Official obituary plays down human-rights battle

Press, 18 December 1989, Page 8

Official obituary plays down human-rights battle

NZPA-Reuter Moscow Andrei Sakharov’s official Soviet obituary praised his work as a nuclear physicist but hardly mentioned his tireless campaign for human rights. Mr Sakharov died of a heart attack on Thursday at the age of 68. His body will lie in state on Sunday and be buried on Monday at a suburban cemetery outside Moscow. Small groups of people gathered on Saturday outside the grey Moscow apartment block where he lived to pay their respects at a makeshift candle-lit shrine decked with red roses.

The short three-column obituary

published in most official newspapers on Saturday praised Mr Sakharov for playing a leading role in developing the country’s hydrogen bomb, the first time the Soviet press had acknowledged the part he played. The obituary, signed by several Politburo members, including President Mikhail Gorbachev and Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov but not the leading Kremlin conservative Yegor Ligachev, contained only a glancing reference to his human rights work. “Sakharov was subjected to gross injustices. He was sent from Moscow to Gorky... (After his return) he devoted much of his time to political opposition,” the obituary said.

“Everything he did was directed by his conscience, his deep humanitarian convictions,” it said. Mr Sakharov’s decision to press for curtailment of nuclear tests, reject a life of privilege and become head of the Soviet dissident movement ensured years of harassment Under the orders of the discredited former leader Leonid Brezhnev he was denounced and finally exiled to the closed city of Gorky in January, 1980. Mr Gorbachev personally ordered his release in 1986, and Mr Sakharov returned to Moscow. Beneath the obituary was a brief eulogy from the scientist Valeri Ginsberg, praising Mr Sakharov’s struggle

for human rights. Mr Ginsberg was one of a number of scientists who in 1973 signed a denunciation of Mr Sakharov’s views. In an interview published posthumously on Saturday, Mr Sakharov urged the country’s Parliament to adopt radical political and economic reforms, saying the present period was one of the most critical in Soviet history. In the interview, in the “Komsomolskaya Pravda” newspaper, he urged Parliament to speed up discussion of proposed key laws on land reform and property, which radical economists say are vital if the country’s moribund economy is to be

saved. “Now is one of the most critical times in our country’s history,” Mr Sakharov was quoted as saying. He also told the newspaper that Mr Gorbachev puzzled him. “Gorbachev is something of an enigma for me. I see that even when he goes to the right, the country in general goes to the left... The most favourable explanation is that he is a cautious man,” he said. “Of course, there are less favourable explanations, for example that he is the product of the tactical and unprincipled deliberations generated by a general power struggle. That is unforgiveable.”