Judgment in Moscow: Soviet Crimes and Western Complicity

Bukovksy's Judgment in Moscow (updated in 2001), details Soviet meddling in Western politics in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the activities of the USSR in the Third World and the regime's suppression of dissent at home. The information comes from Communist Party archives to which Bukovsky was given access by Russia's President Yeltsin -- unaware that the novel gadget attached to Bukovsky's laptop was a handheld scanner.

Bukovsky's thesis is in the title: Just as the Nuremberg trials declared Nazism and the deeds of the Third Reich to be crimes against humanity, so the world should have put Communism on trial after the fall of the Soviet Union. Not for purposes of revenge, but as a prophylactic measure and a public declaration that the world would consider a resurgence of the USSR's form of totalitarian government intolerable and criminal, and would not allow it to rise again.

Had that happened former officials of the Soviet regime, such as KGB operative Vladimir Putin, would not have been allowed to hold positions of power in Russia's new democracy.

As veteran Russia-watcher and journalist David Satter comments: "The entire 27-year history of post-Soviet Russia is a tribute to the failure to eradicate the influence of communism."

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Judgment in Moscow has never been published in English until now.

In the 1990s, Bukovsky refused to rewrite parts of the book which accused prominent Westerners of behind-the-scenes dealings with the Soviets. The author quotes correspondence with a New York publisher 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."

Published by the Ninth of November press, the book includes hundreds of footnotes with source references to Communist Party documents, contemporary newspapers and books, and historical context notes for contemporary readers, plus an introduction by former Economist editor Edward Lucas and an afterword by longtime Russia journalist David Satter.

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

"A fascinating work which demolishes a few more myths prevalent in the West about the Soviet Union and the Cold War... stunning." -- Richard Pipes, Harvard University professor emeritus of history

"A massive and major contribution." -- Robert Conquest, author of The Great Terror and Harvest of Sorrow