Dina Kaminskaya

Dina Isaakovna Kaminskaya
Yulia Vishnevskaya, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Dina Kaminskaya, Kronid Lyubarsky in Munich, 1978
Native name	Дина Исааковна Каминская
Born	(1919-01-13)January 13, 1919 Yekaterinoslav
Died	July 7, 2006(2006-07-07) (aged 87) Falls Church, Virginia
Nationality	Russian
Citizenship	Soviet Union, United States
Occupation	lawyer
Known for	human rights activism with participation in the Moscow Helsinki Group
Movement	dissident movement in the Soviet Union
Spouse(s)	Konstantin Simis
Children	Dimitri K. Simes

Dina Isaakovna Kaminskaya (Russian: Ди́на Иса́аковна Ками́нская, 13 January 1919, Yekaterinoslav – 7 July 2006, Falls Church, Virginia) was a lawyer and human rights activist in the Soviet Union who was forced to emigrate in 1977 to avoid arrest. She and her husband moved to the United States. She was born in Yekaterinoslav.

The writer Yuli Daniel engaged Kaminskaya as his lawyer when, in December 1965, he was prosecuted with Andrei Sinyavsky, but the state refused to allow her to speak up in court on his behalf. She went on to defend - as far as the Soviet authorities would let her in a legal system designed as an instrument of Soviet power - Vladimir Bukovsky in 1967. She also defended Yuri Galanskov (who would die in a Soviet labour camp), Anatoly Marchenko (who would also die in camp), Larisa Bogoraz and Pavel Litvinov, and the Crimean Tatar activist Mustafa Jemilev.

Kaminskaya was prevented from defending Bukovsky in his 1971 trial and Sergei Kovalyov in 1975. In 1977, after being stripped of her license to practice as a lawyer, she was barred from defending Anatoly Shcharansky. On account of her political defense work Kaminskaya was forced into exile in 1977.

Singer Yuly Kim estimated the efforts and honesty of Dina Kaminskaya and very few other defenders who insisted that there is no any criminal element in actions of their clients accused in anti-Soviet propaganda.

Kaminskaya's book Final Judgment: my life as a Soviet defense attorney translated by Michael Glenny was published in English in 1982. In 1984, the book was published in Russian under the title Lawyer's Notes.

The recent publication of Stars of Advocacy qualifies Dina Kaminskaya and Sofia Kallistratova as stars of the legal profession in Soviet Russia.

Kaminskaya was married to Konstantin Simis and they had one son, Dimitri K. Simes. She died in Falls Church, Virginia.

Further reading

• Moscow Helsinki Group, Public Group of the Assistance of the Implementation of Helsinki Accords in the USSR, Moscow Group “Helsinki”
• Giganty i Charodei Slova. Russkie Sudebnye Oratory Vtoroi Poloviny XIX. Nachala XX Veka by V. I. Smolyarchuk
• Holley, Joe (15 July 2006). "Dina Kaminskaya; lawyer defended Soviet dissidents". Washington Post. p. B06. 
• Blake, Patricia (2 May 1983). "Law: verdict on Soviet justice". Time. 
• Corley, Felix (3 August 2006). "Dina Kaminskaya. Lawyer to Soviet dissidents". The Independent. 
• Каминская, Дина (2009). Записки адвоката [Lawyer's Notes] (PDF) (in Russian). Moscow: Новое издательство. ISBN 5983791192. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 November 2015. CS1 maint: Unrecognized language (link)