SAKHAROV'S FRIENDS GATHER IN TRIBUTE

Author: By Joan Vennochi Globe Staff

Date: Monday, May 17, 1982
Page: ?????
Section: RUN OF PAPER

A police officer guards his front door at all times, his relatives say. His mail is opened and his research work has been stolen. He can receive no visitors and he can never leave Gorky.

To refocus attention on this third year of Sakharov's exile, some 125 people gathered yesterday at a brunch at the Boston Park Plaza sponsored by Action for Soviety Jewry, Inc. Proceeds will benefit the Human Rights Efforts of the Sakharov Defense Campaign and Action for Soviet Jewry.

Sakharov's ideals for human rights and nuclear disarmament, and the personal price he has paid for his views, were praised by guest speakers, including Sen. Paul Tsongas and US Reps. Barney Frank and Margaret Heckler.

Soviet officials banished the 1975 Nobel Prize winner and internationally- ac claimed physicist to Gorky after he spoke out against Russian intervention in Afghanistan. Before his banishment, he already had come to symbolize the fight for human rights for Soviet Jews and other dissidents.

The three politicians said yesterday that the issue of human rights should be included in any US-Soviet policy discussions.

And, citing the fierce opposition to the nuclear arms race that Sakharov - known as the father of the Soviet H-Bomb - has expressed since the 1960s, all three called for nuclear disarmament negotiations with the Soviet Union.

But it was Sakharov's daughter-in-law, Lisa Alexeyeva, who expressed - in soft Russian that was translated into English by Sakharov's step-daughter, Tanya Yankelevich - the most basic hope of Sakharov's sympathizers in the west yesterday:"I hope that one day all of us will have an opportunity to give him a birthday party here," said Alexeyeva.

A year ago, she said, she was in Moscow, receiving word that her application for a visa to the United States had once again been denied by Soviet authorities. She won the right to leave the Soviet Union and come to the United States last December - only after Sakharov and his wife, Elena Bonner, staged a 17-day hunger strike that gained world attention.

Tsongas said that the issue of human rights that Sakharov has continued to fight for, even from Gorky, should not be forgotten in the face of the "happy ending" for Alexeyeva. And he said that the "perfect tribute" to Sakharov's devotion to human rights is a call for a lessening of the nuclear arms race.

"How does one argue for human rights and at the same time argue that 17,000 nuclear warheads between two super-powers are not enough?" he said. "There will be no human rights after a nuclear holocaust. There will be only two kinds of people, those who die instantly and those who die over a time."

Heckler also called for the issue of human rights and nuclear disarmament to underscore negotiations with the Soviet Union.

Frank termed the Soviets' treatment of Sakharov as "cruel, savage, barbarous . . . and cowardly." He said gatherings, such as yesterday's are important because "the Russian leadership wishes that we weren't here.

Prof. Joel L. Lebowitz, of Rutgers University and the Committee of Concerned Scientists, and Prof. Herman Feshbach, of MIT and the president- elect of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, also spoke on behalf of Sakharov yesterday.

Sakharov's relatives said yesterday that despite his exile, Sakharov has not given up the effort to reach the world beyond Gorky.

This past March, said his step-daughter, Yankelevich, Sakharov managed to make public an appeal to his Soviet colleagues in the scientific community, urging them to join in the fight for human rights. It was his first appeal to Soviet scientists, she said.

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