later some of these academicians themselves were arrested; and then third academicians, still alive, demanded the death penalty for them. Defending Sakharov, Orlov on 16 September 1973 wrote "Open Letter to L.I. Brezhnev about the Reasons for the Intellectual Backwardness in the USSR and Proposals to Overcome It" which appeared in underground samizdat circulation. The Western press published the letter in 1974 but publication in the Russian press was only in 1991. In the early 1970s, the article by Yuri Orlov "Is a Non-Totalitarian Type of Socialism Possible?" also appeared in underground samizdat circulation. In 1973, he was fired after becoming a founding member of the first Amnesty International group in the Soviet Union. In May 1976, he organized the Moscow Helsinki Group and became its chairman. Andrei Sakharov praised Orlov for systematically documenting Soviet violations of the human rights provisions of the Helsinki accords. Orlov ignored orders to disband the Moscow Helsinki Group when the KGB told him the group was illegal. The KGB head Yuri Andropov determined, "The need has thus emerged to terminate the actions of Orlov, fellow Helsinki monitor Ginzburg and others once and for all, on the basis of existing law." Arrest and trial On 10 February 1977, Orlov was arrested. In March 1977, Orlov published the article about his arrest "The road to my arrest." In a closed trial, he was denied the right to examine evidence and to call witnesses. The courtroom was filled with some 50 individuals selected by the authorities, while supporters and friends of Orlov, including Andrei Sakharov, were barred from entering because there was no room. Orlov's summation was interrupted many times by the judge and the prosecutor and by spectators who shouted "spy" and "traitor." According to Orlov's wife Irina, hostile spectators in the courtroom applauded the sentence and shouted: "You should have given him more." Orlov at the trial argued that he has a right to criticize the government and a right to circulate such criticism under the freedom of information provisions of the Helsinki Accords. Orlov also argued that he circulated such information for humanitarian, not subversive, reasons. On 15 May 1978, Orlov was sentenced to seven years of a labor camp and five years internal exile for his work with the Moscow Helsinki Group. Protests over Orlov's trial US President Jimmy Carter expressed his concern over the severity of the sentence and the secrecy of