Mrs. Sakharov Speaks
SAKHAROV, ELENA BONNER
LIFE AMONG THE DISSIDENTS Mrs. Sakharov Speaks BY ELENA BONNER SAKHAROV The following text by Mrs. Elena Bonner Sakharov, wife of the noted Russian physicist who is this year's recipient of the...
...I then submitted a request to ovir, the office in charge of issuing permits for foreign travel, and on March 5, 1975, was refused for the first time...
...To them we feel grateful...
...One showed a woman's face, with hand-drawn skulls in the place of her eyes...
...We have been deprived of telephone communication with the West, which is essential to my husband's human-rights activities...
...Before deciding to come, I was in four Soviet hospitals, including a high-status medical center belonging to the Academy of Sciences...
...We are constantly faced with warnings concerning my children...
...Elena Bonner Sakharov, wife of the noted Russian physicist who is this year's recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, was forwarded to The New Leader by Victor Erlich, Bensinger Professor of Russian Literature at Yale...
...We worry about the professional and personal future of my son, denied admission to the university, and of my son-in-law, who is unable to work in his area of specialization: For a young engineer this is tantamount to losing a career...
...Finally, a word about my own involvement in dissident matters...
...My principal ward is my nephew, Ed-uard Kuznetsov: In December 1970, he received a death sentence, which was commuted to 15 years of confinement in a harsh forced-labor camp...
...This is true...
...As a result, the letters arrived in October 1974...
...My second ward is Viktor Khaustov, who was convicted for helping to transmit Kuznet-sov's camp diaries to the West...
...I try to help him...
...At first the necessary letters of invitation from abroad settled somewhere in the recesses of the Soviet postal system or the KGB...
...We are harassed by terrorists and by menacing phone calls...
...On August 15, the day of my departure, we received an envelope containing newspaper clippings...
...This statement struck me as rather strange, since there had been no talk of Andrei Dimitrievich accompanying me...
...Efforts to secure permission to receive medical attention outside the Soviet Union consumed almost a year (from August 1974 to the end of July 1975...
...Why and for whom that call was necessary we do not know...
...One doctor said his dissertation would not be approved if he operated...
...She politely requested, indeed almost pleaded, that I come to the ovir office right away...
...But life is exceedingly difficult, and this summer Andrei Dimitrievich suffered a minor stroke...
...I welcome this opportunity to express my gratitude, and am certain that my husband would do the same were he here...
...Among our visitors are relatives of people convicted for political or nonpolitical reasons...
...The President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, in reply to an inquiry from the President of the U.S...
...Valentin Turchin, a great scientist and a close friend, was fired from his job...
...But this decision had to be confirmed by the Moscow Soviet, so the apartment has been standing empty for two years now...
...The inspector who informed us of the refusal, a woman, was very blunt...
...We have not received the telegrams to this day...
...Hair does not fall from his head because for some time he hardly has had any left...
...But the doctors were always afraid of me because I was being watched by the KGB...
...Nearly every day we receive persons who need help or advice, sometimes simply a friendly word of sympathy...
...When I arrived I was escorted to the office of a man who, judging by his manner, was an important official...
...It was translated by Olga Peters...
...Later, my husband was told the KGB or some other bureau would cover the cost...
...Almost immediately upon my arrival in Italy, I was placed in the hospital and operated on...
...Correspondents were able to determine that the envelope, sent from Stockholm, originally contained a letter that had been replaced by the clippings...
...We won't let him join you...
...another simply asked me to check out—she feared for her husband and son...
...And the Academician Sakharov does not even have a desk at home —there is no room for it...
...Ours is a very tense, difficult existence...
...some do not care to look beyond the official facade to see the violations of human rights...
...Yet most try honestly to understand what the Soviet Union is...
...The Academy of Sciences decided to use its own funds to provide its member, A. D. Sakharov, with an apartment...
...Our friends?dissidents, or as they are also called, democrats—come to talk to Andrei, most frequently about the defense of some political prisoner...
...The delay, I was told, was due to the absence of someone who had to sign it...
...I began by thanking the Western correspondents for their work, but I must conclude with something of a reproach...
...On May 8, the 30th anniversary of the end of World War II, my husband and I declared a three-day hunger strike...
...But my request for a trip was denied again...
...They include believers (e.g., Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics), individuals persecuted for their desire to leave—Germans, Jews, Lithuanians—and those fighting for their national rights—Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Tartars...
...My reason for this visit to Italy was to have an eye operation...
...Shortly afterward a letter came special delivery from ovir and the Ministry of Health stating that I could summon any doctors from any country...
...I said I could not be there by 6, when they stop working, but she said they would wait...
...There were threats to kill my daughter's husband and my small grandson...
...Once more we sent the authorities invitations from friends, relatives and doctors in various countries—France, Italy, Israel, the U.S., Switzerland—and once more, in mid-July, we were turned down...
...In those Western newspapers that reach us, Sakharov is usually described as a "father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb.' The journalists apparently do not realize that while my husband did participate in the creation of the bomb, as long ago as the '50s he was warning the regime about the dangers of thermonuclear experiments, and was among the first to work toward a peaceful use of nuclear energy...
...We wanted to buy a one-room apartment for my son, but local authorities did not permit this...
...There is every reason to fear for his fate...
...I am, of course, no stranger to my husband's activities in the field of human rights...
...Two additional weeks went by while I waited for a passport...
...I reapplied, and was turned down a second time...
...The inertia of anxiety in our country causes nearly everyone to consider how an association with us will affect his or her future...
...Florence Let me begin by saying that we, the so-called "Soviet dissidents," can never forget that foreign correspondents in Moscow have made the world aware of what goes on in our country...
...Nearly all dissidents have such prisoners as their personal wards...
...We know that the KGB issued a direotive that no apartment be made available to Sakharov's stepson...
...Iought to add that my husband and I, my mother and my daughter's family—all seven of us—live together in two small rooms...
...The operation was performed brilliantly by Professor Frizzotti, and with the aid of contact lenses my vision is better than it has been in over 30 years, since the time of my concussion in World War II...
...These were not bad people...
...But my husband had still another heated exchange with some high officials, including a person on the Central Committee by the name of Ivanov, and I ultimately obtained my papers...
...Yet the following day, after 5 p.m., I received a call from her...
...Now about our life...
...Telegrammed invitations did not reach us either...
...Not all Western journalists present our life incisively or accurately...
...The arrests of our friends—of the biologist Sergei Ko-valev, one of my husband's intimates, in December 1974, and of Andrei Tverdokhlebov, practically a member of the family, in April of this year—were especially hard to take because these were due in part to their association with us...
...He has been interrogated about Kovalev (in connection with his trial earlier this month), and about Sakharov's article "The World in Half a Century," found when his apartment was searched...
...Like many others, I try my best to alleviate the lot of political prisoners...
...Academy of Sciences, has declared that not a single hair would fall from Sakharov's head...
...He introduced himself as Tro-fimov and informed me that I was granted permission for a trip to Italy, adding: "Do not expect Andrei Dimitrievich to arrive there...
...Immediately following the conversation, a man who did not give his name telephoned the Reuters agency, allegedly in my behalf (he said I did not have time to call myself), and reported that I had obtained permission for the trip...
...The others were of a similar nature...
...We would be grateful if reporters kept this in mind when they wrote their stories...
...Then the Italian newspaper II Giornale began publicizing the matter...
Vol. 58 • December 1975 • No. 25
