TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/052190/0521534.000

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                5¬                                                          SAKHAROV, Page 48

Years in Exile

By Andrei Sakharov


[From Memoirs. (c) 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Translated by
Richard Lourie]

    [As the 1960s drew on, Andrei Sakharov inched toward a break
with the regime he had served so ably as the master builder of
its thermonuclear-weapons program. His convictions and the
growing repression in the U.S.S.R. during the Brezhnev years
moved him to identify ever more closely with dissent in his own
country and abroad. In 1966 he took part in his first human
rights demonstration, a one-minute silent protest in Pushkin
Square. In 1967 he wrote a letter to Communist Party leader
Leonid Brezhnev defending imprisoned dissidents. That prompted
an angry reaction from Efim Slavsky, head of the Ministry of
Medium Machine Building, which supervised the Soviet nuclear
program. "Sakharov is a good scientist," said Slavsky. "But as
a politician he's muddleheaded, and we'll be taking measures."
Those included a pay cut of nearly 50% and a demotion at the
Installation, the secret "atomic city" east of Moscow, where
he was then working on the peaceful uses of nuclear explosions.
But in the following year, 1968, Sakharov definitively broke
with the Soviet system, and far harsher measures were soon to
come.]


    By the beginning of 1968, I felt a growing compulsion to
speak out on the fundamental issues of our age. I was
influenced by my life experience and a feeling of personal
responsibility, reinforced by the part I'd played in the
development of the hydrogen bomb, the special knowledge I'd
gained about thermonuclear warfare, my bitter struggle to ban
nuclear testing and my familiarity with the Soviet system. I
hoped that such notions as an open society, convergence of the
capitalist and communist systems, and world government might
ease the tragic crisis of our age. In 1968 I took my decisive
step by publishing Reflections on Progress, Peaceful
Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom.

    My work on Reflections happened to coincide with the Prague
Spring. What so many of us in the socialist countries had been
dreaming of finally seemed to be coming to pass in
Czechoslovakia: democracy, including freedom of expression and
abolition of censorship; reform of the economic and social
systems; curbs on the security forces; and full disclosure of
the crimes of the Stalin era (the "Gottwald era" in
Czechoslovakia). Even from afar, we were caught up in all the
hopes of the catchwords "Prague Spring" and "socialism with a
human face."

    Events in the Soviet Union echoed those in Prague but on a
much reduced scale. In the campaign for the dissidents
Alexander Ginzburg, Yuri Galanskov and Vera Lashkova (who were
tried in January 1968), more than 1,000 signatures -- an
extraordinary number under Soviet conditions -- were collected,
mainly from the intelligentsia. A few years earlier, no one
would have dreamed of publicly defending such "hostile
elements." That and other efforts were a sort of Prague Spring
in miniature. They frightened the KGB into taking tough
countermeasures: firing, blacklisting, public reprimand,
expulsion from the party. After 1968, when everyone understood
the consequences, people refused to lend their names to such
initiatives.

    To my shame, I must admit that the campaign simply passed
me by, just as had the 1964 banishment of poet Joseph Brodsky
from Leningrad and the 1965 arrests of the dissident writers
Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel.

    Around the end of January 1968, a friend suggested that I
write an article on the role of the intelligentsia in today's
world. The idea appealed to me, and soon I was writing at the
Installation from 7 p.m. to midnight. My wife Klava was
ambivalent: she knew full well the potential consequences for
us and our three children, but she allowed me complete freedom
of action. By this time her health was beginning to
deteriorate.

    My essay laid a theoretical foundation for virtually the
entire range of my future public activities. I wanted to alert
readers to the grave perils threatening the human race --
thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine, an
uncontrolled population explosion, alienation and dogmatic
distortion of our conception of reality.

    I argued for convergence, for a rapprochement of the
socialist and capitalist systems that could eliminate or
substantially reduce these dangers. Economic, social and
ideological convergence should bring about a scientifically
governed, democratic, pluralistic society free of intolerance
and dogmatism, a humanitarian society that would care for the
earth and its future and would embody the positive features of
both systems.

    I wrote about thermonuclear missiles -- their enormous
destructive power, their relatively low cost, the difficulty
of defending against them. I wrote about the crimes of
Stalinism and the need to expose them fully and the vital
importance of freedom of opinion and democracy. I stressed the
value of progress but warned that it must be scientifically
managed and not left to chance. I outlined a program for
mankind's future; my vision was somewhat Utopian, but I remain
convinced that the exercise was worthwhile.

    Later on, life -- and Lusia [Elena Bonner, his second wife]
-- would teach me to pay more attention to individual victims
of injustice, and a further step followed: recognition that
human rights and an open society are fundamental to
international confidence, security and progress.

    I prefaced Reflections with an epigraph taken from Goethe's
Faust:

    Of freedom and of life he only is deserving     Who every
day must conquer them anew.

    The heroic romanticism of these lines echoes my own sense
of life as both wonderful and tragic. Another aspect of the
truth that complements Goethe's metaphor is contained in these
lines by the postwar poet Alexander Mezhirov,

    I lie in a trench under fire.     A man enters his home,
from the cold.

    Mezhirov understands that heroic exploits are not ends in
themselves but are worthwhile only insofar as they enable other
people to lead normal, peaceful lives. Not everyone need spend
time in the trenches. The meaning of life is life itself: the
daily routine that demands its own unobtrusive heroism.
Goethe's lines are often read as an imperative call to
revolutionary struggle, but there is nothing peremptory or
fanatical in them once they are stripped of their poetic
imagery. Reflections rejected all extremes, the intransigence
of revolutionaries and reactionaries alike. It called for
compromise and for progress moderated by enlightened
conservatism and caution. Marx notwithstanding, evolution is
a better "locomotive of history" than revolution: the "battle"
I had in mind was nonviolent.


    "For God's Sake, Don't Do That"

    I flew to Moscow on April 1, bringing a typed copy of the
essay. Historian Roy Medvedev came to see me that evening, and
I exchanged it for the final chapters of his book on Stalin.
Medvedev showed my essay to friends (which I had given him
permission to do), and he passed on their comments. After
making a few changes, I gave the manuscript back to Medvedev.
He was going to produce a dozen or more carbon copies. Some,
he warned me, might end up abroad. I replied that I had taken
that into account. (We were communicating in writing to foil
eavesdroppers.)

    On May 18, I paid a call on Yuli Khariton, scientific
director of the Installation. I mentioned that I was writing
an essay on war and peace, ecology and freedom of expression.
Khariton asked what I intended to do with it. "I'll give it to
samizdat," I answered, referring to the underground network
that had sprung up for circulating dissident writing. "For
God's sake, don't do that," he said. "It's too late to stop it
now," I confessed.

    Early in June I traveled with Khariton to the Installation
in his personal railroad car. After supper Khariton said, "[KGB
chief Yuri] Andropov called me in. His agents have been finding
copies of your essay all over the place -- it's circulating
illegally, and it will cause a lot of harm if it gets abroad.
Andropov asked me to talk to you. You ought to withdraw it from
circulation."

    "Why don't you take a look at it?" I suggested. Khariton
retired to his compartment to do so.

    "Well, what do you think?" I inquired the next day.

    "It's awful."

    "The style?"

    Khariton grimaced. "No, not the style. It's the content
that's awful!"

    "The contents reflect my beliefs. It's too late to withdraw
it."

    In mid-June Andrei Amalrik, who wrote Will the Soviet Union
Survive Until 1984? and as a result was imprisoned for five
years for defaming the Soviet state, gave a copy of Reflections
to a Dutch correspondent. On July 10, a few days after
returning to the Installation and exactly seven years after my
clash with Khrushchev over nuclear testing, I turned on the BBC
or VOA and heard my name. The announcer reported that on July
6 the Dutch newspaper Het Parool had published my article.

    The die was cast. That evening I had the most profound
feeling of satisfaction. The following day I was due to fly to
Moscow but stopped at my office at 9 a.m. and told Khariton,
"My article's been published abroad."

    "I knew it would happen" was all Khariton could say. He
looked crushed. Two hours later, I left for the airfield. I was
never to set foot in my office again.


    A Dangerous Muddle

    Toward the end of July, Slavsky summoned me to the ministry.
"Party secretaries have been calling from all over the
country," he said, "demanding firm measures to put a stop to
counterrevolutionary propaganda in my ministry." Of
Reflections, he said, "It's a dangerous muddle. You criticize
the leaders' privileges -- you've enjoyed the same privileges.
Those who bear immense responsibilities, difficult burdens,
deserve some advantages. It's for the cause.

    "What you wrote about convergence is utopian nonsense.
Capitalism can't be made humane. Their social programs and
employee stock plans aren't steps toward socialism. And there's
no trace of state capitalism in the U.S.S.R. We'll never give
up the advantages of our system, and capitalists aren't
interested in your convergence either.

    "Without a strong hand, we could never have rebuilt our
economy after the war or broken the American atomic monopoly
-- you yourself helped do that. You have no moral right to
judge our generation -- Stalin's generation -- for its
mistakes, for its brutality; you're now enjoying the fruits of
our labor and our sacrifices.

    "Convergence is a dream. We've got to be strong, stronger
than the capitalists -- then there'll be peace. If the
imperialists use nuclear weapons, we'll retaliate at once with
everything we've got and destroy every target necessary to
ensure victory."

    So our response would be an immediate, all-out nuclear
attack on enemy cities and industry as well as on military
targets! Most alarming, Slavsky ignored the question of what,
other than military force, might prevent war. I pointed out
that Reflections warned against exactly the kind of approach
he was taking, in which life-and-death decisions are made by
people who have usurped power (and privilege) without accepting
the checks of free opinion and open debate. I raised the issue
of Czechoslovakia: Was there any guarantee against Soviet
intervention? Slavsky said that had been ruled out by the
Central Committee, provided there was no overt
counterrevolutionary violence, as occurred in Hungary.

    A couple of weeks after this, Khariton told me that Slavsky
opposed my return to the Installation. "You're to remain in
Moscow for the time being," he said. This was tantamount to
being fired.

    On July 22 Reflections was published in the New York Times
and later was widely reprinted. The International Publishers
Association said that in 1968-69 more than 18 million copies
were published around the world, putting me in third place
after Mao Zedong and Lenin and ahead of Georges Simenon and
Agatha Christie.

    Reflections was well received by liberal intellectuals
abroad. A kindred voice had reached them from behind the Iron
Curtain -- and from a member of a profession that in America
was dominated by "hawks." On the other hand, my criticism of
Soviet society appealed to conservatives, and everyone seemed
pleased by my comments on the environment, my humanitarian
concerns and my scenarios for the future.

    The essay was widely read in the U.S.S.R. as well --
samizdat was flourishing -- but many people were punished for
circulating Reflections. A driver from Dushanbe who had mailed
my essay to a friend was sentenced to three years in a labor
camp for defaming the Soviet system.

    On Aug. 21 newspapers reported that Warsaw Pact troops had
entered Czechoslovakia and were "fulfilling their international
duty." The invasion had begun. The hopes inspired by the Prague
Spring collapsed. And "real socialism" displayed its true
colors, its stagnation, its inability to tolerate pluralistic
or democratic tendencies, not just in the Soviet Union but even
in neighboring countries. The abolition of censorship and free
elections were regarded as too risky and contagious.

    The international repercussions of the invasion were
enormous. For millions of former supporters, it destroyed their
faith in the Soviet system and its potential for reform.

    On Aug. 25, to protest the invasion, seven activists sat for
a minute near the spot in Red Square where prisoners had been
executed in prerevolutionary Russia. Then KGB agents began
beating them. All were arrested (they were quickly sent to
labor camps, into exile or, in one case, to a prison
psychiatric hospital). Minutes later, cars carrying Alexander
Dubcek and other Czechoslovak leaders who had been brought to
Moscow by force shot out of the Kremlin's Spassky Gate and
raced across Red Square.


    Acts of "Hooliganism"

    [Sakharov's wife Klava died in 1969 of stomach cancer. After
a while he found himself working closely with Elena Bonner
("Lusia"), a vigorous  human rights activist of Jewish and
Armenian origin. "Since August 1971," he writes, "Lusia and I
have followed a common path." In January 1972 they were
married, and attending the ceremony were half a dozen KGB men
in identical black suits. "I'd guess that they were
demonstrating their disapproval," notes Sakharov. Soon the
authorities were stepping up the pressure on him and Bonner to
cease speaking out.]


    After the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich
Olympics, I joined a silent protest in front of the Lebanese
embassy in Moscow. Lusia was ill, but her son Alexei, her
daughter Tanya and Tanya's husband Efrem Yankelevich were with
me. We were all carted to a drunk tank by the KGB. A month
later, Tanya was expelled from Moscow University. Lusia's
children had now become hostages to my public activity. Their
access to education and jobs would be restricted or blocked.
Threats of arrest, imprisonment, physical violence and even
murder became a genuine menace. Eventually, the children were
forced to emigrate.

    On Oct. 26, 1973, the trial of Cronid Lubarsky, an
astrophysicist charged with distributing the Chronicle of Human
Events, the underground publication, began in Noginsk, a town
near Moscow. A dozen of us tried to enter the courtroom but
were shoved back outside by a wedge of KGB agents. Arms were
twisted; some people were trampled. Lusia marched up to the
senior KGB officer and slapped his face.

    Two weeks later, Lusia was summoned before the Moscow party
committee. Could she explain her acts of "hooliganism" in
Noginsk? Such behavior, she was told, raised doubts about her
continued membership in the party. The threat of expulsion was
meant to intimidate her. Instead, Lusia placed her party card
on the table, along with a statement she had prepared asking
to be removed from the ranks of the party. It was an enormously
effective stroke.

    "Why are you so hostile to the Soviet system?" a committee
member asked. "It's given you everything."

    "No one gave me anything. I fought in the war, nearly lost
my sight; I worked night and day." Lusia had broken with the
party for good.

    Not long afterward, her son Alexei was rejected by Moscow
University. He was an excellent student, winning a prize in the
math Olympics and graduating first in his class. But during his
junior year at a new school he refused to attend the standard
"Lenin class" that led to automatic Komsomol [Communist Party
youth organization] membership. I urged him not to jeopardize
his future for a minor formality. Alexei answered, "Andrei
Dmitrievich, you allow yourself to be honest. Why do you advise
me to behave differently?"

    We later learned that one Moscow University examiner had
received a direct order to flunk him: "He won't be accepted
anyway, and you'd just be fired." Alexei's story is not
unusual. Anti-Semitic discrimination in university admissions
is part of a deliberate policy of squeezing Jews out of the
country's intellectual establishment. The Central Committee is
said to have asked Mstislav Keldysh, then president of the
Academy of Sciences, when its Jewish membership would fall to
zero. It would take about 20 years to solve the "problem," he
replied. I must note that Keldysh did not reduce the number
of Jews in the institutes he directed and was not anti-Semitic.


    Notoriety at Home and a Nobel in Oslo

    On Aug. 15, 1973, Mikhail Malyarov, the Soviet Deputy
Procurator-General, telephoned and asked me to come see him.
At his office on Pushkin Street, Malyarov said that meeting
with the foreign press, as I had been doing in behalf of
dissidents, could be regarded as a violation of my obligation
not to disclose state secrets. To make it clear that I was
determined to go on speaking out, I decided to hold a major
press conference.

    Some 30 Western correspondents crowded into our apartment
on Aug. 21. I said I supported detente, since it reduced the
risk of war, but added that caution, unity and firmness of
purpose were necessary on the part of the West as it embarked
on a new and more complex relationship with the U.S.S.R. The
Soviet Union, I said, is a country "behind a mask," a closed,
totalitarian society capable of dangerously unpredictable
actions. Detente would promote international security only if
the West avoided letting the U.S.S.R. achieve military
superiority and at the same time tried to promote a more open
Soviet society. I reminded my listeners that the ingrained
conservatism and inertia of the Soviet system militated against
any rapid change. A few hours after the conference, Western
radio stations and newspapers began carrying reports.

    On Aug. 28, newspapers carried a letter signed by 40
academicians denouncing me for actions that "discredit the good
name of Soviet science." It marked the beginning of a press
campaign against me that included the obligatory letters from
scientific research institutes, writers' and artists' unions,
individual scientists, authors, physicians, war veterans,
steelworkers, miners and milkmaids.

    The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was also included in many
of these attacks. The vital truths expressed in his
extraordinary literary works and keen polemics had made him the
object of virulent party and KGB hatred for several years; now
there were claims that I alone, or the two of us, were engaged
in a slanderous assault on Soviet society and its guarantees
of work, free medical care and an unrivaled educational system.
The main charge was that we were enemies of detente, working
against peace.

    This grave accusation had an insidious plausibility to
believers in Soviet foreign policy's pacific aims, the
selflessness of our aid to national liberation movements and
the treachery of the imperialists who surrounded us with
military installations. If we stand for peace, then the more
missiles, nuclear warheads and nerve gas we stockpile, the
safer everyone will be. Our Western opponents employ exactly
the same line of argument.

    In response to the press campaign against me, Valentin
Turchin of the Institute of Applied Mathematics issued an open
letter in my support. His defense was made at a heavy cost: he
was denounced at a staff meeting, demoted and finally fired.
Turchin later supported himself by tutoring private students
until his immigration to the U.S. in 1977.

    On Sept. 16 the physicist Yuri Orlov wrote an open letter
to Brezhnev suggesting economic and political reforms and
offering a spirited defense of me; like Turchin, he soon found
himself out of a job. In 1976 he helped organize the Moscow
Helsinki Watch Group, part of an organization set up by Soviet
dissidents to monitor human rights violations, but two years
later he was sentenced to seven years in a labor camp and five
of internal exile for anti-Soviet activities. He suffered
extremely harsh treatment. At the end of Orlov's trial, a
scuffle broke out when his friends were barred from entering the
courtroom to hear the verdict. I hit one KGB agent; Lusia,
receiving a sharp blow to the neck from another, smacked him
back, but as she was being shoved into a police car, she
accidentally punched the local police chief. She said later,
"I was right to hit the KGB agent and don't regret it, but I
struck the police chief by mistake, and I'd like to apologize
to him."

    On Sept. 5, Solzhenitsyn dispatched his article "Peace and
Violence" for publication abroad, warning the West about the
nature and extent of state violence in the U.S.S.R. Just before
its publication, he added the proposal that I be awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize for "indefatigable, devoted (and personally
dangerous) opposition to systematic state violence."

    On Oct. 9, 1975, Lusia and I -- she in Italy after a
hard-fought battle to permit her to leave the country to treat
her glaucoma; I in Moscow -- heard the news that I had been
awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The official reaction in the
U.S.S.R. was one of intense irritation tinged with nervousness.
I was denied permission to go to Norway for the Nobel award
ceremonies on the grounds that I was "an individual possessing
knowledge of state secrets." Lusia accepted the award for me
in Oslo in December.


    Shanghaied and Banished

    [Sakharov was able to continue his cat-and-mouse game with
the authorities through the 1970s at least partly because of
his world stature as a human rights activist and because his
arrest would have strained Soviet-U.S. relations. But with the
invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, those relations deteriorated
catastrophically, and the state soon moved against Sakharov.]


    As 1980 began, Afghanistan cast a long shadow. Increased
latitude was granted to the KGB because of the war and possibly
in anticipation of the forthcoming Olympics, as evidenced in
a series of arrests.

    On Jan. 17, Charles Bierbauer, an ABC television
correspondent, and his crew arrived for an interview. Afterward
I accompanied them to their car. I was surprised by the number
of KGB agents in the area and by something peculiar in the air
-- a mixture of hostility and gloating.

    I said, "Well, here they are."

    "Yes, here we are!" a KGB agent echoed derisively. I suppose
they'd already learned of the decision to exile me. But the
Americans were allowed to drive off.

    Our phone rang at 1 a.m. on Jan. 22. A friend, very excited,
said he had heard that a decision had been made to deprive me
of my awards and exile me from Moscow. I remarked, "A month
ago, I wouldn't have taken it seriously, but now, with
Afghanistan, anything's possible."

    Jan. 22 was a Tuesday, the day the theoretical-physics
seminar met at FIAN [the physics institute where Sakharov still
worked]. I followed my customary routine, ordering a car from
the academy's motor pool and leaving home at 1:30. At the
Krasnokholmsky Bridge, a traffic-patrol car forced us to stop.
From the front seat I saw two men get in the rear, flashing red
IDs marked MVD [for Interior Ministry]. They were actually KGB.

    They ordered the driver to follow the patrol car to the
Procurator's Office on Pushkin Street. KGB agents escorted me
to the fourth floor, where "chats" about my activities had
taken place in 1973 and 1977. I asked Alexander Rekunkov, the
deputy procurator-general, "Why didn't you send a summons
instead of shanghaiing me?"

    Rekunkov replied, "I gave orders to have you brought here
due to the extraordinary circumstances and the great urgency
involved. I have been instructed to read you a decree passed
by the Presidium:

    "In view of A.D. Sakharov's systematic actions, which
discredit him as a recipient of State awards, and in response
to many suggestions made by the Soviet public, the Presidium
of the U.S.S.R. Supreme Soviet has decided to deprive Andrei
Dmitrievich Sakharov of the title Hero of Socialist Labor and
all his State awards."

    Rekunkov continued, "It has been decided to banish A.D.
Sakharov from Moscow to a place that will put an end to his
contacts with foreigners." The official looked up and added,
"The place that has been selected is Gorky, which is off limits
to foreigners. Please sign here to acknowledge that you have
been informed of the decree's contents."

    He handed me a typewritten sheet of paper. I saw the typed
-- not signed -- name of Leonid Brezhnev. The decree was
undated and made no mention of banishment.

    As I studied the paper, Rekunkov said, "The regulations
require that persons deprived of awards return them." I
refused, since the awards had been given in recognition of
services rendered.

    I asked why the decree was undated and why Brezhnev had not
personally signed it. Rekunkov said something about
"technicalities." I failed to ask who had made the decision to
banish me and on what authority. I considered the entire
proceeding completely illegal and thought it pointless to argue
fine points of jurisprudence with those who obviously had no
respect for the law. By maintaining this attitude all through
my first weeks in Gorky, I may have created the inadvertent
impression that I accepted their right to proceed in this
totally unlawful manner.

    "You're to leave for Gorky at once," Rekunkov said. "Your
wife may accompany you."

    I phoned Lusia. "I'm calling from the Procurator's Office.
They picked me up on the street."

    "Whaaat?"

    "Police stopped our car; KGB agents got in and ordered us
to drive here. I've been stripped of my awards, and I'm being
banished to Gorky -- it's off limits to foreigners."

    "Will you be coming back to the house?"

    "No, I'm supposed to leave straight from here, but it's my
understanding that you can accompany me." I hung up and mumbled
to myself, "So this is it . . ."

    Downstairs, I climbed into the backseat of a minibus with
curtained windows, flanked by KGB agents. We were preceded by
a police car with a flashing light and siren and followed by
another car. Lusia arrived at Domodedovo Airport more than two
hours later. She told me that as soon as she hung up after my
call, our phone went dead (service wasn't restored until
December 1986). Soon afterward, police and KGB cordoned off our
building and stopped correspondents and friends from entering.

    Five minutes after Lusia arrived, an officer announced that
our plane, a Tu-154, was ready. A dozen KGB agents accompanied
us on our special flight. We were too relieved at being
reunited to worry about where we were headed -- we didn't care
if it was to the ends of the earth. In Gorky we were loaded
into another minibus. "Where are we going?" Lusia asked our
anonymous escorts.

    "Home," answered one, grinning.


    Visit from a Gunman

    After a long journey, we were deposited at a twelve-story
building off what we later learned was Gagarin Avenue and taken
to an apartment on the first floor. In a large room a man
seated behind a desk said, "I'm Perelygin, deputy procurator
for the Gorky district. I've been instructed to inform you of
your regimen: you are forbidden to go beyond the city limits
of Gorky. You'll be kept under surveillance, and you are
forbidden to meet with or contact foreigners or criminal
elements. The MVD will let you know when you're required to
check in at their headquarters. If you have any questions, call
the KGB, either Major Yuri Chuprov or Captain Nikolai
Shuvalov." Perelygin left.

    Lusia, meanwhile, had been talking with our "landlady" and
had taken a look around the apartment, which had four rooms
(one reserved for  the landlady), plus kitchen and bathroom. The
landlady told Lusia she was the widow of a KGB officer. (It
took us six months to discover what her real duties were: to
make sure that the window in her room was left unbolted to
allow KGB agents access to the apartment from the street,
bypassing the police manning a watch post.) As I appeared, she
retired to her room.

    At last Lusia and I were alone together. [Alone Together is
the title of Elena Bonner's 1986 account of her life in exile
with Sakharov.]  She'd had the foresight to pack our transistor
radio, and on the evening news my exile was the lead story,
along with Afghanistan. For the next two weeks foreign
broadcasts featured protests by writers, public personalities
and -- of particular weight -- scientists, including the U.S.
scientists Sidney Drell and Jeremy Stone. The intervention of
U.S. National Academy of Sciences President Philip Handler and
other prominent scientists might have forestalled further steps
against me. My Soviet colleagues, regrettably, kept silent --
except for public attacks on me.

    Lusia, who was still permitted to travel, left Gorky for
Moscow on Jan. 27. The next day, at a press conference held in
our Chkalov Street apartment, she read a statement I had
written describing the circumstances of my exile and my
thoughts on current issues. She also visited the Procurator's
Office to determine the official grounds for my exile and to
resolve the visa problem of her son's fiancee Liza (Alexei had
immigrated to the U.S. in May 1978, but Liza had not received
permission to join him).

    Several Gorky residents visited me while Lusia was absent.
Felix Krasavin, an old friend of the Bonner family, paid a
call. So did the refusenik physicist Mark Kovner, whom I'd met
at a seminar in Moscow. I made new acquaintances, among them
Sergei Ponomarev, who had served five years in a labor camp for
"anti-Soviet activity."

    Each visitor, upon leaving the building, was taken by the
police to a nearby site designated "post for the maintenance
of public order." They would be held for hours while their
papers were checked, and attempts would be made to intimidate
them. Many suffered unpleasant repercussions. After a few weeks
the authorities allowed only people sent or approved by the KGB
to pass through their blockade. A few months later, the flow
of visitors stopped altogether.

    On Jan. 28 I was ordered to report to MVD headquarters.
There, two KGB men introduced themselves as Major Chuprov and
Captain Shuvalov. They complained that I had violated the terms
of my regimen by phoning Moscow and writing a postscript to a
Helsinki Group document.

    "They're mistaken," I said.

    "Will you put that in writing?"

    "Of course." I took a sheet of paper and wrote that I had
not called Moscow (my attempts to telephone had all been
illegally cut off). I had added my signature to the document
about Afghanistan but had not made any changes in it, since I
was not a member of the Helsinki Group.

    I asked Chuprov to write down several requests and pass them
on. I asked that Liza be granted a visa to join Alexei, that
young scientists from FIAN be permitted to visit me, that I
have access to my regular doctors from the academy clinic, that
the telephone be reconnected in the Moscow apartment of Lusia's
mother Ruth (essential because of her age, 79, and her health)
and that phone service be installed in the Gorky apartment --
members of the academy are entitled to a private telephone.

    Chuprov suggested that I order the telephone myself. I said
that no one would speak with me at the telephone office since
I was officially still a resident of Moscow.

    "You can register as a resident of Gorky."

    "Under no circumstances will I do that: I was sent here
illegally."

    That same evening, I answered the doorbell. Two men -- drunk
or pretending to be drunk -- entered, declaring that they
wanted to "get a look at this Sakharov guy."

    "I'm Sakharov."

    "Why do you want the Olympics boycotted?"

    "Because the U.S.S.R. is conducting military operations in
Afghanistan."

    Suddenly, one pulled a pistol from his pocket; he began
playing with it and waving it around. I asked whether it was
a real pistol or just a cigarette lighter. One of them replied,
"A cigarette lighter that drills holes in people."

    The second man kept assuring me that his friend really was
a first-class marksman. Then the man with the gun started to
shout, "I'll show you what Afghanistan's really like! I'll turn
this apartment into an Afghanistan!"

    While this was going on, Lusia's friend Natasha Gesse, who
was looking after me while Lusia was gone, caught sight of the
pistol and told the landlady, "Pretend you're taking out the
garbage and go tell the policeman that drunks are in the
apartment and that they've got a pistol."

    The landlady was gone a good while, but when she returned,
she pretended she'd misunderstood Natasha. She had to be sent
a second time. At last, several policemen appeared and led the
"drunks" away.


    A Theft in Gorky

    The KGB never let things settle into a stable pattern; from
time to time, they would commit a new outrage.

    Whenever I left the building, my KGB tails would shadow me.
I came to know many by sight. When I walked in the woods, I
more than once flushed an observer hiding behind a tree, who
would then dash away. We were prevented from making
long-distance calls; whenever we went to a post office to do
so, the phones were "out of order" -- KGB shadows had been
there ahead of us. Once I managed to make a call by carrying
out a trash can, dropping it off and continuing to a post
office. From that day on, a policeman accompanied us when we
took out the garbage.

    The KGB did more than supervise my quarantine. From the
first days, we detected signs that strangers were entering our
apartment. We would find our tape recorders, radios and
typewriter damaged and had to repair them many times. At first,
we assumed that some of the policemen were letting the KGB
agents into our apartment; then we realized it was the
landlady. Whenever I went out, I took irreplaceable notes,
documents and books with me.

    The KGB never gave up its pursuit of my bag of documents.
In March 1981, I visited a dental clinic where I was having
some work done. The dental technician insisted that because
this was a surgical office, I'd have to leave my bag outside.
When I went to reclaim the bag, it was gone. The KGB had struck
a powerful blow: I lost notes on scientific matters and current
events, personal documents and letters, my diary for the past
14 months and three thick notebooks containing the manuscript
of these memoirs.

    I began to reconstruct the book from memory. Once or twice
a month, Lusia would take what I'd written to Moscow and send
it on to Efrem and Tanya in the U.S. How she accomplished this
is a story that cannot yet be told. By April 1982, I had
finished another rough draft. But on Oct. 11, 1982, the entire
manuscript -- 500 typewritten pages Lusia had brought back from
Moscow and 900 handwritten pages I had recently completed --
was again stolen, this time by what can only be called gangster
methods.

    We had driven into town, and Lusia went off on an errand
while I waited in the car, the bag on the floor behind the
front seat. A man walked over and asked through my half-open
window, "Are you headed for Moscow?" I told him no. My memory
of what happened next is blank. I recall someone pulling the
bag through a window. I tried to get out of the car but
couldn't find the door handle, something that usually comes
automatically. I finally extricated myself and saw three women
standing nearby, one holding what looked like a doctor's kit.
"They jumped over the railing," one woman told me. "Did you
know they smashed your window?" The left rear window had been
smashed, but I hadn't heard a thing. I believe I'd been
momentarily stunned by some narcotic. I have no direct
evidence, but there was a strange odor, like that of rotting
fruit.

    "We called the police," one said. "They're coming." One of
the women must have been a doctor, the other two were probably
nurses assigned to treat me if I suffered any ill effects from
the narcotic. They'd lied about calling the police. They didn't
want me to go straight to the precinct station; maybe they were
afraid I'd pass out along the way. They walked off before I
could ask them to serve as witnesses.

    Beginning in March 1980, a policeman was stationed in front
of our apartment door around the clock. Anyone who came to see
me was given a hard time, and those from other cities were
usually forced to leave Gorky. Some found themselves in serious
trouble: at least three persons who attempted to visit spent
several months in psychiatric confinement.


    A Visa for Liza

    [In 1981 the Sakharovs began their first hunger strike while
in Gorky (earlier they had conducted others in support of
various dissidents). The issue was the KGB's refusal to permit
Liza to join her fiance, Elena Bonner's son Alexei, in the U.S.
Some Soviet dissidents strongly criticized the strike, fearing
Sakharov might die over a relatively "trivial" family issue.]


    Our two-year campaign had made Liza's case widely known, so
we could count on sympathy and support. Most people would
understand that a hunger strike was not a bizarre extravagance
but our one remaining option.

    At first, Lusia and I exchanged written notes about our
plans, so that the KGB couldn't eavesdrop on us. Once we had
made our decision, there was no reason to conceal it. On the
contrary, by declaring our intentions, we gave the KGB an
opportunity to let Liza go quietly and save face. So, in
October, we sent out appeals for support.

    Lusia traveled to Moscow with letters announcing our hunger
strike, also notebooks containing the work I had done on these
memoirs. I didn't want the KGB to get any of this. A week
later, she returned with 100 bottles of Borzhomi mineral water,
which helps maintain the body's electrolyte balance while
fasting. On Oct. 21 I sent telegrams to Brezhnev and the head
of the Academy of Sciences, announcing that our hunger strike
would begin on Nov. 22.

    Many dissidents held Liza responsible for not preventing the
hunger strike. It should have been obvious to them that Liza
had no way of influencing our decision. The refusal to let her
rejoin Alexei may have been the immediate cause of the strike.
But in a broader sense, it was the consequence of all that had
happened to us, including exile in Gorky and a continuation of
my struggle for human rights and the freedom to choose one's
country of residence. There had been virtually no objection
when I declared a hunger strike in 1974 on behalf of the
dissident Vladimir Bukovsky and other political prisoners. This
time I was honoring a more compelling and personal obligation.


    [The strike began on Nov. 22. After nearly two weeks,
Sakharov and his wife were steadily growing weaker.]


    Dec. 4 was Tanya and Efrem's anniversary, and we looked
forward to clinking glasses with Mark Kovner when he stopped
by later in the day: mineral water in our glasses, vodka in
his. While we were taking our 1 o'clock walk on the terrace,
we caught sight of a man inside our apartment -- a KGB agent
whose face was familiar. We hurried in from the terrace and saw
that eight people had invaded the living room and entry hall.
At least some, if not all, were from the KGB. Most were wearing
white coats. Lusia said, "They've come to kill us."

    The door chain had been ripped off -- not for the first time
-- and the key was lying on a table. One of the intruders
announced he was from the Municipal Health Department. "We have
to hospitalize you. We've received a great many letters from
citizens, from your children."

    We realized that resistance was useless and, in any case,
we no longer had the strength. The KGB agents went outside. We
kissed. Tears came to my eyes. Lusia said bitterly, "And on
Tanya's anniversary . . ."

    Out on the street, they began pushing us into two separate
ambulances. I was taken to Semashko Hospital, the medical
center for the Gorky region, while Lusia was taken to Hospital
No. 10, a run-down facility on the Oka's left bank. But until
I actually saw Lusia again, I was under the illusion we were
in the same hospital. I was put in a semiprivate room. My
roommate introduced himself as secretary of a district party
committee. A third bed and patient had been placed in the entry
leading into our room. These men were both genuinely ill.

    A few minutes after I got to the room, the attending
physician, Dr. Rulev, appeared, and I allowed him to take my
pulse and blood pressure. I refused to submit to any other
procedures and asked to be reunited with Lusia. Separation was
difficult to bear. The KGB was apparently counting on that to
break us. They were also hoping that the news that the
Sakharovs were in the hospital receiving medical care would
pacify our friends around the world.

    I spent part of the first night reading Nabokov's Speak,
Memory. In the morning I wrote a statement to the doctor in
charge declaring that my wife and I had been separated by
force, and that I would refuse all medical procedures until we
were reunited, and would not end my hunger strike until I was
certain that Liza would be granted permission to emigrate.

    The nurses would bring meals for me even though I asked them
not to. I would leave the untouched trays in the hall. The
other patients were kind enough to eat in the entry, keeping
the door to the room closed.

    A well-known consultant, Dr. Vagralik, would visit me two
or three times a day, accompanied by Rulev and sometimes by a
doctor who was introduced as a neurologist but was, I suspect,
a psychiatrist. Vagralik warned me that I was not a young man,
that I could slip into a terminal state at any moment, and that
he had already noticed irreversible changes whose progress
would accelerate. The neurologist (or psychiatrist) suggested
that I was becoming confused and losing my faculties. As he put
it, I already had one foot in the grave, and I ought to let the
doctors obey the Hippocratic oath and help me.

    To all these statements and to Rulev's attempts to take my
blood pressure, I responded with a single, set phrase: "I
refuse to be examined until I'm reunited with my wife." On the
morning of Dec. 8, Rulev said, "You have only a few hours to
think it over. You must end your hunger strike."

    A few hours after Rulev's visit, a man entered my room. He
was from the KGB. "We've met before," he said. It was in 1980,
after Lusia surprised the KGB searching our apartment. "My name
is Ryabinin. I'm authorized to inform you that your request can
now be reconsidered in a positive light, but you must first end
your hunger strike." I said that I took the KGB's promises
seriously, but that my wife and I could decide to end the
hunger strike only when we were together. He said, "You'll be
seeing me again."

    That same morning, apparatus for forced feeding was brought
into Lusia's room. She warned the doctors that she would resist
forced feeding with all her strength, even if she died in the
struggle. A few hours after this last attempt to break her
will, Lusia was driven to Semashko Hospital. In the chief
physician's office, after four days of painful separation, we
embraced. We insisted that Ryabinin speak in our presence with
Academy President Anatoli Alexandrov, as an earnest of the
KGB's promise; only then would we end our hunger strike. After
17 days, the strike was over, and Liza was free to join Alexei
in the U.S.


    Mentally Unstable?

    In April 1983 in Gorky, Lusia had what was apparently her
second heart attack. The weeks that followed brought two
additional cardiac events. She was offered a bed in the Academy
of Sciences hospital, but refused to be admitted without me.

    The academy soon dispatched a team of specialists to examine
me. The head of the team said hospitalization was advisable in
my case, as I had received no treatment for a chronic prostate
condition since arriving in Gorky, was plagued by angina and
borderline hypertension and apparently had suffered several
heart attacks -- microinfarcts in 1970 and 1975 and three
attacks in Gorky -- as well as a bout of thrombophlebitis. My
condition was not nearly so critical as Lusia's, but there was
still ample reason for me to be admitted. But I was only
kidding myself that my hospitalization was being given serious
consideration.

    During the summer of 1983 Yuri Andropov, then the Soviet
leader, told a group of visiting American Senators who had
asked about my situation that I was mentally unstable. Did
these remarks indicate a new KGB strategy for dealing with "the
Sakharov problem"? The authorities clearly were reluctant or
unable to banish me from the country, and hesitated to imprison
either of us. There is evidence that the KGB intended to
portray my public activities as a delusion produced by the
influence of Lusia, who would be presented as a corrupt,
self-serving, loose-living, egotistical, depraved and immoral
Jew prostitute, an agent of international Zionism. I would be
transformed back into a distinguished Soviet (Russian, of
course) scientist who had made invaluable contributions to the
Motherland and world science. The KGB was concentrating its
energies on her, and she was by now seriously ill.

    Lusia was detained at the Gorky airport on May 2, 1984,
which ended for 17 months her visits to Moscow, our principal
means of contact with the outside world. She was put on trial,
convicted in August of "slandering the Soviet system" and
sentenced to five years' internal exile, in Gorky.

    In April 1985, against Lusia's wishes, I conducted a hunger
strike demanding that she be allowed to go abroad to visit her
mother, children and grandchildren and to receive medical
treatment. I was forcibly confined in Gorky's Semashko Hospital
from April 25 and subjected to painful forced feeding until
July 11, when I decided to end that hunger strike. But two
weeks later, I resumed it, and on July 27 I was taken back to
Semashko by force. My normal weight is around 175 lbs., but it
dropped to 138 by Aug. 13. That day, they began subcutaneous
(into both thighs) and intravenous drips to supplement  the
forced feedings. Each subcutaneous feeding took several hours,
my legs would swell painfully, and I would be unable to walk
for a day or two.


    "You Can Return to Moscow"

    [In March 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet
Union. Though he at first defended the treatment of Sakharov,
he soon decided that keeping him in exile was incompatible with
the image he wished to convey of a Soviet Union committed to
glasnost and perestroika.]


    In February 1986 I wrote a letter to Gorbachev quoting his
own words in an interview with the French Communist newspaper
L'Humanite: "About political prisoners, we don't have any.
Likewise, our citizens are not prosecuted for their beliefs.
We don't try people for their opinions." In my letter, I argued
that prosecutions under various articles of the criminal code
are in fact prosecutions for beliefs, including religious
beliefs. I also mentioned persons confined in psychiatric
hospitals for political reasons, and others imprisoned on
trumped-up criminal charges. I gave brief accounts of 14 I knew
personally -- Anatoly Marchenko, the writer, headed the list
-- and called for the unconditional release of all prisoners
of conscience.

    In early October 1986 I was summoned to the regional
Procurator's Office to see U.S.S.R. Deputy Procurator General
Vladimir Andreyev "in connection with your statement." But
Andreyev evaded the real issues. He told me that all the
prisoners on my list had been properly sentenced. I told him
that I was disappointed in our meeting.

    I wrote another letter to the General Secretary and mailed
it on Oct. 23. I wrote that I'd been banished illegally,
without a court decision. I'd never broken the law or disclosed
state secrets. My wife and I were being held in unprecedented
isolation. Her sentence and the slanders printed about her in
the press were actually attempts to shift responsibility for
my actions onto her. I mentioned our health problems, and I
felt it necessary to say that I would "make no more public
statements, apart from exceptional cases when, in the words of
Tolstoy, `I cannot remain silent.'" I concluded, "I hope that
you will find it possible to end my isolation and my wife's
exile." Once I'd sent off the letter, I forgot about it for the
next seven weeks.

    Lusia was twirling the radio dial on Dec. 9. The jamming was
intense, but through the crackle we both made out the name
Marchenko. For a few moments we thought he had been released.
Since Aug. 4 he had been on a hunger strike at Chistopol
Prison, demanding better conditions for political prisoners and
an end to repression. He hadn't been allowed visitors for 32
months and had spent long periods in punishment cells.

    We soon realized that the broadcast was not a report of
Marchenko's release. The evening before, he'd asked for a
doctor. By the time he was brought to the hospital his
condition was hopeless. A cerebral hemorrhage was listed as the
immediate cause of death. Marchenko was 48. His death ended an
era for the human rights movement, which he had helped to
shape.

    Dec. 15, 1986, was the 25th anniversary of my father's
death. Shortly after 10 p.m. the doorbell rang. A search? Two
electricians and a KGB agent entered the apartment. They had
orders to install a phone. The KGB man said, "You'll get a call
around 10 tomorrow morning."

    On Dec. 16 we waited for the call until 3 p.m., when the
phone rang and I answered. A woman's voice: "Mikhail
Sergeyevich will speak with you."

    "I'm listening." I told Lusia, "It's Gorbachev." She opened
the door to the hallway, where the usual chatter was going on
around the policeman on duty, and shouted, "Quiet! Gorbachev's
on the phone." There was an immediate silence.

    "Hello, this is Gorbachev speaking."

    "Hello, I'm listening."

    "I received your letter. We've reviewed it and discussed it.
You can return to Moscow. The Decree of the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet will be rescinded. A decision has also been made
about Elena Bonnaire."

    I broke in: "That's my wife!" It was an emotional reaction,
not so much to his mispronunciation of her name as to his tone.

    Gorbachev continued: "You can return to Moscow together. You
have an apartment there. Go back to your patriotic work!"

    I said, "Thank you. But I must tell you that a few days ago,
my friend Marchenko was killed in prison. He was the first
person I mentioned in my letter to you, requesting the release
of prisoners of conscience -- people prosecuted for their
beliefs."

    Gorbachev: "Yes, I received your letter early this year.
We've released many, and improved the situation of others. But
there are all sorts of people on your list."

    I said, "Everyone sentenced under those articles has been
sentenced illegally, unjustly. They ought to be freed!"

    Gorbachev: "I don't agree with you."

    I said, "I implore you to look one more time at the question
of releasing people convicted for their beliefs. It's a matter
of justice. It's vitally important for our country, for
international trust, for peace and for you and the success of
your program."

    Gorbachev made a noncommittal reply. I said, "Thank you
again. Goodbye." (Contrary to the demands of protocol, I
brought the conversation to a close, not Gorbachev. I must have
felt under stress and perhaps subconsciously feared that I
might say too much.) Gorbachev had little choice, so he said,
"Goodbye."

    On the morning of Dec. 23 we stepped off the train at
Moscow's Yaroslavl Station onto a platform teeming with
reporters. It took me 40 minutes to make my way through the
crowd. Hundreds of flashbulbs blinded me and microphones were
continually thrust into my face as I tried to respond to the
barrage of questions. The whole scene offered a preview of the
hurly-burly life that now awaited us.

    Lusia and I were almost buried under the load of the first
few months in Moscow. I spent time preparing written responses
for almost all major interviews. People passed through the
house endlessly. Lusia cooked for a whole crowd. Long after
midnight, it was not uncommon to find her, despite her heart
attacks and her bypasses, mopping the landing -- our building
is self-service -- and me still at work on a statement.


    Gorbachev: A Cry for Help

    One subject that came up in every interview was my attitude
toward Gorbachev and perestroika. In 1985, while still confined
in Semashko Hospital, I watched one of Gorbachev's early
television appearances, and I told my roommates, "It looks as
if our country's lucky. We've got an intelligent leader." My
initial, positive reaction has remained basically unchanged.
Gorbachev, like Khrushchev, is an extraordinary personality who
has managed to break free of the limits customarily respected
by the party bureaucracy. What explains the inconsistencies and
half measures of the new course? The main stumbling block is
the inertia of a gigantic system, the resistance, passive and
active, of the innumerable bureaucratic and ideological
windbags. Most of them will be out of a job if there is a real
perestroika. Gorbachev has spoken of this bureaucratic
resistance in some speeches, and it sounds like a cry for help.

    But there's more to it than that. The old system, for all
its drawbacks, worked. And people had grown used to the old
system, which at least guaranteed a certain minimal standard
of living. Who knows what the new one will bring? And lastly,
Gorbachev and his close associates themselves may still not be
completely free of the prejudices and dogmas of the system they
wish to reform.

    Restructuring the command-type economic system in our
country is an extremely complex matter. Without market
relations and elements of competition, we are bound to see
serious shortages, inflation and other negative phenomena. Our
country is already experiencing economic difficulties;
everywhere, food and other necessities are in short supply.
Another thing troubles me greatly: the zigzags on the road to
democracy. Gorbachev is trying to gain control of the political
situation and strengthen his personal power by compromising
with the forces opposed to perestroika instead of relying on
democratic reforms. That's extremely dangerous. Only a
nationwide swell of initiative can give substance to democracy,
and our "chiefs" have shown they're not ready for this.

    The gradual replacement of key personnel, the country's
objective need for perestroika, and the fact that "the new
always beats the old" (to quote Stalin's famous phrase) should
all work in Gorbachev's favor. He has four levers he can use
to move the country forward: glasnost (this is proceeding under
its own steam); the new personnel policies; the new
international policies aimed at slowing the arms race; and
democratization.

    My positive attitude toward perestroika is not accepted by
everyone: it especially upsets some dissidents in the U.S.S.R.
and some emigres in the West. One Russian-language newspaper
in New York City printed an article with the headline THE
PARDONED SLAVE HELPS HIS MASTER, or something of the sort.

    On Feb. 5, 1987, a delegation organized by the U.S. Council
on Foreign Relations came to see me. I stressed the West's
vital interest in having the U.S.S.R. become an open,
democratic society. Henry Kissinger posed a blunt question: "Is
there a danger that the U.S.S.R. will first effect a democratic
transformation, accelerating its scientific and technological
progress and improving its economy, and then revert to
expansionist policies and pose an even greater threat to peace?"

    I replied that what people should fear is not the
development of an open, stable society with a powerful
peacetime economy in the U.S.S.R. but a disruption of the
world's equilibrium and the single-minded military buildup of
an internally closed and externally expansionist society. I
believe the West should actively support the process of
perestroika, cooperating with the U.S.S.R. on disarmament and
on economic, scientific and cultural issues. But this support
should be given with eyes wide open, not unconditionally.
Opponents of perestroika should understand that a retreat from
reform would mean immediate termination of Western assistance.

    In a futurological article I wrote in 1974, "The World After
50 Years," I concluded, "I hope that mankind will be able to
put an end to the dangers threatening us and to continue its
progress while preserving everything that makes us human." I
would like to conclude this book too with those words. Today,
as I approach the eighth decade of my life, my personal
aspirations and my entire existence center on my beloved wife,
my children and grandchildren, and all those who are dear to
me.

    This volume of memoirs is dedicated to my beloved Lusia.
What matters most is that she and I are together.


    [On the night of Dec. 14, 1989, Andrei Sakharov returned to
his Moscow apartment from a heated meeting of radical
parliamentarians where he had called for the formation of an
alternative party to oppose the Communists, lay down for a nap
and never awoke. He was 68 when a heart attack felled him. He
had been a free man for less than three years.]