Liza Alexeyeva reunited with husband

December 21, 1981

Soviet dissident Liza Alexeyeva arrived in the United States from Paris Sunday after winning a long struggle with Soviet authorities to join her husband.

She was greeted with a small round of applause by about 75 reporters and photographers who were waiting at Boston's Logan airport.

Miss Alexeyeva's husband-by-proxy, Alexei Semenov, had earlier made his way through customs for a private reunion with his wife, whom he had not seen for three years.

Miss Alexeyeva won an exit visa after a widely publicized 17-day hunger strike staged by Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner.

Mr. Semenov, a mathematics student at Brandeis University, is Mrs. Bonner's son by a previous marriage. He and Miss Alexeyeva were married by proxy in the state of Montana but the ceremony was not recognized by Soviet authorities.