Vengeance

Bonner exiled, Sakharov taped

Increasingly angered by the dissident activities of Andrei Sakharov over the past two decades, Soviet authorities last week moved to exact another bit of vengeance. A court reportedly sentenced Sakharov's wife Yelena Bonner, 61, to five years of internal exile for anti-Soviet slander. For Sakharov, 63, the blow was worsened by the prospect that Bonner may not survive the hardships of banishment. She has already suffered several heart attacks. When she was visited by a close family friend early this year, her lips and fingernails had turned blue and she was taking several dozen nitroglycerin tablets a day.

Indeed, it was Sakharov's alarm about his wife's health that led to her trial and conviction. Last February the physicist appealed to Soviet authorities to allow Bonner to go abroad for treatment of her heart disease, arguing that she was being deprived of adequate care in the Soviet Union. His request denied, Sakharov on May 2 began a hunger strike that made news around the world. Soviet officials then accused Bonner of conspiring with U.S. diplomats to conduct an anti-Soviet campaign in the West. Meanwhile, Western statesmen, including President Reagan, persistently expressed concern about Sakharov's condition. Rumors that Sakharov was dangerously ill, and even dead, kept the story in the headlines.

Possibly to divert international attention from Bonner's trial and conviction, the Soviets released a videotape about the Sakharovs. Obtained by the West German newspaper Bild Zeitung from a Moscow-based journalist known to be well connected with top Soviet officials, the tape was bought by ABC News and broadcast in the U.S. last week. The video event was not especially convincing. Footage purporting to show that the Sakharovs are healthy, indeed prospering, had apparently been taken months ago. The tape had been spliced in many places, and relatives who are now in the West recognized at least one segment as being more than a year old. In one brief sequence, however, a strikingly thin and exhausted-looking Sakharov is seen eating some food at a table on which a July 16 copy of Newsweek has been conspicuously placed. The videotape proved one thing: Sakharov had interrupted, though perhaps not ended, his hunger strike as early as six weeks ago. Still, worldwide concern for him and his wife is scarcely likely to subside. Said Sakharov last May in an appeal to world opinion: "Her death would be my death."