For nearly half an hour, five customs officials carefully inspected her four suitcases. They counted her foreign currency--lire and dollars--and raised their eyebrows at the four jars of caviar she had with her, before a guard finally checked her travel documents. Then, for the first time in six years, Yelena Bonner, 62, wife of Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov, was finally free to leave the Soviet Union.
The trip marked a victory for the Sakharovs. Ever since Bonner had been forced to join her husband in exile in the city of Gorky (pop. 1.4 million) in May 1984, he had waged a...
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