In Praise of Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov has maintained an active correspondence with his children and grandchildren since their separation two years ago. The letters to his grandchildren almost always include a drawing or...
...The children in Newton are playing...
...But here there is animation...
...He remembers, and he analyzes, and the conversation continues to flow between deeply personal anecdotes of kindness and courage and razor-sharp analyses of world politics...
...How is it with you...
...it is seen as selfless, as a sacrifice for the sake of truth...
...you chose only honesty...
...The ocean is very large, and if one is to draw it correctly, there is need for a very large piece of paper...
...A lonely path, now so much more lonely than in Moscow, where the journalists and the petitioners and the comrades would gather in the Sakharov kitchen, where the correspondence with these children in Newton could be maintained and the calls across the oceans completed...
...Where do you go for walks...
...Learn also to read...
...You did not choose to become a symbol...
...Is there even one who, when all the rationalizations are done, when all the excuses are over, even after the turning of a blind eye has become pure instinct, has forgotten the rottenness on which his status rests...
...There was the time, for example, when Sakharov announced a hunger strike, to last one week...
...Taking into account the obstacle to emigration from the USSR, the history of the fight for the right to emigrate, and the fact that the emigration problem falls inside the human rights issue as a whole, I view this campaign with real misgivings...
...Must they not have felt shame, and the anger one feels towards a palpable conscience...
...to hundreds of millions of people, scattered across the world he ennobles, a beacon and an inspiration...
...Your letter brought me much joy...
...On the last day, they left him, weak, at nine in the evening...
...1977) The wires through which telephone conversations are carried on lay on the bottom of the sea-ocean and they are called cables...
...I kiss you...
...Grandpa Adia I kiss all of you very very strongly...
...They have learned not to disturb the adults...
...Does it intimidate, does it make one feel smaller, is it stifling and burdensome...
...For is there even one who does not know the injustice which Sakharov describes...
...This I drew of the salute to the 7th of November...
...I kiss all of you...
...No, they say, one feels larger...
...Yes, the "average" citizen has long since come to believe most of what he has been told about the evils of the dissidents...
...So we talk of hope and of kindness...
...Only later will the guest learn, and not from them, that Efrem's life had been threatened, that Tatyana had been repeatedly interrogated, that some of the heroism and much of the quiet courage did rub off on them...
...But when they brought the juice to Sakharov, he refused it...
...Instead, they chose a different and more difficult path of honor...
...Here, there is matter-of-fact reminiscing, no effort at all to call attention to self...
...Anietchka...
...Each day, the reporters would come, and they'd talk...
...Grandma Ruff and Grandma Lelia also enjoyed it...
...Against the massive Soviet system and all its agents of oppression and deception, there was 48B Chkalov Street, Apartment 68, Moscow, telephone 227-2720, the home and phone of Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov and Elena Bonner, his wife...
...There are 230 other members of the Academy of Sciences...
...honesty...
...What is it like to live in the presence of such rectitude...
...And the rest of us...
...Icicles hang from the roofs and the water is dripping from them...
...With whom do you play...
...So, when not very long ago Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, a full member of the Academy for more than a quarter of a century, sought to take the floor during a debate on Soviet agriculture, and was surrounded, boxed in, by KGB goons until the meeting was adjourned, what could his colleagues have felt...
...But in the Soviet Union there was one address and one phone number for those who needed help, who needed defense, who needed protection, who needed decency...
...Is it not in your own book, Alarm and Hope, that the words of King William the Silent of the Netherlands are cited: "It is not necessary to hope in order to undertake, nor to succeed in order to persevere...
...Sakharov has his standards...
...to his colleagues, a rebuke...
...Did you not write, "In almost every specific case of repression we really have no hope, and almost always there is a tragic absence of positive results...
...It is a brutally cold Sunday morning in Newton, Massachusetts, and we are sitting in the kitchen: Tatyana and Efrem, Sakharov's step-daughter and son-in-law, whose home this is...
...Now there is only Gorky, and the police station next door, and the KGB official who lives with them...
...Grandpa Adia Dear Motinka...
...He remained hungry, and sick...
...Only detente created the possibility of exerting even minimal influence on both the domestic and foreign policies of the socialist countries...
...it is also those everywhere who care for truth, for dignity and decency...
...All those hopes, and the knowledge of how very little you can in fact accomplish...
...The man who is a hero to the world, a nobleman of our time, is to them a father...
...We read your letter and were happy to know that you are learning to write and are already writing good letters...
...In Moscow, there is a beginning of SPRING...
...It would be a great misfortune to return to the past...
...he does not judge others by those standards, only himself...
...He and his wife, herself as outspoken—a pediatrician whose eyesight was damaged by a bursting shell in World War II— could have lived out their lives in honor and comfort...
...And on the other, the far heavier hand, there are all the hopes that people in trouble have invested in you—the fraction who call and who write, and the steady stream who simply show up at the apartment, expecting there to be protected from the evil eye, expecting refuge...
...Later we will be joined by Aleksei, Tatyana's brother...
...the apprehension is well-hidden, or deferred by the claims of a six-year-old boy and a four-year-old girl, the brewing of coffee, the welcome to a guest who does not want to probe the wounds and fears too deeply...
...In the name of detente, they are required to accommodate their actions to universal humanitarian standards...
...To his government, a thorn...
...His presence is not a reproach, his courage is not a rebuke...
...You are Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov, warm husband, loyal father, dear grandfather, staunch friend—and symbol to a generation, symbol far beyond the borders of your maddening homeland...
...1977) (I am concerned by) "the reports of a campaign in Israel to deny help to those people who intend to emigrate from the USSR, but who do not wish to go to Israel...
...On the one hand, there is the constant harrassment, the threats against self and family, the snubs of old friends and colleagues...
...Write us how you live, how are Mama and Dad...
...It is known only that she was ordered to report to the State prosecutor...
...It is the view from our window...
...Yuri had brought mineral water that afternoon, and Sakharov's mother-in-law had pressed strawberries to make a nourishing juice with which to break the fast...
...Not hope, not fantasy...
...to his comrades, a friend...
...Not, that is, to those who love him...
...Uncle Aliosha...
...230 others who enjoy the same perquisites, and it is difficult to believe that there is even one of them who does not feel shame in Sakharov's presence, shame and resentment...
...How about you...
...Unlike some hunger strikers, he never lost his appetite...
...But no, Sakharov is seen as an exception...
...Not all the letters were delivered, and the phones were often out-of-order and always tapped...
...It is early February, scarcely two weeks since Andrei Sakharov has been banished to Gorky, and there has been no word for days, no word, especially, of mother's fate...
...Kiss Mania...
...they are in a different room, and we have moved to the living room to talk of Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, to talk of detente and of freedom, and Aleksei has joined us, Aleksei whose wife and four-year-old child are still in Russia, Aleksei with his plaid shirt and running shoes, Aleksei who was expelled on a pretext from his fifth year of study at the Moscow State Lenin Pedagogical Institute, Aleksei who sits quietly until he catches up with the ongoing conversation and then, with 23 years of rather special experience at life behind him, moves his chair closer and begins his soft-spoken interventions...
...He has everything to lose, nothing to gain from his lonely battle...
...it is very interesting...
...Mathew and Anya, their children, Sakharov's grandchildren...
...What is it like to live in the presence of such strength...
...It is not only the hounds of the KGB who watch this man...
...It was only nine, the fast was to last for a week, and the week would not be up until midnight...
...To others—say, to his fellows of the Academy— one imagines things are rather different...
...It is no easy thing to stand solitary against the monolith...
...and Uncle Aliosha Anietchka...
...Hello all my dear ones...
...And there are also the very large number who are nameless, for whom you have ceased to be a person and have become a symbol...
...The sun shines in every icicle and in every drop of water...
...Yuri, our mutual friend who has brought us together...
...Children play with little boats...
...The letters to his grandchildren almost always include a drawing or two, several of which his family was kind enough to share with us...
Vol. 5 • March 1980 • No. 3
