Sakharov’s public denunciation of the invasion of Afghanistan, he
and his wife were exiledto Gorkiy, a closed provincial city to the east
of Moscow. His treatment in Gorkiy was atrocious. His wife was de-
nied access to physicians for her eye disease. But in December 1986
the KGB installed a telephone in Sakharov’s apartment so that
Mikhail Gorbachevcould call with the news that he could return to
Moscow. In the last three years of his life, Sakharov played a critical
role in the development of nascent secular political institutions. Un-
til his death he quietly nurtured political reformers and dissidents in-
terested in creating a law-based state.
Andropov and the KGB’s persecution of Sakharov and his wife
discredited the Soviet Union in the eyes of Westerners and many So-
viet intellectuals. The dissident movement in the Soviet Union was at
most a small and inchoate group and never presented a danger to the
Communist Party. The prosecution of Sakharov and a Nobel laureate
like Solzhenitsyn did the Soviet Union far more harm than good.SAMIZDAT. To avoid Soviet censorship, Soviet dissidentsproduced
samizdat(self-publishing) political documents, which were hand-
written, mimeographed, or photocopied. The most famous samizdat
publication was the Chronicle of Current Events, which tracked the
dissident movement in the Soviet Union. Samizdatincluded religious
tracts as well as popular literature. Many Russian intellectuals who
had written only “for the drawer” used samizdatto publish their
thoughts. The KGBwas never totally able to shut down samizdat.
Nevertheless, the KGB and conservatives in the Communist Party
leadership reacted strongly to the problem posed for them by the pub-
lication of a few thousand pages of material.SAVCHENKO, SERGEI ROMANOVICH (1904–1966). After al-
most two decades of service in the Border GuardsDirectorate,
Savchenko was transferred to the Ukrainian NKVDin 1938 as
Lavrenty Beriapurged the security service. During the Great Pa-
triotic War, Savchenko worked behind Nazi lines in the Ukraine
and was promoted to lieutenant general in 1945. He was highly dec-
orated, receiving the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Ban-
ner, among other decorations. From 1949 to 1953, he served as chief
of foreign intelligence. Savchenko was a mediocre chief; he had noSAVCHENKO, SERGEI ROMANOVICH (1904–1966)• 23106-313 P-Z.qxd 7/27/06 7:57 AM Page 231