Sakharov Regains Spot on the Ballot

Independent historian Roy Medvedev won a runoff election for a new Soviet congress, and the Academy of Sciences restored Andrei D. Sakharov to the ballot for separate elections to the chamber, official reports said today.

The balloting across the nation Sunday was the second stage of the Soviet Union’s first multicandidate national elections in 71 years.

In the first round March 26, voters rejected at least 45 government and Communist Party leaders in their bids for seats in the new Congress of People’s Deputies.

Tass press agency said Sakharov, the human rights activist who won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, was among those nominated at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences.

Field of Candidates

Tass said 168 members were proposed as candidates for 12 seats still available from the academy and that today’s session had whittled that number to 28, including Sakharov and space scientist Roald Sagdeev.

The nominees will be presented to academy members for balloting April 19-21 to choose the deputies.

Of 2,250 seats in the congress, 750 were assigned to the Communist Party and its affiliates as well as social and professional organizations like the Academy of Sciences.

Sakharov was previously proposed as a candidate, but an electoral commission cut him and other well-known reformers from the final list in favor of old-guard academy managers. Sakharov supporters successfully blocked about two-thirds of that slate and forced a second election.

Historian Medvedev, unlike Sakharov, ran in one of the 1,500 geographical electoral districts.