Perestroika is in danger, one of the Soviet Union’s leading human rights advocates, Andrei Sakharov, has told a prominent Soviet Jewish activist in Israel.
Sakharov, a Nobel laureate and member of the Soviet parliament, passed the warning to Natan Sharansky in a telephone call from Moscow, the Jerusalem Post reported Sunday.
Sakharov phoned the former fellow prisoner of conscience Saturday night to cancel plans to attend a scientific conference at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot next month.
He said he could not come because a meeting of the Supreme Soviet “fateful” to the future of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev’s program of perestroika, or reconstruction, will be held at the same time as the scientific conference.
Sakharov warned that conservative elements working against Gorbachev are gaining power in the Soviet Union, the Post reported.
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