The "new European Soviet".

During a late-February address in Brussels, former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky warned that the European Union--referred to by former Soviet dictator Mikhail Gorbachev as the "new European Soviet"--represents a continuation of the totalitarian vision he had fought against in Russia.

In his speech, sponsored by the UK Independence Party, "Mr. Bukovsky called the EU a 'monster' that must be destroyed, the sooner the better, before it develops into a full-fledged totalitarian state," reported Paul Belien, editor of the Brussels Journal. "In his speech Mr. Bukovsky referred to confidential documents from secret Soviet files which he was allowed to read in 1992. These documents confirm the existence of a 'conspiracy' to turn the European Union into a socialist organization."

"I am referring to structures, to certain ideologies being instilled, to the plans, the direction, the inevitable expansion, the obliteration of nations, which was the purpose of the Soviet Union," Bukovsky elaborated in an interview with Belien. "Most people do not understand this. They do not know it, but we [ex-Soviet dissidents] do because we were raised in the Soviet Union where we had to study the Soviet ideology in school and at university."

Bukovsky spent more than a dozen years imprisoned for "anti-Soviet" activities; that figure includes a term as an inmate in the II psihuska, the notorious psychiatric gulag, where he underwent various forms of torture.