Word: sakharovs
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...Moscow. To some extent the Soviets appeared determined to play down the visit, largely because of France's expulsion last month of six Soviet officials on charges of spying on the Ariane rocket program. The Soviets retaliated in kind. Nonetheless, Chirac had an unscheduled encounter with Physicist Andrei Sakharov and a long meeting with Gorbachev that left the Premier enthusiastic about the General Secretary's reforms. On arms-control issues, however, Chirac retained his skepticism about Moscow's double-zero proposal to eliminate medium- and shorter-range nuclear weapons in Europe...
Chirac was one of the beneficiaries of glasnost on his second day in Moscow. At a reception at the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he met Sakharov, the academy's most celebrated -- and recently rehabilitated -- member. The scientist told Chirac that the changes in the Soviet Union could "contribute to stability in the world." Sakharov was less optimistic on human rights in the Soviet Union: it was "very unsatisfactory," he said, that the release of "prisoners of conscience" had been "interrupted." In an earlier aside to French reporters, Sakharov addressed arms control: "Every time there is a chance for a possible...
...anti-Communist as Margaret Thatcher came away from Moscow telling reporters, "I would implicitly accept his word." Distinguished American visitors, not wishing to bestow an accolade they might later have to retract, settle almost in a chorus on a more neutral descriptive word: they find him "impressive." Andrei Sakharov, the physicist who was willing to starve himself to death in defiance of the Soviet regime, now disturbs other dissidents by his guarded approval of Gorbachev...
This gradual shift of attitudes has been reported out of Moscow, accompanied by an escort of journalistic cautions. Life in Moscow is a postgraduate course in skepticism for correspondents. When Gorbachev telephoned Sakharov in December to free him from nearly seven years of internal exile in Gorky, most of the initial speculation saw it as primarily a propaganda stunt for foreign consumption. The press corps in Moscow reminded everybody that the Gulags are still full and dissidents who are Soviet Jews have a hard time emigrating. Then came the op-ed page experts, asserting that change in the Evil Empire...
...between journalists and Evil Empire theorists is that journalists are in the business of reporting change. (Each day editors and anchormen wake up, look out over the world's landscape and ask suspiciously, "Who moved?") When more than 100 imprisoned dissidents had been set free, nearly two months after Sakharov's release, a story from Moscow Correspondent Philip Taubman made the front page of the New York Times: SOVIET TURNS A BIG CORNER -- RELEASE OF DISSIDENTS MORE THAN A GESTURE. Taubman found in Sakharov's release not only Gorbachev's desire to soften international opinion but also his need...