Soviet Union: Missing Person

Sakharov's fate is unknown

What has happened to Andrei Sakharov? That question took on increasing urgency last week as the Soviet Union's leading dissident passed what would have been the 18th day of his hunger strike in Gorky, the industrial city to which he was exiled in 1980. Since word leaked to the outside world that Sakharov, 63, had begun a fast to secure permission for his ailing wife Yelena Bonner to travel abroad for treatment for a heart condition, the Soviet authorities have isolated the couple behind a curtain of silence and...

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