Longtime dissident Andrei Sakharov, now a member of the Soviet parliament, warned Saturday the Soviet Union may be on the brink of a political clampdown similar to the one in China.
Sakharov spoke at the end of a two-day visit to the University of Groningen, where he received an honorary law degree for his efforts on behalf of human rights in the Soviet Union."I am afraid that something like what is happening in China could happen in the Soviet Union," Sakharov told reporters through an interpreter. "The political activity of the masses has increased greatly in the Soviet Union, and the political leadership is getting scared.
"Mikhail Gorbachev must gather enough common sense and realism not to create new reasons for conflict but to solve the outstanding problems instead. That is the only way to avoid a disaster. The country is on the brink of catastrophe."
Sakharov said that President Gorbachev should speed up the pace of democratic reform in a country where there is "no good economic structure and no possibility for scientific and technological progress."
"There is an unprecedented loss of confidence in the political leaders. The situation in the country is similar to that of 1917 when the communist monopoly was established," he said. "That ended up costing tens of millions of people their lives."
Sakharov said a crackdown similar to the brutal suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations in China could occur in the Soviet Union, where Gorbachev's policy of "glasnost," or openness, has brought into the open long-standing grievances, especially among the nation's many ethnic groups.
Sakharov's wife Yelena Bonner, who accompanied the physicist on his third foreign trip, complained the Soviet Union was attempting to combat problems such as unemployment without spending much on education.
"More than 40 million people live below the minimum existence level which itself is extremely low," Bonner said.
Sakharov received his honorary degree Friday in the presence of Holland's Queen Beatrix.