Word: sakharov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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From the moment Sakharov returned from Gorky, he was often at odds with the man who gave him his freedom, whether pressing at home for the immediate release of all political prisoners or warning audiences abroad that Gorbachev was amassing too much power. He clashed with the Soviet leader on the opening day of the Congress last May, saying he would support him as President only after an open debate, and was dismissed from the podium on the final day when he tried to outline his own political program...
With his whining voice, rambling syntax and rumpled suits, Sakharov was not cut out to be a public speaker in an era of live television. Sometimes he was all too ready to embrace every needy political cause and seemed in danger of squandering his considerable moral authority. Two weeks before his death, Sakharov joined a handful of Deputies from a radical coalition known as the Interregional Group in calling for a "warning strike" to force Congress to debate Article 6 and a package of reform laws. The strike was a failure, a tactical error that strained relations with Gorbachev...
Gorbachev too is likely to regret that Sakharov's prophetic voice has been silenced. Despite their differences, the two men had managed to carry on something resembling a dialogue amid all the clamor at the Congress. Seven months have passed since the new parliament held its first meeting, more than half a year in which political change has outpaced progress in solving economic problems and ethnic tensions. At times last week, Moscow's maestro tried to orchestrate the debate, cutting off talk with a curt "That's all." Still, plenty of sour notes were struck. The Armenian delegation stormed...
Preoccupied though he was with the Soviet Union's political upheaval, Andrei Sakharov found time in his last months to polish his autobiography. The following fragments from Sakharov's Memoirs, to be published in 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf, tell of his evolution from an honored physicist into a man reviled, hounded and condemned to exile as the U.S.S.R.'s foremost human rights activist...
...WORLD: Sakharov is gone, but Gorbachev still faces opposition...