Sakharov Kin Returns to Live in Soviet Union

Ruth Bonner, 86-year-old mother-in-law of Soviet physicist Andrei D. Sakharov, returned Saturday to live permanently in the Soviet Union after seven years in the West.

Bonner was greeted at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport by Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner. Arriving with her were Sakharov’s stepdaughter, Tatiana Yankelevich, and her two children.

Yankelevich said she and the grandchildren will be staying in Moscow for three weeks. Sakharov entered the normally closed customs area to greet and kiss his mother-in-law, who had lived in the United States since his exile to Gorky for dissident activities in early 1980.

Sakharov’s grandson, Matvei, 11, and his sister Anna had not seen Sakharov since 1977 when their parents, Yankelevich and her brother, Alexei Semyonov, emigrated to the United States.

Sakharov, 65, a nuclear physicist, who won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize for his defense of human rights, was released from internal exile last December and allowed to return to Moscow.