Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity

“The movers and shakers of today have little interest in digging for the truth. Who knows what one may come up with? You may start out with the Communists and end up with yourself.” —Vladimir Bukovsky

Bukovsky's Judgment in Moscow, called "stunning" by Richard Pipes and "a massive and major contribution" by Robert Conquest, has been published for the first time in English. Margaret Thatcher gave a grant to support the writing of the book, and the initial publication in Russia was paid for by Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. The book has an introduction by Edward Lucas and an afterword by David Satter.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, legendary Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky had the opportunity to steal thousands of classified documents from the Soviet archives. Judgment in Moscow is about the secrets exposed by those documents. It reveals the inner workings of the Soviet regime and the complicity of many in the West with that regime.

Judgment in Moscow was an international bestseller published in nine languages, but has only now been published in English for the first time. It was previously at Random House, but Bukovsky refused to rewrite parts of the book which accused prominent Westerners of behind-the-scenes dealings with the Soviets. In this edition, the author quotes correspondence with his editor, who says, "I don't disagree, but I simply can't publish a book that accuses Americans like Cyrus Vance and Francis Ford Coppola of unpatriotic -- or even treacherous -- behavior."

“Vladimir Bukovsky uses the Kremlin's own documents to show how the Soviet Union provided a false face to the world and how Soviet leaders used Western leaders as dupes or willing actors. Judgment in Moscow provides the written Nuremberg trial the Soviets never got when the USSR fell.” —Anne Applebaum, author of Gulag: A History (Pulitzer Prize)

“An essential warning of the dangers of collaborating with authoritarian regimes.” — Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and author of Winter is Coming

“The most important work to appear for decades on the Soviet empire and its aftermath.” — Edward Lucas, former senior editor of the Economist, from the introduction

One of the most widely-known prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, whom The New York Times called "a hero of almost legendary proportions," Vladimir Bukovsky was expelled from Moscow University at age 19 for publishing criticism of a state youth program. By the time he was 35, he had spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and ersatz psychiatric hospitals for a series of protests and leaked documents.

After his expulsion to the West in 1976, he accepted an invitation to continue his interrupted studies at Cambridge University, where he earned a master's degree in biology. His status as a leading irritant to the Soviet government was ensured by the publication in 1978 of his powerful bestselling prison memoir To Build a Castle, recently re-released in digital format.

Bukovsky continued for decades to write and speak about the dangerous abuses of state power. Having experienced brutal forced feeding through the nose during hunger strike himself, he warned post-9/11 America in a Washington Post essay that torture also traumatizes its perpetrators: "Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers."

Even into his seventies and despite failing health, he has continued to be a burr under the saddle of Russian leaders. In 2014 his testimony helped the British inquiry into the murder by radiation poisoning of his friend, Alexander Litvinenko, conclude that President Putin had likely sanctioned the killing.

Bukovsky sees Russian leadership not as a series of changing regimes, but as an unbroken chain of murderous meddling at home and abroad. After the 2018 radiation poisoning of military intelligence defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England, he quipped: "If two cruise missiles were to be launched at the Lubyanka, the level of terrorism worldwide would drop by approximately 80 percent."

One of the most widely-known prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union, whom The New York Times called "a hero of almost legendary proportions," Vladimir Bukovsky was expelled from Moscow University at age 19 for publishing criticism of a state youth program. By the time he was 35, he had spent a total of twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and ersatz psychiatric hospitals for a series of protests and leaked documents.

After his expulsion to the West in 1976, he accepted an invitation to continue his interrupted studies at Cambridge University, where he earned a master's degree in biology. His status as a leading irritant to the Soviet government was ensured by the publication in 1978 of his powerful bestselling prison memoir To Build a Castle, recently re-released in digital format.

Bukovsky continued for decades to write and speak about the dangerous abuses of state power. Having survived torture himself, he warned post-9/11 America in a Washington Post essay that torture also traumatizes its perpetrators: "Our rich experience in Russia has shown that many will become alcoholics or drug addicts, violent criminals or, at the very least, despotic and abusive fathers and mothers."

Even into his seventies and despite failing health, he has continued to be a burr under the saddle of Russian leaders. In 2014 his testimony helped the British inquiry into the murder by radiation poisoning of his friend, Alexander Litvinenko, conclude that President Putin had likely sanctioned the killing.

Bukovsky sees Russian leadership not as a series of changing regimes, but as an unbroken chain of murderous meddling at home and abroad. After the 2018 radiation poisoning of military intelligence defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England, he quipped: "If two cruise missiles were to be launched at the Lubyanka, the level of terrorism worldwide would drop by approximately 80 percent."

From 1976 to 1982, he was the Moscow correspondent of the Financial Times of London. He then became a special correspondent on Soviet affairs of The Wall Street Journal. He is currently a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a fellow of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He has been a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and a visiting professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.