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279 19 Arrested but Still Defiant On January 22, 1980, the day he expected the government to arrest him, Sakharov was determined to follow his usual routine.1 In the early afternoon, in a limousine the academy provided him, he set off for the Lebedev Institute to attend its weekly seminar on theoretical physics. Although he had had no formal duties at the institute since 1969, he retained an office there and enjoyed the intellectual stimulation the seminars provided. As his limousine traversed the Krasnokholmskii Bridge, the police, who had closed the bridge to other vehicles, stopped Sakharov’s car and surrounded it. Two KGB agents quickly got into the car and ordered the driver to take Sakharov to the procurator’s office. On their arrival, the agents hustled him to the office of the deputy procurator, Alexander Rekunkov, who read to him the January 8 decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet rescinding the awards and medals he had won, as well as the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, as punishment for various actions of his—none of them specified—that had supposedly harmed the Soviet Union. Rekunkov then informed Sakharov that to prevent him from talking to foreigners, the government was exiling him to Gorky, a city five hundred miles east of Moscow that was closed to foreigners. When Rekunkov asked Sakharov to indicate receipt of the decree by signing a separate sheet of paper on which were written the last few sentences of the decree, Sakharov noted that neither Brezhnev (who in 1977 had become chairman of the Supreme Soviet) nor the Presidium secretary had signed the decree; instead, their names were typed onto it. This seemed to Sakharov symbolic of the decree’s illegality and of the illegality of the punishment the government had prescribed, and he defiantly refused the deputy procurator’s request. To substantiate his objections, he pointedly reminded Rekunkov that the awards he had received were for services he once performed for his country and thus could not be conjured out of existence simply because the government was now angry with him.2 Undeterred by this, Rekunkov told Sakharov that he had to leave for Gorky immediately and could not even return home to collect any belongings he might want to take with him. But the deputy procurator did allow him to call Bonner, who was still unaware of what was happening . In their conversation, Sakharov transmitted the information that she could, if she wished, accompany him to Gorky but that she had only two hours 1. In describing the events of the day, I have relied mainly on the narrative in Sakharov’s memoirs, pp. 510–13, and in “The Exile of Sakharov,” Chronicle of Current Events, no. 56 (April 30, 1980): 74–75. 2. Ioirysh, Uroki A. D. Sakharova, 11. The idea of stripping Sakharov of his awards and title was not a new one. Andropov had suggested it, as well as expulsion from the Academy of Sciences, in September 1973. “Zapiska komiteta gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov SSR (September 1973),” Korotkov, Melchin, and Stepanov, Kremlevskii samosud, 334. 280 Meeting the Demands of Reason to pack and do whatever else she had to do before a car would come to take her to the airport. There was never any doubt that Bonner would join her husband in exile. By 1980 the couple had gone through too much together to endure separately this new test of their mettle. Nor did she hesitate, while she was frantically packing, to ask Ruf and Liza (who by this time was living in Sakharov and Bonner’s apartment ) to ask everyone they knew, especially foreign correspondents, to publicize the events that were unfolding and to characterize what the government was doing to Sakharov as a violation of human rights and Soviet law. Given their experience with the Soviet press, Sakharov and Bonner both considered foreign reporters useful conduits for information that would place their activities in a favorable light, rather than as neutral observers of the events they reported, and on this occasion the couple were especially intent on using the foreign press to their advantage. Given their situation, their intentions are entirely understandable . Because the telephone in their apartment mysteriously went dead immediately after Bonner’s conversation with Sakharov ended, as did the pay phones in the immediate vicinity of the apartment, Liza had to walk a considerable distance to find one that worked. Finally she did, and...

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