Sakharov, Bonner return to Moscow (12/28/86)

Sakharov, Bonner return to Moscow

JERSEY CITY, N.J. - Dr. Andrei Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner returned to Moscow Tuesday, December 23, ending nearly seven years' internal exile in the town of Gorky for the physicist and two for his wife, for their advocacy of human rights.

Dr. Sakharov and Ms. Bonner were greeted by a swarm of Western reporters and cameramen as they stepped off train No. 37 from Gorky, an industrial city 250 miles east of Moscow, according to The New York Times. Gorky is closed to foreigners. While a group of friends were on hand at Yaroslavl station to welcome the couple, there was no official greeting party.

Dr. Sakharov was exiled to Gorky on January 22, 1980 without trial or conviction when he denounced Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. His case has come to symbolize Soviet human-rights abuses and Western leaders have continually pressed the Kremlin for his release. His wife was sentenced to five years of exile in Gorky in 1984 on charges of anti-Soviet activity. Ms. Bonner has been pardoned of her "crimes."

News of Dr. Sakharov's release came on Friday, December 19, at a press conference. Vladimir F. Petrovsky, a deputy foreign minister, announced that the Soviet authorities had approved a request by the physicist to return to Moscow with his wife. Dr. Sakharov won the 1975 Peace Prize for his human rights work; his brilliance in theoretical physics helped give the Soviet Union the hydrogen bomb, for which he won three titles of Hero of Socialist Labor, the USSR's highest civilian honor.

General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev personally telephoned the physicist on December 16 to tell him that he could return to Moscow. This occurred the day after a phone had been installed in the couple's apartment in Gorky, according to several newspaper reports. There were no conditions on the release.

In a telephone Interview with The New York Times, Dr. Sakharov stated, "I am going to live as I lived before my exile, and resume all of my activities." He said that the Soviet leader told Dr. Sakharov that he could go back to Moscow and to his work in theoretical physics.

"He told me to return to work for the public good - that is the formula he used," Dr. Sakharov recalled. In relation to whether he had agreed not to take part in political activities, he said: "Gorbachev never made such demands on me, and I told him the exact opposite."

When asked how he felt, Dr. Sakharov said his happiness was tempered by the news of the death of Anatoly T. Marchenko, who died on December 8 in prison. The release of the physicist is one of the most dramatic signs that the government is taking a new approach to human rights, according to the Times.

Although he was exiled to Gorky, and subsequently castigated in the Soviet press and reviled by his colleagues, Dr. Sakharov was not expelled from the Academy of Sciences, of which he has long been a member.

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