Russia refuses Sakharov exit

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34000, 14 November 1975, Page 13

Russia refuses Sakharov exit

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright)

MOSCOW, November 13.

Soviet authorities have refused the dissident physicist, Dr Andrei Sakharov, permission to go to Oslo next month to collect his Nobel Prize because they said he had secret knowledge and its release could threaten State security.

Dr Sakharov, who once: played a leading role in the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, immediately protested that the refusal contradicted the Helsinki Security Conference, and was a challenge to world public opinion. In Oslo the Nobel Peace Prize Committee expressed regret at the Moscow announcement, but said that the December 10 award ceremony would proceed as planned.

The Nobel Institute director, Mr Tim Greve, said that the gold medal, the diploma, and the prize money amounting to 630,000 Swedish crowns would be handed to an appointee of Dr Sakharov.

The grey-haired, soft-spo-ken scientist, who largely abandoned his career in the 1960 s to become the Soviet Union’s leading human rights campaigner, was awarded the peace prize on October 9. He was cited as ‘‘the spokesman for the conscience of mankind.”

Mrs Yelena Sakharov, who is in Florence for an eye operation, told reporters that to say her husband possessed State secrets was just a Soviet pretext to stop him leaving the country. “He has not had any contact with State secrets since 1968, whereas several other scientists who are still engaged in secret research but are politically inoffensive to the Government travel abroad very often,” she said. “She was unable to say whether she would go to Oslo, to accept the peace

prize on her husband’s be half.

Most observers in Moscow believed that the refusal of a visa to Dr Sakharov would not mean that Mr Leonid Kantorovich, who won this year’s Nobel economics prize, would be prevented from receiving his award in Stockholm on December 10, the same day as the Oslo prize-giving. In 1958, when Boris Pasternak was forced to refuse the Nobel Literature prize, three scientists — including Dr Sakharov’s former chief, Igor Tamm, — were allowed to collect Nobel awards. Senior officials of the Soviet Academy of Sciences were sounding out the possibility of expelling Dr Sakharov and a Jewish chemistry professor, Benjamin Levitch, from the Academy, Professor Levitch’s son said.

Alexander Levitch, who with his brother received a Soviet exit visa last April, told a press conference he had telephoned his father two days ago.

“He told me that senior Academy officials were speaking privately with members to test the atmosphere for a campaign to expel Sakharov and himself from the Academy,” he said.

Mr Levitch said that his father was informed by secret police last month that he would not be granted an exit visa.