Dina Kaminskaya

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Dina Isaakovna Kaminskaya (January 13, 1919 – July 7, 2006) was a Soviet lawyer and human rights activist. She was born into a Jewish family in Yekaterinoslav (now in Ukraine) and worked to defend people targeted by the Soviet government.

Kaminskaya defended many dissidents in court, often facing political pressure. Her cases included Yuli Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky in 1965, Vladimir Bukovsky in 1967, and Yuri Galanskov, Anatoly Marchenko, Larisa Bogoraz, Pavel Litvinov, and Mustafa Jemilev. She was blocked from defending Bukovsky in 1971 and Sergei Kovalev in 1975. In 1977, after being stripped of her license to practice law, she was barred from defending Anatoly Shcharansky and was forced to emigrate. She left the Soviet Union with her husband, Konstantin Simis.

In the United States, she continued her work in the public eye and wrote Final Judgment: My Life as a Soviet Defense Attorney, published in English in 1982 (Russian edition, Lawyer's Notes, 1984). She and Simis had a son, Dimitri K. Simes. Dina Kaminskaya died in Falls Church, Virginia, at the age of 87.