TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/caps/86/86cappeo.4

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                ╛ªed                                                    k««A Hero's Return

December 29, 1986

For Andrei Sakharov, the long banishment in Gorky is finally over

For weeks the rumors had swirled.  After seven years of "internal
exile" in the closed city of Gorky, Andrei Sakharov, the
distinguished nuclear physicist who had become the Soviet Union's
leading human-rights activist, would soon be released.  Even so, when
the official announcement finally came last week, it caught
journalists by surprise.  They had gathered in the main hall of
Moscow's international press center to be briefed on an entirely
different subject, the Kremlin's decision to resume nuclear testing
after a self-imposed 16-month moratorium.  During the question-and-
answer session, Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky was asked
about reports that Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner, who was also
being detained in Gorky, were about to be freed.

Petrovsky's answer stunned everyone present.  In fact, he said, he
had an announcement to make on that very subject.  Sakharov had asked
the Soviet leadership for permission to move to Moscow, Petrovsky
related, and the request had been considered by the appropriate
organizations.  As a result, said Petrovsky, Sakharov's wish had been
granted and Bonner had been pardoned for "slandering" the Soviet
state.  He continued, "Academician Sakharov and Mrs. Bonner may
return to Moscow, and Academician Sakharov may actively join the
scientific life of the Academy of Sciences."

The Sakharovs had heard the good news four days earlier from an
impeccable source.  At 10 o'clock one evening, workmen had
unexpectedly installed a telephone in their Gorky apartment.  The
next day at 3 p.m. Sakharov received a call from none other than the
General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev.  The
Soviet leader said the Sakharovs would be permitted to return to
Moscow and that Andrei could go back to his "patriotic work."

For the Sakharovs, who were expected to leave Gorky this week, the
long exile of deprivation, hunger strikes, illness and ever present
loneliness was apparently over.  In Newton, Mass., Bonner's daughter
Tatyana Yankelevich was exultant.  "We are happy to hear the news,"
she said.  "It is overwhelming."

Exactly why the Kremlin had chosen to free the Sakharovs at this time
is not known.  But it was obviously a carefully orchestrated move
bearing the earmarks of Gorbachev's style.  Ever since he took power
in March 1985, the Soviet leader has encouraged frankness in public
attitudes toward domestic Soviet problems by mounting a campaign of
glasnost, or openness.  Last week, for example, foreign diplomats
were taken aback by the unprecedented Soviet coverage of ethnic
rioting in Alma-Ata, capital of the Central Asian republic of
Kazakhstan.  Despite such newfound candor, however, Gorbachev has
been unable to shake the opprobrium created in the West by human-
rights violations in general and the Sakharov case in particular.

During the past 20 years the soft-spoken physicist has undergone a
remarkable transformation in the eyes of his countrymen.  Once he was
a highly decorated scientist who in the 1950s helped develop the
first Soviet hydrogen bomb; by the early 1970s he had become an
outcast among his own people as a result of his relentless campaign
for human rights and disarmament.  In 1975 he was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize but was not allowed to go to Oslo to receive it.  In
January 1980 he was arrested by the KGB after criticizing the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan.  He was then flown to exile in Gorky, where,
despite a steady flow of criticism from the West, he has remained
ever since.

The protests have continued.  Western officials have harped on the
plight of the Sakharov's as an example of the Soviets' failures in
the area of human rights.  Many other activists and dissidents remain
in prison, internal exile or psychiatric hospitals, to be sure, but
none as famous as Sakharov and Bonner.  Over the past year, Gorbachev
has tried to reverse the Soviet Union's negative human-rights image
by releasing two well-known activists, Anatoli Shcharansky and Yuri
Orlov.  Another, Anatoli Marchenko, 48, died in prison in early
December, the victim of a brain hemorrhage following a hunger strike.
His death may have induced the Kremlin to make a gesture of
reconciliation and at the same time rid itself of the burden of the
Sakharovs' incarceration.

The first sign of a new policy toward the famous dissidents came a
year ago.  Following a 30-day hunger strike by Sakharov to force
Moscow to allow his wife to seek medical treatment abroad, Bonner was
permitted to go to the U.S. for a coronary-bypass operation.  At the
beginning of her six-month visit to the West, Bonner adhered to a
pledge she had been obliged to sign in order to obtain her visa:  she
would hold no press conferences and give no interviews while abroad.
Later, however, she was outraged at seeing secretly recorded
videotapes of herself and her husband that portrayed them as living
in comfort in Gorky.  She was also upset when Gorbachev declared last
February that Sakharov would never be allowed to leave the Soviet
Union because of his knowledge of state secrets.  After that she
spoke openly about the hardships her husband had endured and
campaigned passionately for his release.  When she returned to Gorky
in June, Soviet authorities did not try to punish her.

Even as the Sakharov case came to its surprising conclusion,
Gorbachev was absorbed, at least temporarily, by other political
matters.  Last week, for the first time, the Soviet press explicitly
pinned the blame for the country's economic trouble on former Soviet
Leader Leonid Brezhnev.  In fact, the rioting in Kazakhstan was
largely a result of Gorbachev's efforts to get rid of a Brezhnev
crony, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, a Politburo member and local arty
chieftain who was noted for championing local autonomy against
Moscow.  Gorbachev replaced Kunaev with an ethnic Russian, a move
widely interpreted as part of a drive to consolidate Moscow's
control.  Another Politburo member whose job is staid to be in
jeopardy is Vladimir Shcherbitsky, party chief in the Ukraine and a
longtime Brezhnev ally.

Gorbachev was also busy sending messages to a crisis-plagued
Washington.  In Moscow he told visiting Senator Gary Hart that the
Soviet Union wants to resume serious disarmament negotiations during
the final two years of the Reagan Administration.  Gorbachev went so
far as to say that Moscow was prepared to be flexible on research and
testing for the American space-based missile-defense system known as
the Strategic Defense Initiative, or Star Wars.

The State Department dismissed Gorbachev's comments, noting that no
such Soviet flexibility has been forthcoming at the negotiating table
in Geneva.  Some Soviet experts argued, however, that because
Gorbachev is eager for progress on arms control in order to devote
more attention to the Soviet economy, he may be looking for ways to
get around the Star Wars deadlock with the U.S.

On another arms-related issue, the Kremlin said it would end its 16-
month suspension of nuclear testing as soon as the U.S. conducts its
first nuclear test in 1987.  The U.S. said again last week that it
was not ready to agree to a new ban on testing.  The Reagan
Administration, for its part, announced two decisions related to the
future of the U.S. strategic nuclear force.  The President gave the
go-ahead to a plan for basing MX Peacekeeper missiles on railroad
tracks, and he approved the full-scale development of the mobile
Midgetman intercontinental ballistic missile.

On the diplomatic front, the State Department abruptly announced that
the U.S. Ambassador to Moscow, Arthur Hartman, was retiring after
five years on the job.  Although initially described as a "personal
decision" on the Ambassador's part, officials hinted that Hartman was
let go because he had displeased President Reagan.  A staunch
advocate of arms control and backer of a Reagan-Gorbachev summit in
the U.S., he had strenuously opposed the recent round of U.S.-Soviet
diplomatic expulsions, which ended when 260 Soviet employees of the
U.S. embassy were ordered to quit by the Kremlin.  Hartman's likely
successor:  Jack Matlock, a career diplomat who recently served on
the National Security Council staff.

If the Kremlin is concerned about the political activities of the
Sakharovs once they return to their tiny apartment on Chkalova Street
near the Yauza spur of the Moscow River, it is not showing it.
Soviet leaders may calculate that any statements the Sakharovs make
will simply get lost in the current atmosphere of self-critical
glasnost.  To be sure, the political climate in Moscow has changed
since Sakharov was whisked away to Gorky.  The Helsinki Watch
Committee, of which Sakharov became a symbol in the 1970s, has all
but disappeared as members have been imprisoned, sent off to labor
camps or forced into exile, and no organization has arisen to replace
it.  Even so, if his health holds, the brave and stubborn Sakharov
can hardly be expected to remain silent indefinitely on matters of
conscience.

--By William E. Smith
  Reported by David Aikman/Washington and Ken Olsen/Moscow