The West is right to applaud Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev's decision to allow dissident scientist Andrei D. Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, to return to Moscow from internal exile. But we should not cheer too lustily yet, for several reasons.
First, we should never forget how and why Sakharov was arrested. He was picked up by the KGB as he drove to work in Moscow in January, 1980. He was arrested without warrant and exiled without trial. He was punished because he continually used his prestigious position of academician to criticize Kremlin positions on a wide range of issues from nuclear testing to the invasion of Afghanistan to relations with the West to the abuse of human rights within the Soviet Union. Sakharov's six-year exile in Gorky was a flagrant violation of due process. As Bonner has described in her book "Alone Together," the conditions of exile were so harsh as to amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Sakharov's return to Moscow does not necessarily mean that such practices have been banished forever.
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