End of a Fast

Sakharov makes his point

For 17 days it seemed certain that Andrei Sakharov's war of wills with the Kremlin could end only one way: in defeat and, possibly, death by starvation. Then, four days after the dissident leader's hunger strike led to his being hospitalized, the Kremlin backed down. In a rare concession, the Soviet leadership surrendered to Sakharov's demand that his daughter-in-law Liza Alexeyeva, 26, be allowed to join her husband, Alexei Semyonov, in the U.S. Sakharov, 60, and his wife Yelena Bonner, 58, who had joined him in the hunger strike, broke their fast upon hearing the news that Alexeyeva was free to leave. Semyonov, 25, who is Bonner's son by a previous marriage, was allowed to leave the Soviet Union in 1978. He is a graduate student at Brandeis University and now lives in Waltham, Mass.

The Soviet action was evidently prompted by pressure from abroad. The Kremlin leaders had become increasingly alarmed about the Soviet image in the West as pro-Sakharov demonstrations erupted in European capitals, and world statesmen, including Pope John Paul II, West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and President Reagan, expressed their concern. The Soviets have always held back from taking extreme measures against Sakharov because of his international celebrity as the much decorated nuclear physicist who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb. He later went on to gain greater fame as the champion of human rights in the U.S.S.R. and the winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, though he has been roundly vilified in the Soviet press. The Soviets' fear of incurring worldwide opprobrium was compounded a month ago, when Sakharov managed to get a message to the West that if he died during his hunger strike, the KGB might well be guilty of his murder.

It was the KGB that passed word of the Kremlin's decision to Alexeyeva that she could go to the U.S., thus halting Sakharov's fast. Alexeyeva, who married Semyonov by proxy last June, had been previously denied a visa to leave for the U.S. On Saturday, Alexeyeva boarded a train to visit the Sakharovs in the industrial city of Gorky, where the couple has been living in exile for the past 23 months.

At week's end, the government newspaper Izvestia published a tiny news item on the affair. The article, in its entirety, said: "In connection with the fact that the parents of Y.K. Alexeyeva have withdrawn their objections to her leaving the Soviet Union, a decision has been taken to grant her an exit visa by way of exception." It was the first announcement to the Soviet public that Sakharov had won his battle with the Kremlin.

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