Cambridge, England — All Soviet dissidents are legendary, to one degree or another. Vladimir Bukovsky is especially so. He is held in awe by people whom the rest of us hold in awe. I'm speaking of his fellow dissidents. He is a dissident's dissident, so to speak.
A book of his, which originally appeared in 1995, is now being published in English for the first time. On his back patio, amid chirping birds, I talk with him about this and many other subjects.
Bukovsky was born in 1942 and quickly opposed the system: the system into which he had been born. He was kicked out of Moscow State University when he was 19. He had criticized the Komsomol, the Young Communist League.
“Do you think you were just born this way?” I ask him. Born to take risks, born to land in trouble? “Yeah,” says Bukovsky. “There's nothing you can do about it. I would feel uncomfortable if I tried to hide what I believe. It's against my nature.”
In an interrogation, a KGB general tried to get him to turn — to inform on the dissident movement. Bukovsky, with the recklessness of youth, told him off. Years later, Bukovsky was pleased to find something in his dossier: “not suitable for recruitment.”
He does not necessarily condemn those who made compromises, however. “When you live in a totalitarian society, you learn to be very cautious in your judgments,” he says, “because you know that people sometimes find themselves in hopeless situations.”
He spent twelve years in the Gulag: prisons, labor camps, and sadistic psychiatric hospitals. I ask, “Did you ever think you would not survive?” “Oh, yeah,” he answers. “It was the dominant idea.” He thought they would kill him. “Most of my friends never expected to live to the age of 30. We all thought it was a given. It was just luck that I survived. Most of my friends were killed.”
Bukovsky was released in 1976, exchanged at the Zurich airport for Luis Corvalán, the head of the Chilean Communist Party. “What was that like?” I ask. “It was a very good day,” says Bukovsky, “but if you asked me was I jubilant or something — no. I suddenly felt how tired I was. Until then, you keep fighting, and therefore your tiredness is at bay. You don't allow it to rule your life. You go on. Then suddenly . . .”
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