Film Shows Sakharov Discussing Chernobyl
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LONDON — British television Thursday night showed a video of Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei D. Sakharov criticizing the West’s reaction to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Aired by Britain’s independent network, the film showed Sakharov at his home in Gorky, where he has been in exile since 1980.
“The West has exaggerated Chernobyl,” Sakharov said. “Out of Chernobyl you have made a mountain. Chernobyl and Challenger (the U.S. space shuttle), these were both tragedies. That’s life.”
His comments were interspersed with typed comments from his wife, Yelena Bonner. Bonner, who is in London to meet with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today, is due to return to the Soviet Union on June 2 after six months in the West for medical treatment. “If my husband could speak, he would tell the truth,” she said.
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