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Sakharov's banishment may be the signal for an intensification of a domestic crackdown that has paralleled the hardening of Soviet foreign policy. According to a report by Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, more than 40 Soviet dissidents have been arrested or tried in the past three months. These have included religious leaders, Jewish "refuseniks" and activists for the rights of such national groups as the Ukrainians and the Lithuanians. Two weeks ago, Father Dmitri Dudko, 57, was arrested and imprisoned in Moscow's Lubyanka Prison. As revered a figure among Russian Orthodox Christians as Sakharov is among his secular adherents, Dudko is an eloquent preacher whose sermons circulate widely from hand to hand. One day after Sakharov was flown to Gorky, two contributors to the underground magazine Poiski (Quest) were arrested in Moscow; a third dissident, in the town of Vladimir, was detained for questioning by police.
These new victims of Soviet authoritarianism will miss Sakharov; for more than a decade he has tirelessly called the world's attention to oppression in his country and castigated the Soviet regime for its aggressive policies. Still, Sakharov is not a man to give up easily. Two days after his banishment he phoned several friends in Moscow and issued an appeal to "all people of good will, including sportsmen and sports lovers" to demand the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan and to support human rights everywhere.