Soviet Union a Hero's Return

By William E. Smith

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 Sakharovs 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 party 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 said 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.

With reporting by David Aikman/Washington and Ken Olsen/Moscow