Vladimir Bukovsky, the
hooligan at odds with both Russia and the West
Why Soviet dissident,
writer and campaigner Vladimir Bukovsky (1942-2019) was a global politician,
and why his experience is important today.
13 November 2019
Here again, however, Vladimir Bukovsky was an exception to the rule. He didn’t confine himself to Russian issues, instead actively applying his own ideological priorities, which gradually grew in clarity and precision, to the political realities of the West. It was, in fact, the possibility of free speech and participation in political life that created his holistic agenda. Bukovsky wasn’t part of the left and liberal mainstream in Western political thought – he was a Libertarian, Conservative and Euro-sceptic.
The main object of Bukovsky’s fervent reproof was probably the EU. His commitment to take a stand against all forms of highly concentrated state power led to his systematic dislike of European integration. At the start of the 2000s he even coined the term “EUSSR”. In 2010, he wrote:
“This pattern of dictatorship, oppression, and lack of freedom of speech is rising not only in third world countries, but also in Europe and the
Bukovsky was, in a sense, a “Brexiteer” long before the concept of Brexit was born. His patronage of UKIP hardly surprising in this regard. This suspicion and fundamental objection to seeing any positive aspects of European unity were based not only on the idea of a “government over governments” as an unconditional evil. Bukovsky, who received access to the documents published by him in Judgment in Moscow in the early 1990s, was convinced that the idea of a “common European home” was not only deeply socialist in itself, but was the result of direct actions by the leaders of the moribund Soviet Union, who were aiming to counteract the pro-market policy of some European leaders, especially Margaret Thatcher…….
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/vladimir-bukovsky-globalny-politik-en/
