Sakharov was Murdered, Sobchak Said in an Article He Couldn’t Get Published in 1998

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 14 – Thirty years ago today, Academician Andrey Sakharov died at the age of 68, silencing one of Russia’s most important moral voices. On this anniversary, a Moscow newspaper has published an article Anatoly Sobchak wrote in 1998 but was unable to get published in which he suggested that Sakharov like Galina Starovoitova was murdered.

            Sobchak’s widow, Senator Lyudmila Narusova, says that her late husband, the former mayor of St. Petersburg, wrote the article “Sakharov, Starovoitova – Who’s Next?” in Paris in December 1998 because he did not believe the official version that his partner in the Inter-Regional Deputies Group died of natural causes.

            Unfortunately, she continues, all the Moscow and St. Petersburg outlets in which Sobchak tried to publish this explosive material refused; and as a result, it has remained in her family archive until now (mk.ru/politics/2019/12/13/andreya-sakharova-ubili-otravlyayushhim-veshhestvom-neizvestnaya-statya-sobchaka.html).

            “I do not believe in the natural death of Sakharov. It was too unexpected” for both his friends and political opponents, Sobchak wrote.  Instead, he argued, Sakharov’s opponents from the nomenklatura killed him as they later killed Galina Starovoitova because of his immense moral authority and influence.

            The timing of Sakharov’s demise also raises suspicions, Sobchak argued. He died “not long before the planned all-union miners strike, the initiator and inspirer of which he was and also on the eve of the Second Congress of Peoples Deputies, thus “essentially weakening the position of democratic forces” and giving a victory to “the ruling nomenklatura.”

            Narusova says that Sobchak had been told by a chemist he knew that Sakharov was killed by a substance which stops the heart without leaving a trace.

            Sergey Lukashevsky, director of the Sakharov Center, says that there were suspicions about Sakharov’s death in the 1990s but that they had been dismissed by the academician’s widow Elena Bonner. And Lukashevsky stressed that the Nobelist really did have a weak heart because of his life in exile and hunger strikes (echo.msk.ru/news/2554253-echo.html).

            In his view, the head of the Sakharov Center continues, Sakharov died of natural causes but Russians are ever more ready to believe that he was murdered because “everyone sees the large number of murders and attempted murders” that the government doesn’t thoroughly investigate and that many are prepared to believe the Kremlin is behind.

            “This is a very sad, alarming and horrific symptom,” Lukashevsky adds. “And given this background, of course, those suspicions and concerns which were expressed in the 1990s take on a completely different aspect now.” What is ironic is that now the Sakharov Center itself has been labelled a foreign agent by the Putin regime.

            Sobchak himself died two years after writing this hitherto unpublished article, and there were suspicions about his death as well. But after an investigation, they were dismissed (newsru.com/russia/14dec2019/saharov_sobchak.html).