Vladimir Bukovsky, Russian dissident who spent many years in psychiatric prison-hospitals, labor camps and prisons within the Soviet Union, died of cardiac arrest in Cambridge on Sunday, 27 October 2019. He was 76.
After his expulsion from the USSR in December 1976, he spent his last four decades writing and campaigning against successive regimes in his homeland.
Bukovsky first gained notoriety as a student writer and organiser in Moscow.
In 1963, he was arrested for possessing forbidden literature. Rather than put him on trial, Soviet authorities had him declared mentally ill and locked him in a psychiatric hospital — a common tactic used in the USSR to discredit dissenters and confine them without appearing to be holding political prisoners.
He was arrested again in 1967 and sent to a labor camp for three years.
After his release, Bukovsky created an international uproar when he had psychiatric hospital records for six well-known dissidents smuggled to the West in 1971. International psychiatrists’ organisations studied the records and charged Soviet doctors and the government with creating false diagnoses as a way to indefinitely detain possibly thousands of political opponents who showed no medically recognized symptoms of mental illness.
After another prison sentence, Bukovsky was deported from the USSR in exchange for Luis Corvalán, the imprisoned general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile. Bukovsky was not due for release until 1983.
Vladimir’s funeral will take place on Tuesday 19 November 2019 at Highgate Cemetery in London (Swain’s Lane, London N6 6PJ).
Times:
11.00 am: funeral service at the cemetery chapel [west side of Highgate Cemetery]. Unfortunately, the chapel is small, and the organisers fear that not everyone will fit in. At the end of the service, people will be given an opportunity to enter the chapel to approach the coffin and say the last goodbye before the coffin is closed. Please bring umbrellas in case you have to wait outside the chapel and it may be raining.
Between 12:30 and 13:30: Burial. In Eastern side of Highgate Cemetery.
They are making arrangements for a memorial meeting to take place after the burial, hopefully at a venue near the cemetery.
For people who would like to send flowers for the funeral:
Any floral tributes (via Interflora or other) should be directed to the undertakers at the following address:
Leverton & Sons, 212 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1BD
The flowers should be received by 9 a.m. on the morning of the funeral (19 November), or on the previous day (18 November), with an indication that they are for the funeral of Vladimir Bukovsky.
Requiescat in pace.
The above text has been adapted from the obituary notice issued by the Bukovsky Centre in California and from Bukovsky group on Facebook.
Picture: Rob C. Croes / ANeFo. — licensed for free use
