Soviets Line Up for 3 Miles to Honor Sakharov

In an unexpected emotional outpouring, tens of thousands of people stood for up to five hours in bitter cold Sunday to pay last respects to Andrei D. Sakharov.

The controversial, fiery physicist and human rights activist was as revered in death as he was sometimes reviled in life.

The line of those waiting to file past his body in the central hall of Moscow’s Palace of Youth stretched for more than three miles along the city’s broad Komsomolsky Prospect and into nearby alleys.

The unforeseen numbers of mourners on the first of two days of memorial ceremonies forced officials to double the time the palace was open, from four to eight hours.

Sakharov, 68, was alone in his study Thursday evening when he died of a heart attack. The magnitude of publicly expressed grief emphasized his importance to Soviet society, despite his years as an outcast and his recent sparring with President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other leaders in the Congress of People’s Deputies.

“When I heard the news of Sakharov’s death, I felt as though my own defender had died,” said Dr. Natalia Yarosheva, a Moscow resident. “As long as he lived, I was confident that he would speak out on behalf of myself and every common person.”

Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko eulogized Sakharov in verse as “the most gentle of rebels.” His death left “a frightening emptiness” in Soviet society, wrote Yevtushenko, whose poem was published Sunday in the Communist Party daily Pravda.

Also in Pravda, Yevgeny Velikhov, vice president of the Academy of Sciences, said Sakharov will be compared by future generations to Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi and Russian author Leo Tolstoy as a “monument of moral strength.”

One wreath at the foot of Sakharov’s coffin was from exiled novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. “To Andrei Dmitrievich, With Love,” read an attached banner.

Yelena Bonner, Sakharov’s wife, sat beside his body in the Palace of Youth. She smoked, occasionally laid her head on the open casket and at one point touched Sakharov’s cheek. A photograph of Sakharov, his chin resting in his hand, hung above the body.

“I always expected that in the event of Andrei’s death, it would be sorrow for the whole country. I always knew that,” Bonner told reporters.

Some mourners carried lit candles, others brought flowers and still others carried small photographs of Sakharov. “Forgive Us,” said one sign placed near the casket. The Borodin string quartet played solemn music by Tchaikovsky and Beethoven.

Because the Kremlin apparently feared that impromptu protests could break out at the memorial ceremony, hundreds of troops set up security lines on and around Komsomolsky Prospect, and police vans and ambulances stood parked nearby.

The Ukrainian National Front sent representatives carrying the flag of the Ukrainian republic. But no one actively demonstrated, and the atmosphere in and around the hall was somber and controlled.

Sakharov was officially and vehemently condemned for years in the Soviet Union for his struggle for human rights and the democratization of Soviet society. He was barred from going to Oslo 14 years ago to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

At the time of his death, he was still struggling against what he viewed as outmoded government policies and seeking to form an opposition group to the Communist Party, which dominates Soviet life. He nevertheless was officially hailed over the weekend for his exceptional spirit and contribution to his country.

He was praised in a Kremlin obituary as a man of “deep humanitarian convictions” and remembered by the official Tass news agency as an “outstanding scientist.”

Moscow Radio and state television broadcast statements honoring him and showed scenes of the crowds gathered at the Palace of Youth.

Yevgeny Primakov, a junior member of the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo, was among the first to enter the hall to pay respects Sunday.

The weekly Moscow News published a special issue dedicated to Sakharov. In it, Gorbachev wrote: “I feel great pain at this misfortune. Andrei Sakharov’s memory will be preserved forever in our country.”

Gorbachev personally freed Sakharov in December, 1986, after the scientist spent seven years in exile in interior industrial center of Gorky, where he was sent for criticizing the Soviet Union for its invasion of Afghanistan.

Once Sakharov returned to Moscow, he quickly moved to the forefront of radicals urging speedy reform of Soviet society.

But it was as a leader of the pre-Gorbachev dissident movement that he was remembered by many on Sunday.

“A man has died who was not silent even when many others could not muster courage to oppose injustice,” Mikhail Takki, a postgraduate student at Moscow University, was quoted as telling Tass.

“We should all make an effort to meet the unavoidable hardships of life as courageously and fearlessly as Andrei Sakharov did when he staunchly defended his ideals,” said legislator Vitaly Goldansky.

Artyom Budyansky, a 19-year-old soldier who asked for a special leave to view Sakharov’s body, said: “No one did as much for the struggle for human rights in the Soviet Union as Sakharov. His name will always be a symbol in the struggle for freedom of conscience and the democratization of public life in the Soviet Union.”

About 6,000 people passed by the body each hour, making for a total of more than 50,000, Tass reported.

Sakharov is to be buried today in a civil ceremony in the Russian Orthodox Vostyankovskaya Cemetery after a public commemoration in Luzhniki Stadium.