Word: sakharovs
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...said Physicist Andrei Sakharov, perhaps the Soviet Union's most famous human-rights advocate, in assessing last week's announcement by the Kremlin that it had begun to release as many as 280 political dissidents from prisons and other places of detention. At best this would represent no more than 40% of the 750 or more Soviet citizens who are currently imprisoned or detained for their political beliefs. Still, it is the first mass release of prisoners of conscience since the de-Stalinization drive of the late 1950s, as well as the latest and perhaps most important manifestation of Soviet...
...refusenik protest before the opening last weekend of a three-day forum titled "For a Nuclear-Free World and the Survival of Mankind." A dizzying array of Western notables, ranging from John Kenneth Galbraith to Pierre Cardin, were expected to attend the session. One of the initial speakers was Sakharov, who called for a more democratic Soviet Union, but also said that there had been recent setbacks in such areas as human rights and emigration...
Events in Moscow last week seemed like scenes from a world turned upside down. Dissident Physicist Andrei Sakharov, who recently returned from seven years of internal exile, was invited to a nuclear disarmament conference at the Kremlin. Meanwhile, Soviet police arrested Yuri Churbanov, the son-in-law of former Leader Leonid Brezhnev, and jailed him on bribery and corruption charges. In addition, officials freed more than 40 political prisoners, the largest dissident group to be released in three decades, and announced that some 500 people, most of them Jews, have been granted exit visas. Only 900 people were allowed...
...moments. At one point some members on tight schedules, including Kissinger, were so disturbed by Soviet slowness in arranging promised meetings with Gorbachev and other leaders that they threatened to return home. That spurred a flurry of activity, and soon the program was full. The group eventually also saw Sakharov, Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Anatoli Dobrynin, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Commission...
...developments in the Soviet Union last week were typical of the now- you-see-it, now-you-don't liberalization taking place under Gorbachev. The invitation to Sakharov to attend a Kremlin disarmament forum this week could provide Gorbachev with a prestigious ally in his antinuclear campaign. Thus, it will be a good platform to show off the new Soviet openness in a way that also serves Moscow's interests...