Sakharov Reached by Phone, Surprised by Wife’s Surgery

Relatives of Soviet dissident Yelena Bonner today reached her husband, Andrei D. Sakharov, by telephone for the first time in two weeks and said he was surprised to learn she had undergone heart surgery.

“He said he was glad it was over because he would have been very worried if he’d known about it in advance,” Tatiana Yankelevich, Bonner’s daughter, told reporters after the 15-minute telephone call to Gorky.

Bonner, 62, was recovering from Monday’s operation at Massachusetts General Hospital and could not take part in the conversation.

Yankelevich said Sakharov told relatives he was all right and had recently had some dental work done.

Static interrupted the call when family members tried to ask him if he had received visits from fellow physicists from Moscow, she said, characterizing the interruption as jamming by Soviet authorities.