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Gorky Tutor to Detention A year ago, famed Russian scientist Andrei Sakharov was sentenced to forced detention in the provincial town of Gorky for expressing his opposition to the Communist regime. He is in fact the Soviet Union’s most celebrated political prisoner. His wife, Yelena, is the only person authorized to have contact with him, and she has given the following description of the circumstances of his detention to the French weekly l’Express: “We are always followed in the streets of Gorky by two or three persons. Ifwegoto the movies, a black Volga automobile with three people inside tails us. Because of these ‘guardian angels,’ Sakharov can’t even use the telephone. When we go to the post office to try to telephone, one of the guards in civilian clothes hurries to the long-distance switchboard and the inter-city lines are immediately cut. Once Sakharov was able to outwit his shadows and telephone to the institute in Moscow where he used to work to ask his colleagues to send him scientific books he needed for his work in Gorky. The result was that they cut off the institute’s telephone for three days. The same thing goes for letters. Only a part of our mail arrives, and we found out recently that the authorities often sign the receipts for registered letters addressed to us. For Andrei, there is no question of emigrating. What he wants from the West now is some material help for our adopted daughter Liza, who has been refused a visa for the United States where she wants to rejoin her fiancé. After an American scientist who visited Moscow expressed anxiety about Sakharov’s living conditions, my husband received a visit from three of his colleagues. The KGB thus wanted to make the West believe that he could maintain normal relations with the scientific community. As for the future, I am pessimistic, as I have always been. I am pessimistic because I am convinced that our rulers always carry out to the end what they have undertaken.”

Warsaw Economic Straits Representatives of 15 of Poland’s Western creditors met recently in Paris and will meet again at the beginning of April to see if all or part of the country’s huge $25-billion debt to the West can be refinanced or otherwise more safely carried. If they fail, not only is the Polish economy threatened with immediate default in respect of those sources of money most necessary to it, but it will of necessity become enfeoffed to Soviet handouts. About one-third of the debt is owed to Western governments and two-thirds to Western commercial banks. The Poles would like the whole debt rescheduled, and the governments concerned are willing to work hard to accomplish this. The assumption is that patchwork arrangements will be made on both levels, until some general rescheduling can be worked out. But meanwhile Poland continues to seek further Western credits it needs just to keep functioning. The banks reply that they want to see exactly what the government in Warsaw can offer in the way of economic reforms and stability before advancing any further sums.

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Gorky Tutor to Detention A year ago, famed Russian scientist Andrei Sakharov was sentenced to forced detention in the provincial town of Gorky for expressing his opposition to the Communist regime. He is in fact the Soviet Union’s most celebrated political prisoner. His wife, Yelena, is the only person authorized to have contact with him, and she has given the following description of the circumstances of his detention to the French weekly l’Express: “We are always followed in the streets of Gorky by two or three persons. Ifwegoto the movies, a black Volga automobile with three people inside tails us. Because of these ‘guardian angels,’ Sakharov can’t even use the telephone. When we go to the post office to try to telephone, one of the guards in civilian clothes hurries to the long-distance switchboard and the inter-city lines are immediately cut. Once Sakharov was able to outwit his shadows and telephone to the institute in Moscow where he used to work to ask his colleagues to send him scientific books he needed for his work in Gorky. The result was that they cut off the institute’s telephone for three days. The same thing goes for letters. Only a part of our mail arrives, and we found out recently that the authorities often sign the receipts for registered letters addressed to us. For Andrei, there is no question of emigrating. What he wants from the West now is some material help for our adopted daughter Liza, who has been refused a visa for the United States where she wants to rejoin her fiancé. After an American scientist who visited Moscow expressed anxiety about Sakharov’s living conditions, my husband received a visit from three of his colleagues. The KGB thus wanted to make the West believe that he could maintain normal relations with the scientific community. As for the future, I am pessimistic, as I have always been. I am pessimistic because I am convinced that our rulers always carry out to the end what they have undertaken.”

Warsaw Economic Straits Representatives of 15 of Poland’s Western creditors met recently in Paris and will meet again at the beginning of April to see if all or part of the country’s huge $25-billion debt to the West can be refinanced or otherwise more safely carried. If they fail, not only is the Polish economy threatened with immediate default in respect of those sources of money most necessary to it, but it will of necessity become enfeoffed to Soviet handouts. About one-third of the debt is owed to Western governments and two-thirds to Western commercial banks. The Poles would like the whole debt rescheduled, and the governments concerned are willing to work hard to accomplish this. The assumption is that patchwork arrangements will be made on both levels, until some general rescheduling can be worked out. But meanwhile Poland continues to seek further Western credits it needs just to keep functioning. The banks reply that they want to see exactly what the government in Warsaw can offer in the way of economic reforms and stability before advancing any further sums.