About the Author
Vladimir Bukovsky, who died in 2019, was a writer and scientist who had been a key figure in the struggle for human rights in the Soviet Union. Born in 1942 in the Urals, he was first arrested in 1963 for possessing banned literature and confined to Leningrad Psychiaric Prison Hospital for 15 months. After two subsequent periods of incarceration, he was arrested in 1971 for delivering information about Soviet psychiatric abuses to the West and was sentenced to two years in prison, five years in labor camps, and five years in internal exile. A worldwide campaign on his behalf prompted his release to the West in exchange for Chilean Communist Party leader Luís Corvalán in 1976. Mr. Bukovsky’s books include A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters (with Semyon Gluzman, 1974) and To Build a Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (1978).