Yelena Bonner - Marriage and Children

Marriage and Children

In medical school she met her first husband, Ivan Semyonov. They had a daughter, Tatiana, in 1950, and a son, Alexei, in 1956. Her children emigrated to the United States in 1977 and 1978, respectively.

Bonner and Semyonov separated in 1965, and eventually divorced. In October 1970, while attending the trial of human rights activists Revol't (Ivanovich) Pimenov and Boris Vail in Kaluga, Bonner met Andrei Sakharov, a nuclear physicist and human rights activist. The previous year, 1969, Sakharov had been widowed from his wife, Klavdia Alekseyevna Vikhireva, with whom he had two daughters and a son.