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.

Judgment in Moscow is a unique book in every respect. From the source materials on which it is based, and the daring way in which the author obtained them, to his blunt posing as a long-term regime opponent of awkward questions not just about the USSR but also about various forms of Western collusion and complicity with its duplicitous and murderous system, there is nothing else like it. The book’s availability today is all the more important because, as the last five years have shown, the issues it raises about a supposedly post-Soviet regime in Russia are still most certainly alive and kicking.

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