Sakharov Arriving in U.S. Sunday on 1st Visit to West
Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei D. Sakharov, international symbol for the struggle for human rights, will arrive in Boston on Sunday for his first visit to the West, it was reported today.
Sakharov, who only learned two weeks ago that he had been given permission for the trip, will stay in the United States for two weeks and will travel to New York, Washington and perhaps San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, the Boston Globe said.
Sakharov, 67, is also expected to be examined at Massachusetts General Hospital for possible implantation of a cardiac pacemaker. The procedure usually requires a two-day hospital stay.
His wife, Yelena Bonner, had cardiac bypass surgery in January, 1986, at the same hospital. She will not be with him on this visit.
Often referred to as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, Sakharov on Nov. 15 in Washington will receive the $50,000 Albert Einstein Foundation Peace Prize for 1988 for his work on East-West relations and human rights.
His trip to the United States, his first outside the Soviet Union, is to promote the new International Foundation for the Survival and Development of Humanity, based in Moscow. It is the first private foundation ever allowed to operate with full legal status in the Soviet Union.
Sakharov is expected to arrive in Boston Sunday evening and stay with his wife’s children in Newton, near Boston.
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