In this interview, Arnol'd says the following:
My personal relation with Pontriagin was rather good. He invited me to his house and to his seminar and showed genuine interest in my work, especially on singularity theory. This was partially due to our common interests in differential topology and control and game theory. The main reason, however, was that he wanted to say something against me at an international meeting. Pontriagin was then the Russian representative in the International Mathematical Union (IMU) and had done a lot to prevent any vote for dissident Russians. (I was blacklisted because I, along with 99 other mathematicians, had signed a letter protesting the imprisonment of a perfectly healthy Soviet mathematician in a psychiatric hospital. This was the standard method of eliminating dissidents.) The IMU had always been very political, and he succeeded.