World Notes SOVIET UNION

The scene would have been unimaginable just a few years ago: Andrei Sakharov, 67, for years one of the Soviet Union's most famous dissidents, on U.S. soil. The Nobel Peace prizewinner and ex-prisoner of Gorky arrived in Boston last week on his first trip outside the Soviet Union and declared himself a "freer man." A supporter of perestroika since his release from internal exile two years ago by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Sakharov was traveling with official approval and a blue VIP passport. At a press conference he urged the U.S. to back Gorbachev's reforms.

But as ever, Sakharov's first concern was human rights. He used his maiden appearance in the West to press the case of political prisoner Vazif Meylanov, a mathematician jailed after demonstrating for Sakharov's freedom. "It is my duty now, at this moment, to remember this man and many others who remain in prison," said Sakharov. Nor has Sakharov given up criticizing his country's regime. Five days before leaving Moscow for the U.S., where he is visiting relatives in Massachusetts and attending a meeting in Washington of the International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, he warned that proposed changes in the Soviet political system would create a dangerous monopoly of power. Said Sakharov: "Today it will be Gorbachev. Tomorrow it may be somebody else."