MOSCOW () -- Former Soviet dissident Yelena Bonner appealed to Russia's increasingly fractious democratic movement Tuesday to discard internal differences in the face of the threat of authoritarianism.


"Your disunity deprives us of reference points -- not only political, but also moral," said Bonner, a human rights campaigner and widow of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Andrei Sakharov. Bonner's open letter was published in Tuesday's editions of Segodnya.


The letter, addressed to Yegor Gaidar, Grigory Yavlinsky and Boris Fyodorov, who lead the three largest reformist factions in parliament, said only their unity would allow Russia to become a democratic nation.


"If that fails, one can write off our immature democracy," Bonner said.