Bonner Changes Plan, Will Rejoin Sakharov Tonight

Yelena Bonner said today that she will leave Moscow by train tonight to rejoin her husband, dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, in internal exile in the closed city of Gorky.

The 63-year-old Bonner, who returned to the Soviet Union on Monday after spending six months in the West to see relatives and undergo medical treatment, told Western reporters at her Moscow apartment that she had originally planned to stay in Moscow for a few days.

But she said today that although she is “terribly tired” she has decided to get back to Sakharov as soon as possible and bought a ticket this morning for Gorky, a closed city about 250 miles east of Moscow.

“I want to see my husband and to rest a bit,” said Bonner, whose train will arrive in Gorky on Wednesday morning.

She said she hoped to return to Moscow after about five days to get some luggage.

“If I’m not back here by the 15th, then they haven’t let me come. That’s exact,” Bonner told reporters.

She said she sent Sakharov a telegram immediately after buying her train ticket telling him of her plans.

“Now it depends on the KGB if they let him get the telegram. If they did, I expect he will be waiting for me,” she said.

She said she had not seen any police guarding her apartment since her return.

Bonner was sentenced in August, 1984, to five years’ internal exile in Gorky on charges of anti-Soviet slander. Such a sentence would normally prevent her traveling even as far as Moscow, but the court ruling apparently was waived temporarily after Sakharov staged three hunger strikes in 18 months to win permission for her medical treatment in the West.