(Washington Post) hen Vladimir Bukovsky was released from a Soviet prison in 1976 in an event that drew front-page headlines around the world, he was 33 years old and had already spent about a third of his life in captivity.
A dissident since his student days, he had attracted the ire of Soviet authorities — and the admiration of political leaders, human rights advocates, journalists and other supporters in the West — with his unstinting campaign to reveal the abuses of the communist system. […]
Mark Kramer, director of Cold War Studies at Harvard University, said in an interview that Mr. Bukovsky emerged from “his experience in the Soviet Union looking like such a remarkably admirable figure because he stuck to his principles even when he was paying an extremely severe price for them.”
“He made that choice in favor of sticking to his principles and he had to pay a very dear price for it,” Kramer said. “It cost him 12 years in prison, 12 wasted years of life.” […]
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