As already reported (CCE 34.18 [20]), on 20 December A. D. Sakharov received a letter signed by ‘members of the Central Committee of the Russian Christian Party’; its authors threatened to settle accounts with Sakharov’s son-in-law, Efrem Yankelevich, and his one-year-old son.
On 6 January, at about five o’clock in the evening, two unknown men waylaid Yankelevich on a street in the settlement of Petrovo-Dalneye, a suburb of Moscow; they demanded that he ‘put an end to his activities’ and repeated threats from the letter, interspersing them with obscenities, Yankelevich is convinced that these two were KGB officials.
Sakharov is of the same opinion. On the same day he sent an open letter to Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, He writes:
“A year ago I listened to threats against members of my family from your colleagues masquerading as Palestinians.” (This refers to the visit Sakharov received in October 1973 from two men calling themselves members of the Palestinian terrorist organization ‘Black September’; see CCE 30, Chronicle.) “My wife also heard these threats at the time from investigator Syshchikov, dressed in the official uniform of your department.
“Arab Palestinians, a KGB investigator, false Christians, street hooligans — the wheel has come full circle. I demand that you cease this pressure on me.”
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Sakharov asks that the Yankelevich family be allowed to travel to the USA ‘for an unspecified time, but on Soviet passports’. He also asks that his wife, Yelena Bonner, be allowed to travel to Italy for treatment of a serious eye disease.
On 23 January the police reacted for the first time to the reports of the threats.
A. D. Sakharov was summoned to 38 Petrovka Street, where Major Levchenko talked to him. Sakharov told him about the incident in Petrovo-Dalneye; Levchenko said it was the first he had heard of it and inquired whether the Yankeleviches were connected with the criminal underworld. Levchenko advised Sakharov to limit the number of his visitors, otherwise the police would be unable to afford him reliable protection.
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A Chronicle of Current Events 