Word: bonner
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...doors too. In an apparent attempt to patch up the Soviet Union's poor human rights record, Gorbachev allowed such prominent dissidents as Anatoli Shcharansky and Yuri Orlov to leave the country. And just before Christmas the leading lights of the dissident movement, Andrei Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner, were permitted to return to Moscow from internal exile in Gorky...
...foreign policy." The frail nuclear physicist also tackled human rights. "It is impermissible for our country to have prisoners of conscience and people who suffer for their convictions," he said. "I will do everything within my power to have this stopped." One day later Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner issued an appeal on behalf of a Soviet family that had been seeking to emigrate to France...
Sakharov and Bonner were instantly surrounded by foreign correspondents as the couple stepped off the overnight train from Gorky at 7 a.m. last Tuesday at Moscow's Yaroslavsky Station. For the next 35 minutes, Sakharov patiently fielded questions on the chilly platform. Remarkably, few police officers were in evidence. Usually, any public appearance by a Soviet dissident is well attended by uniformed and plainclothes police, who try to intimidate journalists and passersby. This time no attempt was made to disrupt the impromptu news conference. Nor was there any police stakeout at the couple's tiny seventh-floor apartment on Chkalova...
Even so, Sakharov may not be up to a rigorous travel schedule. "I'm O.K.," he said last week, "but my wife is in poor condition." Bonner, however, told reporters, "He needs a checkup and serious medical care." Bonner, 63, tried repeatedly last week to get her husband to relax. She turned reporters away from the couple's apartment Tuesday, stating, "We need rest." A few hours later Sakharov quietly slipped out to attend a seminar at the Academy of Sciences, where he was applauded by his colleagues. On Thursday, Bonner insisted there would be no further visits...
...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...