The Passing of Yelena Bonner

Yelena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov and a noted human rights activist, passed away on June 18, 2011, in Boston.

As long as she was alive, it was as if Sakharov himself were still living.

Yelena Bonner was Andrei Sakharov’s representative in our world. And it is a rather difficult thing to represent a deceased husband, particularly one like Sakharov, inventor both of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and the Soviet human rights movement, laureate of the Stalin and Nobel Prizes. Yet Yelena Georgievna nonetheless succeeded.

I met Yelena Bonner toward the end of the summer of 1972. Sakharov had invited me to his house to sign two documents he had compiled that were very important: an address to the anniversary session of the USSR Supreme Soviet (it was the USSR’s 50th anniversary) that called for an amnesty to political prisoners, and a petition to repeal the death penalty.

It was during that visit to Sakharov’s apartment that I first met Yelena Bonner. She had just returned to Moscow from Mordovia, where she had attempted, unsuccessfully, to meet with two prisoners sentenced to death for organizing a large group of Jews’ capture and theft of a plane to fly to Sweden, and thence on to Israel. They were saved by a lucky coincidence. In Spain, which was still under the rule of the fascist Franco, a group of Spanish antifascists were awaiting the death penalty. But, on the eve of their punishment, thanks to media pressure from democratic countries, they received a reprieve. After that, the Stalinists in the Kremlin could not but set aside the two prisoners’ death sentence.

Right then, sitting over glasses of tea and listening to Bonner’s stories of Mordovian camps, I sensed her iron will. Alongside her, Sakharov seemed gentle, which in reality he was. Yet it was the gentleness of a great scientist, behind which was concealed great wisdom. Gradually, with time, I came to appreciate that Bonner, in her character, temperament, and her interactions with others, was Sakharov’s antipode. She paid absolutely no attention to what people thought of her, and often was very harsh.

It was a mystery to me how Bonner and Sakharov got along with each other. But “getting along” was not the right word. They were actually fused one to another. And the fact that Bonner herself was a person of great distinction played, apparently, a decisive role in the fact that, after Sakharov’s death in 1989, she was able to represent him to the world, in the true sense of carrying on his mission.

Bonner’s articles on topical political issues were clear, persuasive and drew the attention of people from all corners of society, at home and abroad. One often had the impression that she received the texts of her articles from Sakharov, or that he had edited them. An example of this was an article in which she wrote about her youth in the Second World War, when she was a nurse at the front. “I Dream of a Different Nation,” the article was titled. I read it with tears in my eyes, and wrote to Yelena Georgievna that Sakharov surely took part in the writing of this article. “Well, we do have an astral connection!” she replied.

There were, however, instances when her “astral connection” with Andrei Dmitriyevich was lost. The saddest example was during the standoff at the White House in October 1993, when Bonner supported Yeltsin’s constitutional coup, aimed at liquidating the foundations of democracy in the country. But the connection was soon restored, and Bonner publicly admitted that she had made a “tragic mistake” in supporting Yeltsin. Indeed, admitting one’s mistake is not a common occurrence in modern Russian politics.

Some of my friends in Russia attributed Bonner’s error to the advance of age. Perhaps, but I think the more reasonable explanation is that she had been living for many years outside Russia, and she had gotten a bit out of touch with the situation there. In fact, it is a great shame upon Russia and its leaders that the wife of such a great Russian had to spend her final years abroad. She was not directly forced to leave, but merely fled the overbearing rudeness, cruelty, idiocy and other delights of political and intellectual life in that country, all of which are rather tedious for an elderly person.

According to Yelena Bonner’s wishes, her ashes are to be buried in Russia, alongside the grave of her husband.