Bukovsky: Russia's Thomas Jefferson

Vladimir Bukovsky is perhaps the most sound, astute and libertarian of all Soviet dissidents. Compared to him, Sakharov was a relatively superficial pinko, and Solzhenitsyn was an ignorant nationalist.
In the 1960s to 1970s Bukovsky was sent to prisons and psychiatric asylums for his anti-Soviet activities. In 1976 he was exiled to the West in exchange for Pinochet’s permission to send Chilean commie thug Luis Corvalan to the USSR. He currently lives in the UK.
Unlike many other dissidents, Bukovsky was rational enough to understand that the detente was merely the Soviet Union’s attempt to expand its influence by disarming the West. He also understood that Gorbachev’s perestroika was yet another attempt to fool the West. Gorby's aim was to preserve the totalitarian empire through moderate concessions and maintain Soviet influence in the world, not to achieve any kind of freedom (the correct alternative to the perestroika would be a complete dismatlement of the Soviet regime). Thankfully, his plans got out of control.
When Yeltsin banned the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, Bukovsky was invited as an expert for a commission that proved that the ban was constitutional. As a result, Bukovsky was allowed access to some communist party archives. He managed to scan them and subsequently publish them online. Most of the archives still remain secret, and those published by Bukovsky are the only ones publicly available.
Bukovsky was also one of the first to notice the failure of Russia’s post-Soviet reforms. The foundations of the Putin dictatorship were laid long before Putin came to power. Russia’s 1990s economic reforms, far from being radically “conservative” (as some ignorant people maintain), were actually not free-market enough. The entire monolith of the Soviet economy was subjected only to cosmetic changes, with most parasitic institutions continuing their existence well into the post-Soviet period. Moreover, no rule of law was established, and the constitution gave tremendous powers to the president (which was finally used by Putin).
In 2007 Bukovsky attempted to run for president. He understood quite clearly that Kremlin thugs would not even register him (let alone allow him to win even a tiny fraction of the vote), but intended the campaign as an emotional boost for the most sound elements of the Russian opposition (I attended a rally that nominated him for president, by the way). His campaign slogan was (if a translation of the meaning, not a literal translation, is used) “elect a rebel instead of Putin”, which fits in pretty well with my penchant for the rebels in the wars for American and Southern independence. Pretexts used for rejecting Bukovsky’s candidacy were as ridiculous as you can get – they said his Cambridge degree did not qualify as “higher education” required for a presidential candidate (of course, a degree given by some Russian backwater shithole qualifies well enough), and they also used some technical absurdity related to his citizenship status.
Bukovsky is closely connected with the libertarian community. He recently delivered a lecture on the Soviet economy at the Cato Institute’s Russian division. Unlike many other dissidents, he understands clearly the way the Soviet economy worked and why it failed.
Books authored by Bukovsky include To Build the Castle: My Life as a Dissenter (the English electronic version is available online for free), USSR: From Utopia to Disaster (available in English) and EUSSR: The Soviet Roots of European Integration (available in English, a comparison of European socialism with the USSR).
Below are some quotes from Bukovsky's Judgment in Moscow (Moskovsky Protsess, published both in Russian and English) that I translated:

On the human rights movement’s transformation from the libertarian struggle for the rights of the oppressed into a leftist bureaucratic behemoth that “killed” the entire human rights issue by promoting fake neutrality (hence the roots of modern Guantanamo-bashing and concern for the well-being of Arab terrorists). The leftists refused to cooperate with “hardline” Soviet dissidents:

Meanwhile, Western “human rights” watchdogs, which had played such a major role in our (anti-Soviet-ed.) campaign, were gradually taken over by the local leftist establishment, which started dabbling in human rights, mostly (human rights violations-ed.) in non-socialist countries, in order to pose as objective. A “human rights” bureaucracy emerged and became off limits for us (for hardline Soviet dissidents-ed.) because of our “non-objectivity.”
It became impossible to criticize the Soviet Union without heaping ten times as much criticism on (pro-Western-ed.) South Africa, (free-market-oriented-ed.) Chile or Iran. And some newspaper like the Helsinki Watch would then publish on good paper – and with handsome wages being paid – a report on human rights violations in the world: three violations in the USSR and eleven in the US. One wonders where such “human rights activists” came from. The establishment adapted and found a way to bury the entire issue under a layer of its spurious activities: some sort of commissions for Indian, women’s, Mexican, Micronesian and other minority rights – both real and made-up. (…)
The issue of “human rights” was stolen by the left and became their banner. Meanwhile, we (hardline Soviet dissidents-ed.) were barred from (human rights watchdogs).

On the naivete of those who thought the invasion of Afghanistan was somehow a departure from the Soviet “peaceful” (peaceful my ass) policy:

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 caused a virtual shock in the world, which extremely surprised me: (those shocked) seemed to be unaware of the preceding Soviet expansion all over the globe. The shock, indignation and astonishment were somewhat sham and false – something akin to the indignation of a person who marries a whore and then finds out that she – what a surprise! – is not a virgin.

On the USSR’s manipulation of leftist “useful fools” in the West:

In communist party lingo there is the expression “useful fool”, which was coined by Lenin. Now (…) Soviet rulers have achieved a devastating victory: they found millions of useful fools (i.e. peaceniks in the West-ed.) for implementing their bankrupt policy. (…)
At a news conference back then I was asked what one should do in order not to be a useful fool. I replied: first of all, not to be a fool. If this cannot be changed due to purely biological reasons, one should follow a very simple rule of thumb: never to be useful for the USSR and its policy. If one can’t manage to do that either, one should probably not be involved in public affairs at all. Nor should one take part in any activities together with Soviet representatives and those who are clearly their friends. This seems to be a pretty simple rule comprehensible even for a fool. But peaceniks have set up a trap for themselves by declaring their willingess to cooperate with all “anti-war” forces.

On the USSR’s alleged “struggle for peace” being a ploy used for expansion:

It’s easy to imagine the uproar (triggered by Bukovsky’s writings-ed.) that arose and the leftist intelligentsia’s hatred towards me. (…) As any Soviet-born person, I knew that the “struggle for peace” is an integral part of the Soviet ideological war against foreign countries – or, more precicely, one aspect of that war, because real peace, according to communist ideology, is only possible if socialism achieves victory everywhere. In communist Newspeak, these concepts have long become synonyms, and the expression “struggle for peace” meant the USSR’s struggle for expanding its influence.