Dissident Marchenko Dies at Age 48 in Soviet Prison

MOSCOW — Anatoly Marchenko, a Soviet imprisoned or sent into internal exile for more than two decades because of his dissident activities, has died in prison at age 48, his wife was told today in a telegram.

A Moscow friend said Larisa Bogoraz, Marchenko’s wife, left for Chistopol Prison with the couple’s 13-year-old son, Pavel, immediately after receiving the telegram.

The friend, speaking anonymously, said the telegram did not say when Marchenko died or give the cause of his death.

Soviet authorities recently pressured Marchenko’s wife to emigrate to Israel with her husband and son. Bogoraz is Jewish but has no relatives in Israel. Marchenko is not Jewish. She said then that she believed he was on a hunger strike and being force-fed in prison.

Marchenko was a prominent dissident and a member of the disbanded Helsinki Watch Group that tried to monitor Soviet compliance with the 1975 accord on human rights. He wrote the dissident chronicle “My Testimony” about his labor camp experiences.

He had spent more than 20 years in prison and internal exile for dissident activities and was in the middle of a 10-year sentence on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

The 10-year sentence was to have been followed by five years of internal exile, which would have run until 1996.