Sakharov Stepson Still Fasting to Obtain Freedom for Couple

Perched on a beach chair at a busy downtown corner 500 feet from the Soviet Embassy, the stepson of Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov conceded Friday that as yet there was no “real result” from the hunger strike he launched eight days ago in an attempt to pressure Moscow into releasing his stepfather and mother.

“This was an act of desperation,” Alexei Semyonov told a reporter. “I would not have done it if I thought there was another way to help my parents. But the (Soviet intelligence agency) KGB has totally isolated them from the rest of the world, and I don’t know what I can do otherwise.”

Semyonov, 29, spoke in a low monotone, sipping occasionally from a bottle of mineral water. Semyonov has shed 19 of his normal 170 pounds so far, but he said a physician had examined him Thursday and found his condition “relatively good.”

Wearing red and white trunks and a crew shirt, Semyonov sat reading a paperback novel under a multicolored beach umbrella that only tempered the searing noonday sun. A few in the lunch-hour crowd paused to read a hand-lettered placard addressed to the Soviet Embassy a block away, which is as near as the law allows demonstrators to get to embassies.

The sign said: “I am on hunger strike. Soviets, let me see my parents. FREE SAKHAROVS.”

A Noncommittal Post Card

Now and then, a pedestrian questioned the lanky, black-haired young man about his stepfather, winner of the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize. Sakharov’s dauntless advocacy of human rights led to his internal exile along with his wife, Yelena Bonner, in Gorky, a city closed to foreigners. The last direct word from them was a noncommittal post card from Bonner, written July 4 in the first person and without a mention of Sakharov.

Lev Kopelev, an exiled Soviet novelist, said Thursday in Cologne, West Germany, that Sakharov, 64, and his wife appear to have vanished from their home in Gorky, as have the guards usually posted outside their residence.

‘Conceal Something’

“The Soviets say he was released July 11, but they don’t say where he is or how he is, and there’s no sense in keeping it secret unless they want to conceal something,” said Semyonov’s sister, Tatyana Yankelevich, who joined her brother in Washington after he took a leave from his job as a computer programmer in Avon, Mass., to begin his fast.

The young woman, clad in black, displayed about 130 signatures passers-by have added since Thursday to a petition calling on President Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz to “intervene with the Soviet government” on behalf of Sakharov and Bonner.

While the hunger strike thus far has evoked no reaction from the White House, Semyonov said he would “like very much to hear from the President at this time.” But he denied a published report that he is protesting U.S. inaction in this case.

“I’m not protesting against the Reagan Administration,” he said, “or I’d be at the White House. I’m protesting at the Soviet Embassy because they’re mistreating my parents.”