RUTHFULLY YOURS

There are crimes that are unspeakable and accusations that endure time’s long howl because they are so profoundly disturbing. To be accused of the unspeakable is to be marked with a sign that can wipe out a person’s entire life’s work and reduce their voice to ash. When a man is so brave that his courage and fortitude have forced a totalitarian empire to flinch and to begin dissolution—invoking the unspeakable is often the only way to silence that voice and to rewrite history. You can help us keep this from happening to a great truth teller and dissident hero with your support today.

Who: Vladimir Bukovsky, whom The New York Times called “the most widely known prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union,”and “a hero of almost legendary proportion among the Soviet dissident movement,” is fighting to preserve his legacy.

Bukovsky earned this legacy as a writer and political dissident whom Soviet leaders repeatedly sent to prisons, labor camps and sanitariums — a total of 12 years in captivity — to stop him from spreading the truth about the totalitarian system in the Soviet Union. As a young man, arrested for the “crime” of organizing a poetry reading in Mayakovsky Square in Moscow, he was sent to a psikhushka, a fraudulent psychiatric hospital where troublemakers were often locked up without trial, their writings and political activism dismissed by doctors as the fevered product of schizophrenia.

Instead of folding, Bukovsky found a way to smuggle official documents detailing the medical deception of the psikhushka to the West. The revelation that the USSR was putting political dissidents into mental institutions caused such a widespread uproar in the United States that Yuri Andropov—head of the KGB and future head of the USSR—hastened to chastise Americans, claiming they didn’t understand that the real source of terror was not the government of the USSR but Bukovsky.

However, his acts of “terror” are carried out with only words. Words of integrity and enormous courage, as Bukovsky has been an active and diligent witness to the repression of authoritarian governments and strongmen since he was in his late teens. He revealed the mechanisms of a society in thrall to surveillance and propaganda, kept in poverty and enslaved by the state—with words. Whether in his book, To Build A Castle, about his long periods of imprisonment under the USSR, or his essay in The Washington Post which warned Americans that torture at Abu Ghraib risked making official cruelty as acceptable to them as it had become to many weary Russians —Bukovsky has never shirked the imperative to write truth.

A lifelong problem for Moscow: Bukovsky has continued to speak to the media about the persistence of the ruthless KGB, which he says continues to operate under friendly and unassuming new names all around the world. Recently, Bukovsky testified that the radiation-poisoning murder of his friend Alexander Litvinenko in London was ordered by Vladimir Putin himself. The extensive Litvinenko Inquiry examined evidence from widespread witnesses and forensic work in multiple countries, and came to the same conclusion.

Russia’s never-ending reign of oppression, from Stalin to Putin, is notoriously brutal. Yet today, the regime is wise to international appearances. Killing or imprisoning a man of words like Bukovsky looks weak. Better to hamper his work, cast doubt on his character. Let the bureaucrats deal with him. Putin’s government has kept Bukovsky from returning to Moscow to study Soviet government archives—who knows what he might reveal this time—by claiming they cannot find his citizenship records.

Why Bukovsky is suing English prosecutors:  However, Bukovsky’s libel lawsuit isn’t against Putin or his government, it’s against England’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which prosecutes criminal cases investigated by the police in England. The libel suit claims CPS aided Moscow’s mission to write Bukovsky out of history by casting the most grave aspersion on his character. Bukovsky was accused of having pornographic images of children on his computer, a charge he not only refutes but categorically denies.

The way that these charges have been disseminated and handled by the CPS is strange, serving to undermine both the veracity of the claims and the intent of his accusers. We find it odd that the CPS would issue a press release about these extremely serious charges, something that is normally not done, when Bukovsky was gravely ill and not expected to live. CPS issued this press release before Bukovsky himself had been informed of the charges against him.

Russian media has added layers of odious speculation since the CPS press release. CPS’ press release fueled these media rumors by wording that appears to imply, especially when translated to Russian, that Bukovsky made the images himself. Bukovsky’s libel lawsuit is pointing out how the CPS press release has created an atmosphere that both confuses and inflames the public.  Because child pornography is a horrid crime, an obscene crime—even being accused is to many equivalent to guilt.

A gag order: To make things worse: a recent gag order by the court forbids British media from discussing the case even though public perception, particularly in Russia, has already been tainted by the CPS press release. In spite of the swirling speculation set loose by the press release, the media now cannot even acknowledge that the case exists. That leaves CPS’ press release and subsequent defamation on Russia’s national news sites as the only information available to the public.

Bukovsky has been active recently in revealing Putin’s crimes:  It is interesting that prior to this “discovery” Bukosvky had testified concerning the poisoning of his close friend and fellow dissident Alexander Litvinenko. As always, he has never flinched from revealing Putin’s machinations and crimes.

Additionally, the charges are based on evidence that experts believe was planted—they believe it likely that Bukovsky’s computer was hacked. It is notable, after all, that CPS has broken its established patterns with the press release. Given historical precedence for such actions, it is likely that the press release may have been manipulated by the Kremlin. Many political observers see a cynical and strategically nimble move to discredit Bukovsky—and every word he has ever said—with charges he may not live to defend due to his age and infirmity.

These charges are an updated, modern version of the official diagnoses of insanity at the psikhushka. Why use prisons or poison in an Internet world, when hacking and a libelous press release are more efficient?

This time, his enemies aren’t hoping simply to send him to jail. They are hoping to defame Bukovsky permanently, to discredit his every word retroactively, by charging him with an unspeakable crime just before he dies.

They have one problem: Bukovsky lives.

Garry Kasparov, one of the best-known figures of today’s Russian opposition, said on Twitter that “Vladimir Bukovsky, a Putin critic persecuted for his bravery, deserves his day in court.”

A hunger strike:  Recently Bukovsky endured a long hunger strike to bring his libel suit before the court.

Now the court has granted that day: Bukovsky will have a chance to prove CPS guilty of libel, before they bring their own criminal case against him. But time is tight: The libel case is scheduled for July.

Our goal: The campaign will raise funds for strong legal representation at Bukovsky’s libel trial against CPS in July. The lawsuit claims CPS’ wording knowingly misled English readers and Russian translators, while CPS’ actions encouraged disgustingly exaggerated, deeply damaging rumors. Mr. Bukovsky’s current legal counsel believes he can prove his innocence. But CPS will bring big-name lawyers into court, attorneys whose very names and reputations can influence a decision. In court, innocence is often trumped by eminence.

This campaign, managed by an American in contact with Mr. Bukovsky,
has been authorized by his close friend Yuri-Yarym Agaev, a member of
the board of directors of The Gratitude Fund. Funds will be
transferred to the registered non-profit, The Gratitude Fund, which
will hold the money until it can be transferred to Mr. Bukovsky’s
libel lawyer.

All funds will be used to pay for the superior legal counsel Mr. Stroilov seeks to procure for Mr. Bukovsky’s libel case. By donating to Vladimir Bukovsky’s legal fund, you will provide him with the level of legal representation he needs and deserves to maintain his reputation as a man of integrity, a courageous truth-teller who will not be manipulated by the bullying of authoritarian leaders or their lackies.

Most importantly, you will ensure that the words of a man who has stood up to an oppressive system for 57 years—from Mayakovsky Square to Cambridge Crown Court—will not be stricken from the record.