The Saga of the Sakharovs' Car

By Elena Bonner

I would like to tell the story of our car. It's an old car, born in 1976. And the KGB has subjected it to persecution too.

As soon as it was widely known in the fall of 1981 that Andrei Sakharov and I were planning a hunger strike to get my daughter-in-law an exit visa, the car was stolen. When we were on the hunger strike and not leaving the house because we were afraid of being grabbed on the street and forcibly hospitalized, the car was suddenly found. The state traffic police kept calling us to come for it. We ignored them. But at last, unable to lure us out of the house with the prospect of getting our car back, they simply broke down the door and took us by force to separate hospitals.

After my daughter-in-law's departure, the car was returned to us, but only its remains -- everything that could be unscrewed had been taken, and the tires were replaced by bald ones. Half the parts had been removed from under the hood and everything taken out of the interior -- even the ashtrays. It took us nearly five months to get the car back into shape.

In the years that followed, a strange situation developed around this inanimate object. Whenever the authorities did not like something, it was our car that suffered. Two tires would be punctured or a window smashed or smeared with a durable glue. If something like that happened to our car, we knew that we had done something bad by their standards: perhaps we had managed to talk to someone on the street or at the market, or had gone to the wrong place.

There are many sins and only one car, so it suffers, poor thing.

In the early years in Gorky, we often gave lifts to strangers; then we were forbidden to do that. The authorities enforced their ban by puncturing our tires and that sort of thing. Seeing that we did not understand fully, they began hauling passengers forcibly out of the car. Once, when Andrei was driving, he took in two women -- one was very elderly and could barely shuffle. As soon as he started the engine, our police escort ran over and stopped our car with shouts and curses, and then he pulled the two women out of the car. The old woman was so frightened she could have died on the spot. We were forced to drive away.

In the summer of 1985, I saw a man standing by the side of the road with a screaming child of four or five. The boy had a broken leg. I started to help them in. My guards ran over and began pulling the man from the car. I rushed * at one of the KGB guards, and shouted for him to get in the car and drive. I think I frightened him. He got in, and we drove the boy to the first-aid station near our house. Later, the KGB man said to me, "You are not allowed to stop. You know that, and if you try it again, you can say goodbye to your car."

Another incident was funny. Tires do go flat by themselves occasionally, and it's hard for me to change them, so when I get a flat I flag down a truck. Any driver is happy to change a tire for three rubles. One time, the truck driver whom I flagged was surprised by my request, since he saw a strapping young man near my car. When he was finished changing my tire and I offered him a three- ruble note, he said, "Don't bother, mother, but you should teach your kid a lesson. What's the matter with him, is he sick or something that he can't change a tire?"

"He's not mine, he belongs to the Committee," I replied, using the euphemism for the KGB.

"Ah. . ." said the driver, and he hurried back to his truck.