Andrei Sakharov's Internal Exile (1980-1986)
Soviet physicist and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov was exiled to the closed city of Gorky after criticizing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He was denied contact with the outside world for six years. His wife Yelena Bonner was also confined. He undertook multiple hunger strikes.
Sakharov was isolated but continued writing and protesting, including hunger strikes.
Mikhail Gorbachev released Sakharov in 1986 as part of glasnost reforms. He became a leading voice for democratic change until his death in 1989. Regime change, not international pressure, freed him.
Mohammadi's new sentence includes two years of internal exile to Khosf, a remote city in eastern Iran—echoing Sakharov's punishment. Like Sakharov, she has used hunger strikes to protest. The parallel suggests that only fundamental political change in Iran would secure her freedom.