet and US governments, of which Bukovsky knew nothing, he was taken from Vladimir Prison in December 1976, flown to Switzerland, and exchanged for Luis Corvalán, the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile, who had been released from captivity by Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean dictator. Following a short stay in the Netherlands Bukovsky settled in the UK where he continued his opposition to the Soviet regime and the shortcomings of its successors.Today he is a member of the international advisory council for the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a director of the Gratitude Fund set up in 1998 to commemorate and support former dissidents, a member of the International Council of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, and a Senior Fellow of the Cato Institute in Washington. In 2001, Vladimir Bukovsky received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom which has been awarded annually since 1993 by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.