How did the Soviets silence Sakharov?

Question by asdfghjkl: how specifically did the Soviets silence Andrei Sakharov?

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Answer by az helpful scholar
He was arrested on January 22, 1980, following his public protests against the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and was sent to internal exile to a city of Gorky, now Nizhny Novgorod, a closed city that was inaccessible to foreign observers.

Between 1980 to 1986, Sakharov was kept under tight Soviet police surveillance. In his memoirs he mentions that their apartment in Gorky was repeatedly subjected to searches and heists. He remained isolated but unrepentant until December 1986 when he was allowed to return to Moscow as Mikhail Gorbachev initiated the policies of perestroika and glasnost.

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