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But inside the USSR, Amalrik’s book was not dismissed as the ranting of lunatic. The leadership new that Amalrik had exposed the Soviet regime’s soft underbelly. They understood their vulnerability to dissident ideas: even the smallest spark of freedom could set their entire totalitarian, dissident books were confiscated, and every typewriter had to be registerd with the authorities. The regime knew the volatile potential of free thought and speech, so they spared no effort at extinguishing the spark.

I was arrested in 1977 of charges of high treason as well as for “anti-Soviet” activities. After my own mock trial a year later, i was sentenced to thirteen years in prison. In 1984, my KGB jailers, swelling with pride, reminded me of

Amalrik’s prediction: “You see, Amalrik is dead” – he had died in car accident in France in 1980 – “and the USSR is still standing!” But Amalrik’s prediction had not missed by much. Within a few months of that encounter in the Gulag, Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.

Excerpted from ‘The case for Democracy’ by Natan Sharansky