Sakharov in Moscow, Urges Others Be Freed : He Deplores Prison Death of Dissident Writer, Criticizes Soviet Intervention in Afghanistan

Andrei D. Sakharov returned to Moscow today after seven years of internal exile and immediately appealed for the release of all “prisoners of conscience” in Soviet jails.

Sakharov, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, and his wife, Yelena Bonner, arrived by overnight train from Gorky, the industrial city 250 miles east of Moscow, where he had been isolated since Jan. 22, 1980.

Sakharov, renewing his criticism of Moscow’s intervention in Afghanistan, a stand that led to his being sent into internal exile, described the Soviet role in that country as painful and called for more decisive measures to end the seven-year-old war.

A Night on Train

Smiling but tired from a sleepless night on the train, the dissident physicist was greeted by a crowd of journalists at the Yaroslavl Station.

He termed the death earlier this month of dissident writer Anatoly Marchenko in Chistopol Prison a “tragic event” and said it underscores the need to release others who were imprisoned for their beliefs and had never resorted to violence.

“It shouldn’t be allowed in our country--the fact that we have prisoners of conscience--people who suffer for their ideas,” he said.

Marchenko, 48, a Ukrainian, had spent more than 20 years in detention and in internal exile for his dissident activities. He had been a member of the Helsinki Watch Group, which sought to monitor Soviet compliance with the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki accords.

Call From Gorbachev

Sakharov said Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev telephoned him at 3 p.m. on Dec. 16 to announce that he and Bonner could return to their Moscow home.

“I reminded him of my letter dated Feb. 19 about releasing prisoners of conscience,” he said.

“And now, after the death of Marchenko, my thoughts are even more tragic--who will die next?”

Sakharov, 65, said he was feeling “all right” but added that his wife, who is 63, was “a sick person” now suffering from a leg injury.

Sakharov, pushed along the train platform by a jostling crowd of photographers and correspondents, credited fellow scientists, unnamed government officials, his family in the United States and his wife for making possible his release.

“The isolation in Gorky,” he said,’ was the worst part of his exile.

“For the last seven months my wife and I haven’t had a chance to talk to anybody except one friend and we were allowed to speak on the street with him,” Sakharov recalled.

‘Totally Isolated’

“It was a miracle for us that we were allowed to speak on the street. In general we were totally isolated from the people.”

Soviet officials have said they ended the couple’s banishment for humanitarian reasons and because Sakharov had asked to return to the Soviet capital.

Sakharov was banished in January, 1980, after criticizing the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan that began one month earlier.

The Soviet Union has about 115,000 troops in the country to help the Communist government there battle a Muslim insurgency.

He Was Never Tried

Sakharov was never formally charged or tried but was stripped of all his his titles, medals and honors he won as a physicist and father of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. The only honor left was his membership in the prestigious Academy of Sciences.

Soviet officials have said he would resume work as a scientist in Moscow, and Sakharov himself said after his arrival that he would be involved in space research but gave no details.

Sakharov staged three separate hunger strikes in 1984 and 1985 to fight for permission for his wife to travel abroad for medical treatment. Suffering from leg pains cause by injuries received while she was a medic during World War II, she was allowed to visit Italy and the United States last year for heart and eye surgery.

Very few police were on hand for the Sakharovs arrival in Moscow, but plainclothes officers hovered nearby. They made no attempt to interfere with the news conference as it moved along the train platform.

‘Glad to Be in Moscow’

“I am very glad to be in Moscow,” said Sakharov, a few gold teeth gleaming in the glare of television lights.

He said he wanted to go to his scientific institute and resume work immediately on cosmic and nuclear research.

The couple were driven away to their Moscow apartment by friends after the walk from the train side to the front of the station, which in the press of the crowd took 30 minutes.

“Please let him go,” a friend said as Sakharov got into a mustard yellow Zhiguli. “He’s tired--he’s an old, sick man. Let him go.”