Dina Kaminskaya

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

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), Anatoli 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 licence to practise as a lawyer, she was barred from defending Anatoli Shcharansky.

Kaminskaya's book Final Judgment: my life as a Soviet defense attorney, was published in English in 1982.

Kaminskaya was married to Konstantin Simis, and they had one son, Dimitri K. Simes.