Soviets Reportedly Free 42 Dissidents, Activists : Release Called Largest Since 1950s; Sakharov Says Many ‘Prisoners of Conscience’ Still Held

Soviet authorities have freed 42 dissidents and human rights advocates from prison, labor camp or exile during the past week, a spokeswoman for physicist Andrei D. Sakharov said Saturday.

It appeared to be the largest release of its kind since thousands of people put in prison camps in the Josef Stalin era were freed after the late Nikita S. Khrushchev made his denunciation of Stalin in 1956.

Even so, hundreds of others on Sakharov’s list of “prisoners of conscience”--people he says were jailed only because of their opinions--remained in custody.

The release was ordered by a Feb. 2 decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the national Parliament, according to Sakharov’s wife, Yelena Bonner.

More Flexible Policy

Since each person was listed by name in the decree, however, it was not a blanket amnesty.

But the relatively large number released is certain to have an impact in the West, where the Soviet human rights record has been under strong criticism.

The event also appeared to reflect a more flexible policy on dissent that Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has advocated as part of his new drive for what he terms “democratization” of the Soviet Union.

Those who gained their freedom represented a variety of groups at odds with the state--Jewish and Christian religious activists, proponents of increased emigration, Ukrainian nationalists and monitors of human rights violations.

There were some well-known names on the list, but the bulk of those released are unfamiliar to the outside world.

Call for Immediate Amnesty

The newly freed included Yuri Shikhanovich, editor of the underground human rights journal Chronicle of Current Events. Shikhanovich, a mathematician, was sentenced in 1983 to 10 years of hard labor.

Roald Zelichenok, sent into internal exile after seeking aid from Jewish groups abroad to help him emigrate, was released. So were Zoryan Popadyuk, 33, and Danilo Shumuk, 73, Ukrainian nationalists, and Kirill Popov, who was jailed for sending reports to the West on Soviet human rights conditions.

But Sakharov, who was released from a seven-year exile in the closed city of Gorky only last December, preferred to focus on those still held.

His spokeswoman--who asked not to be identified--said the Nobel Peace Prize winner wanted to “draw attention to the fact that many people are still in prison. He would rather talk about these cases.”

Others Remain Imprisoned

She mentioned Joseph Begun, a leading Jewish dissident of the 1970s who was sentenced in 1983 to seven years in prison and five years in exile for “anti-Soviet defamation,” a common charge against dissenters. She also named Alexander Ogorodnikov, who was sentenced to six years in prison and five years in exile, starting in 1980, for organizing a Christian rights group.

Two other prominent prisoners--Anatoly Koryagin and Sergei Khodorovich--were also not on the list of those who gained freedom last week despite reports by dissident sources that they were about to be released.

Koryagin, 48-year-old psychiatrist, was put in jail for accusing Soviet authorities of using psychiatric hospitals to curb dissent. Khodorovich, a computer programmer, was one of the leading activists on human rights violations.

Dissident sources said late last month that the wives of these two were told that their husbands would be let out of prison if they agreed to emigrate with their families to the West. Sakharov said that Koryagin was moved from a labor camp to a prison in his home city of Kharkov, a type of transfer that often precedes release.

Freedom for Simple Cases

Shikhanovich, like most of the others released, was in a prison camp in the Perm area, in the Ural Mountains, when he was freed and allowed to return to Moscow. He telephoned Sakharov with the news on Friday, according to Bonner.

December’s ending of internal exile for Sakharov and Bonner, who were notified personally by Gorbachev of the decision, may have marked a watershed in the Kremlin policy toward dissenters.

Since the Sakharov announcement, several other well-known dissidents have been released from prison and others were allowed to leave the country.

Naum Meiman, a founder of the Moscow committee that tried to monitor Soviet compliance with the Helsinki accords on human rights, praised the release as a good step forward but far short of a general amnesty.

“I think they’ve freed the most simple cases,” Meiman told the Associated Press.