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21 The Soviet Leadership Softens In the late summer of 1985, when Bonner’s prospects of going abroad and Sakharov ’s of leaving Gorky never seemed worse, the new Soviet leadership, unbeknownst to both of them, was reconsidering its refusal to grant Bonner a visa. On August 29 the Politburo discussed her application formally. Gorbachev, who, as general secretary, chaired the meeting, ascribed Bonner’s behavior to her “Zionism,” and Chebrikov, the head of the KGB, expressed the commonly held view among the Soviet leadership that Sakharov was little more than Bonner ’s puppet. Nevertheless they decided to approve her application. But they also agreed on several conditions Bonner would have to accept before she could leave the country: while abroad, she could not discuss political matters, hold press conferences, or under any circumstances talk to Western reporters.1 On September 5 Sergei Sokolov, the same KGB official who in May had tried unsuccessfully in a personal meeting to get Sakharov to renounce convergence and his views on nuclear weaponry, visited him on behalf of the Politburo to secure his agreement to these conditions, which now required that Sakharov enumerate in a written statement all the secret scientific information he possessed.2 Chebrikov, in particular, was afraid that if Sakharov had not already divulged this information to Bonner, he might divulge it to her in the future, probably just before she went abroad, and then she would share it with interested Westerners , including representatives of Western intelligence agencies. Chebrikov’s expectation, or at least his hope, was that such a statement from Sakharov might somehow prevent her from revealing what she knew while she was in the West. Sokolov also sought from Sakharov assurances that Bonner would not defect once she left the country and that he himself, because of what he was privy to, would never try to emigrate. When Sokolov presented these conditions, Sakharov was noncommittal on those that applied to Bonner, promising merely to inform her of them. As for himself, he told Sokolov he would be happy to produce a statement promising never to leave the Soviet Union but that, in reality, the whole issue was moot: if he applied for an exit visa, he would never be granted one—which meant that if Bonner went abroad, given the strength of their marriage , she would never defect.3 On October 6 Bonner, who independently of Sakharov had concluded that his hunger strike should end, communicated her wishes to him by including in a letter a line from Pushkin the couple had previously agreed would be a signal for him to cease. On October 23 Sakharov did so. The next day Bonner received an exit visa—but with the demand that she leave 1. Dobrynin, In Confidence, 553; Altshuler, “Nou-khau,” 101. 2. Sakharov, “Letter to the Family,” 692. 3. Sakharov, Memoirs, 602. 324 Meeting the Demands of Reason the country immediately. She insisted, however, that before she could leave she needed time to help her husband recover from the effects of the hunger strike, and the authorities, albeit reluctantly, acquiesced. In late November Bonner flew to Italy, where Alexei and Efrem met her. From there, in early December, she traveled on to the United States, where, in January 1986 in Boston, she underwent heart bypass surgery. On June 2 she returned to Moscow and two days later finally arrived back in Gorky, to which, despite her visa, she was still legally confined. As it happened, Bonner never approved of the conditions Sokolov had asked Sakharov to present to her, and in the United States she discussed political issues publicly once her health permitted it.4 While Bonner was away, Sakharov pursued the same causes he had advocated when she was with him—thereby refuting the claim that he was her puppet. On February 19, 1986, he issued yet another appeal, in the form of a letter to Gorbachev, for a general amnesty for prisoners of conscience, claiming that most of them had been wrongly charged under Article 190-1, which required that the person charged with defaming the Soviet Union knew that the statements he made were false. Because Sakharov recognized in Gorbachev a native intelligence that might make it possible to deal with him pragmatically, he included in his appeal an acknowledgment that if a general amnesty was not possible , he would be satisfied with one for the political prisoners he cited specifically in his letter.5 Sakharov also...

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