Aleksey Dobrovolskiy

He studied at the Moscow Institute of Culture. He worked as a bookbinder at the Literary Museum in Moscow. He had mental health problems and was subjected to compulsory psychiatric treatment. A participant in the dissident movement.

A participant in the court case known as the ‘Trial of the Four.’ Arrested in January 1967, he was charged with authorship of one of the texts in the samizdat collection ‘Phoenix’. At the trial he gave testimony against himself and the other defendants and received a mitigated sentence. In January 1968 he was sentenced to two years in labor camps. He was released in early 1969.

1960s

Dissidents Poets Trial of the Four

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The final statement

‘I told the truth. If I had known this truth earlier, I would have said it earlier.’

They tried here to accuse me of connections with the NTS and of illegal currency transactions. I have nothing to do with that. I knew absolutely nothing about it before. In particular, I did not know what the NTS was. What kind of organization it is, I understood only during the investigation and from the prosecutor’s speech, which opened my eyes to many things. I tried during the investigation and at the trial to be as honest as possible. I told the truth. If I had known this truth earlier, I would have said it earlier.

12 January 1968

Moscow City Court, Moscow, USSR.

Source: ‘My final statement: Speeches of the Defendants at Court Trials of 1966–1974’.