Alexander "Sasha" Ivanovich Shatravka (; born 6 October 1950) is a Russian-born former

Soviet dissident Soviet dissidents were people who disagreed with certain features of Soviet ideology or with its entirety and who were willing to speak out against them. The term ''dissident'' was used in the Soviet Union (USSR) in the period from the mid-1960s ...

and

peace activist A peace movement is a social movement which seeks to achieve ideals such as the ending of a particular war (or wars) or minimizing inter-human violence in a particular place or situation. They are often linked to the goal of achieving world p ...

who is known for his memoir ''Escape from Paradise'' about his experiences as a

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although ...

and his escape from the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. He now lives in the United States and is a naturalized U.S. citizen. He is known for his 1974 escape attempt from the Soviet Union as a 24-year-old sailor and for spending nine years as a

in Soviet psychiatric hospitals and

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

concentration camps between 1974 to 1979 and 1982 to 1986.Victims of political terror in the USSR.
Database of the Memorial Society. In 1983 he was sentenced to three years in prison for circulating a petition calling for the universal

abolition of nuclear weapons Nuclear disarmament is the act of reducing or eliminating nuclear weapons. Its end state can also be a nuclear-weapons-free world, in which nuclear weapons are completely eliminated. The term ''denuclearization'' is also used to describe the pro ...

, following his release in 1979. He was released in 1986, in time for the changes of

glasnost ''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...

and

perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

. He finally made it to the West, and testified before the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), also known as the U.S. Helsinki Commission, is an independent U.S. government agency created by Congress in 1975 to monitor and encourage compliance with the Helsinki Final Act and ...

political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union There was systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, based on the interpretation of political opposition or dissent as a psychiatric problem. It was called "psychopathological mechanisms" of dissent. During the leader ...

. He has lived in the United States since 1986 and was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1992. His memoir ''Escape from Paradise'' was published in Russian in 2010 and in English in 2019.

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