TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/caps/86/86cappeo.4

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                                                                                December 29, 1986

SOVIET UNION

A Hero's Return


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