Soviet Union A Hero's Return

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For weeks the rumors had swirled. After seven years of "internal exile" in the closed city of Gorky, Andrei Sakharov, the distinguished nuclear physicist who had become the Soviet Union's leading human-rights activist, would soon be released. Even so, when the official announcement finally came last week, it caught journalists by surprise. They had gathered in the main hall of Moscow's ^ international press center to be briefed on an entirely different subject, the Kremlin's decision to resume nuclear testing after a self-imposed 16-month moratorium. During the question-and-answer session, Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Petrovsky was asked about reports that Sakharov and his wife Elena Bonner, who was also being detained in Gorky, were about to be freed.

Petrovsky's answer stunned everyone present. In fact, he said, he had an announcement to make on that very subject. Sakharov had asked the Soviet leadership for permission to move to Moscow, Petrovsky related, and the request had been considered by the appropriate organizations. As a result, said Petrovsky, Sakharov's wish had been granted and Bonner had been pardoned for "slandering" the Soviet state. He continued, "Academician Sakharov and Mrs. Bonner may return to Moscow, and Academician Sakharov may actively join the scientific life of the Academy of Sciences."

The Sakharovs had heard the good news four days earlier from an impeccable source. At 10 o'clock one evening, workmen had unexpectedly installed a telephone in their Gorky apartment. The next day at 3 p.m. Sakharov received a call from none other than the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Mikhail Gorbachev. The Soviet leader said the Sakharovs would be permitted to return to Moscow and that Andrei could go back to his "patriotic work."

For the Sakharovs, who were expected to leave Gorky this week, the long exile of deprivation, hunger strikes, illness and ever present loneliness was apparently over. In Newton, Mass., Bonner's daughter Tatyana Yankelevich was exultant. "We are happy to hear the news," she said. "It is overwhelming."

Exactly why the Kremlin had chosen to free the Sakharovs at this time is not known. But it was obviously a carefully orchestrated move bearing the earmarks of Gorbachev's style. Ever since he took power in March 1985, the Soviet leader has encouraged frankness in public attitudes toward domestic Soviet problems by mounting a campaign of glasnost, or openness. Last week, for example, foreign diplomats were taken aback by the unprecedented Soviet coverage of ethnic rioting in Alma-Ata, capital of the Central Asian republic of Kazakhstan. Despite such newfound candor, however, Gorbachev has been unable to shake the opprobrium created in the West by human-rights violations in general and the Sakharov case in particular.