Izvestia Assails Sakharov Over Reform Stance

After weeks in which they stood silent before an increasingly critical Andrei D. Sakharov, the Soviet authorities struck back Wednesday, accusing the Nobel prize-winning physicist and human rights advocate of undermining their reform program by making negative statements to the foreign press.

The blow was in the form of an editorial in the government newspaper Izvestia, ostensibly responding to comments Sakharov made in an interview published by the French newspaper Le Figaro last week.

The editorial’s appearance suggested a shift in the complex relationship that has evolved between the 67-year-old former dissident and the Kremlin leadership, which restored him to official respectability two years ago.

Izvestia’s main complaint appeared to be a statement attributed to Sakharov by Le Figaro warning that because Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev has failed to seek popular support in direct elections, “the conservatives will overthrow Gorbachev or at least impose their views on him.”

“It seems appropriate to ask on what data this claim is based and what arguments there are to save it from (being) political fantasy?” Izvestia demanded in a prominent back-page editorial. Using the Russian word by which Gorbachev’s reform program has become known, the newspaper complained that such statements “give rise to all manner of conjectures, which in turn cause confusion in the minds, uncertainty and suspicion, which naturally does not help perestroika and the transformations themselves.”

Sakharov’s wife, Yelena Bonner, told reporters Wednesday that her husband’s remarks in Le Figaro were taken out of context from what he thought was a casual conversation--rather than an interview--with a visiting journalist.

Izvestia indicated that it was particularly offended at Sakharov’s criticisms because he has proclaimed himself a supporter of reform, and because he chose to criticize its course in the foreign press.

Some of Same Criticisms

Sakharov was quoted by Le Figaro as stressing that perestroika is “absolutely necessary” but that this does not mean “that you have to support Gorbachev without reservation.” Also, the Izvestia editorial came on the same day that the Moscow News, a reform-minded local newspaper, carried an interview with Sakharov in which he repeated some of the same criticisms he made to Le Figaro.

“A man who considers himself to be a true supporter of perestroika cannot judge it from the positions of an aloof observer,” declared Izvestia. It singled out Sakharov’s protests over the recent arrests of Armenian leaders campaigning for the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh and commented, “It would be more logical to take actions which will promote further normalization of the situation, rather than to cast doubts about the correctness of the measures taken.”

Nagorno-Karabakh is the region of Soviet Azerbaijan where 78 people died last year in clashes between its majority Armenian population and the minority Azerbaijanis.

The Armenians are mostly Christian while the Azerbaijanis are predominantly Muslim.

While in the past it may have been understandable that Sakharov used “the pages of foreign newspapers and microphones to criticize our internal problems,” Izvestia stated, “this time has passed.” Referring to a call in the Le Figaro interview for the West to keep holding Moscow strictly accountable for its human rights record, it added: “Of course, everyone is free to choose the audience and channels of propaganda. But one can hardly agree with the ethics of calling upon foreign governments and the public to put pressure on the U.S.S.R.”

The Izvestia editorial follows weeks of increasing tension between Sakharov and the authorities.

Freed by Gorbachev

The physicist, who was exiled to the closed, provincial city of Gorky in 1980 for criticizing the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, was released nearly seven years later on the personal order of Gorbachev.

He became both a supporter and a powerful symbol of the Kremlin leader’s reforms, particularly among Soviet intellectuals and in Western capitalist countries, both areas where Gorbachev is anxious to enlist support.

By last November, however, Sakharov was clearly disappointed with the extent and pace of democratic reforms. A new election law fell far short of the ideal, he said, and it would even give Gorbachev a dangerous monopoly on power.

There have followed a number of critical interviews in the foreign media, and last month he condemned the arrest of the Armenian leaders as a dangerous resumption of repression. Sakharov has also called, during an uphill campaign to win a seat in a new Soviet legislature, for parliamentary control over the KGB secret police, the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Defense.

His candidacy is itself a source of potential embarrassment for the authorities. After being rejected in a controversial maneuver for one of the assured parliamentary seats assigned to the Academy of Sciences, of which he is a popular member, Sakharov was nominated for a territorial constituency in which the Communist Party’s candidate was Politburo member Vitaly I. Vorotnikov.

On Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the Moscow National-Territorial Election District commission confirmed that Vorotnikov had withdrawn his candidacy to run in a different district, where he will not face such well-known competition.

One of 15 Nominees

It is still not certain that Sakharov will be accepted for the March 26 ballot, the spokeswoman said. He is one of 15 candidates nominated from the district for what are billed as the Soviet Union’s first-ever multiple-candidate national elections. However, it is now up to the party-controlled election commissions to finalize the ground rules under which the candidate list is whittled down to the anticipated two or three who will actually appear on the ballot.

Among Sakharov’s supporters in the election is a group about which the authorities are clearly nervous, a fast-growing, anti-Stalinist movement called “Memorial.” Sakharov was a featured speaker at Memorial’s formal, founding convention last weekend. The Kremlin sees in the group the potential of a nationwide political movement that would be outside Communist Party control.

While the Izvestia editorial makes clear that the authorities are concerned enough about Sakharov’s criticisms to at least respond, they apparently aren’t anxious for open warfare.

“What we want least of all is for all this to be regarded as criticism or admonition,” Izvestia wrote. However, it added, “neither is it appropriate to keep silence on matters of principle.”