2 Key Dissidents Will Be Freed, Bonner Says

Two leading imprisoned dissidents--a psychiatrist nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and the coordinator of a charity fund set up by Alexander Solzhenitsyn--will be freed and allowed to emigrate, rights activist Yelena Bonner said Friday.

Bonner’s husband, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei D. Sakharov--himself freed from internal exile in December--had appealed for the freeing of Anatoly Koryagin, 49, who has been imprisoned since 1981, and Sergei Khodorovich, 45, jailed in April, 1983, while managing Solzhenitsyn’s fund.

Koryagin’s wife was summoned by the KGB “several days ago” and told if she filled out emigration forms for herself and her family, her husband would be freed and the family would be allowed to emigrate, Bonner told a reporter in a telephone interview.

“Yesterday (Thursday), the (KGB) told the wife of Sergei Khodorovich the very same thing,” she added.

Emigration Expected

In another apparent gesture to combat criticism of human rights abuses, the chairman of the quasi-official Anti-Zionist Committee, Samuel Zivs, said 500 Soviet Jews would be allowed to emigrate soon. Only 914 Jews were allowed to emigrate in all of 1986.

A spokesman for the committee--regarded by many Soviets and Westerners as anti-Semitic--said some of the 500 had already been allowed to leave and between 9,000 and 10,000 emigration applications were being reevaluated.

In Jerusalem, Israeli officials said Friday that Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Meir Rosenne, met secretly with his Soviet counterpart, Yuri V. Dubinin, two weeks ago in a effort to persuade Moscow to allow more Jews to emigrate.

Koryagin, nominated in 1986 for the Nobel Peace Prize, was sentenced in 1981 to seven years in prison and five years internal exile for anti-Soviet agitation after he criticized Soviet abuses of psychiatry for political purposes. He is being held at Chistopol Prison, 600 miles east of Moscow, where he is reportedly in poor health from torture and hunger strikes.

Khodorovich, a computer programmer who ran emigre author Solzhenitsyn’s fund to aid the families of political prisoners, was sentenced for anti-Soviet slander in 1983 and is serving his term in a camp north of the Arctic Circle.

The releases of Koryagin and Khodorovich would be in line with Gorbachev’s policy of freeing dissidents. Last year, Ukrainian poet Irina Ratushinskaya, dissidents Yuri Orlov and Natan Sharansky (known then as Anatoly Shcharansky before he changed to Hebrew usage), were freed from prison and allowed to emigrate.