Short Takes : Widow Wants Sakharov’s Name Dropped From Peace Prize List
The widow of Andrei Sakharov said today that she has asked the Nobel Prize Committee to delete her husband’s name from the list of peace laureates because she did not want it to appear near that of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.
“I am asking you to delete the name of Andrei Sakharov from the list of Nobel Peace Prize winners,” Yelena Bonner quoted her letter as saying.
Bonner, speaking by telephone, made it clear that she was undertaking her action in protest of the Soviet army crackdown in Lithuania on Sunday in which 14 people were killed. She blamed Gorbachev for the military action.
Her letter said: “Gorbachev, as the leader of the country, is responsible . . . for today’s events in Lithuania, staged according to the same scenario as Berlin 1953, Budapest 1956, Prague 1968 and Kabul 1979.”
Soviet authorities banned nuclear physicist Sakharov, who became a human rights activist as well as longtime dissident, from attending his 1975 Nobel award ceremony.
He won the peace laureate for his defense of individual freedom. Bonner received the prize for him in Oslo.
Sakharov died in December, 1989.
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