ENDNOTE

On the 19th of December 1986, as Mr and Mrs Roberts, defectors to the West, were making their plans to covertly return to Europe to bury their son, Andrei Sakharov, the world’s best-known human-rights activist at the time, was released from nearly seven years’ detention in Gorky by Mikhail Gorbachev, the new General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Greg, Mary, Theo, Natalie and Sergei, the latter a friend of Gorbachev, could be forgiven for believing in some small way that by their actions and sacrifices they may have influenced the Soviets in their adoption of perestroika and glasnost, and moved them just a little bit closer to peace with the West.

R.G.