On 5 January 1972 the trial of Vladimir Konstantinovich Bukovsky took place in the Lyublino district court of Moscow. V.K. Bukovsky was charged with having circulated anti-Soviet materials of libellous content, with having communicated to foreign correspondents slanderous information, and with having asserted that in the Soviet Union healthy people are placed in psychiatric hospitals of prison type. In the indictment it was also stated that “Bukovsky had the aim of organizing an underground printing-press in order to circulate samizdat materials”. Defence counsel V. Ya. Shveisky said that the prosecution had made a mistake by defining Bukovsky’s actions under Article 70 of the Russian Criminal Code, and that parts of the indictment, as the judicial examination had shown, had remained unproven. He asked for the acquittal of his client. The sentence of the court was seven years of imprisonment, of which the first two years were to be served in prison and the remaining five in a corrective labour colony of strict regime, plus five years of exile; court expenses to the sum of 100 roubles were to be paid by Bukovsky.
Source:
‘The Case of Vladimir Bukovsky, January 1972 (23.1),’ A Chronicle of Current Events
