SAKHAROV TELLS WIFE OF DRIVER'S LICENSE THREAT
Author: Associated Press
Date: Wednesday, April 23, 1986
Page: 19
Section: NATIONAL/FOREIGN
Andrei Sakharov told his wife by telephone yesterday that authorities
threatened to take away his driver's license because he picked up hitchhiking
gypsies.
The authorities cited a law banning the use of cars for profit in warning
Sakharov to stop his habit of picking up hitchhikers in Gorky, where he was
banished six years ago, his family said.
"I don't think the gypsies offered him anything," his son-in-law, Efrem
Yankelevich, said in a telephone interview from his Newton home, where
Sakharov's wife is staying on a six-month visit.
Yankelevich said he had few details because Sakharov's call to his wife,
Yelena Bonner, was cut off by static. He said the interruptions throughout the
call were the worst yet among the couple's conversations since she arrived for
medical treatment in early December.
Yankelevich said Sakharov often gives strangers lifts because cars are
rare in the Soviet Union and he leads a lonely life.
"He doesn't speak to anybody apparently for days," Yankelevich said.
''There is nobody around him except for KGB agents, and nobody can approach
him on the street because they are immediately intercepted by the agents."
The renowned physicist won the Nobel Prize in 1975 for his human rights
work.
Yankelevich said Soviet authorities let Sakharov keep his car because he
is easy to tail while driving in the industrial city 250 miles west of Moscow.
One advantage to the close watch the KGB keeps over Sakharov is that
agents may avert an accident, Yankelevich said.
"He's a bad driver," he added.
AA0822;04/22,18:59 NKELLY;04/24,11:15 SAKHAR23
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