Andrei Sakharov - Dissident Father of the Hydrogen Bomb
10 Dissidents Who Changed the World: #9
Andrei Sakharov was the inspiration for the democratic movement that polished off the Russian empire. Andrei Sakharov was also the USSR’s leading physicist and the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Andrei Sakharov was a bona fide paradox if ever there was one.
Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921. His father was a private school physics teacher, and devout atheist. His mother was a pious Christian. Both parents raised Sakharov to value human decency, mutual respect, and hard work.
After primary school, he entered Moscow University, where he quickly impressed his professor, Igor Tamm—winner of the 1958 Nobel Prize in physics.
Tabbed as one of his country’s brightest young minds, he was exempted from military service during World War II. Instead, he went to work at a munitions factory.
Hydrogen Bomb Dreams
In June 1948, after Sakharov earned his doctorate, Igor Tamm recruited him to spearhead the development of the hydrogen bomb. Only months after going to work at a top-secret installation, Sakharov dreamed up a new hydrogen bomb design.
But, following a test of one of his bombs in 1955, Sakharov began to be disturbed by his own creation:
When you see the burned birds who are withering on the scorched steppe, when you see how the shock wave blows away buildings like houses of cards, when you feel the reek of splintered bricks, when you sense melted glass, you immediately think of times of war… All of this triggers an irrational yet very strong emotional impact. How not to start thinking of one’s responsibility at this point?
Sakharov began sending letters to Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, and writing articles about the biological hazards of radiation. He explained how halting nuclear tests would directly save hundreds of thousands of lives.
Despite his efforts, on October 30, 1961, the largest bomb ever made was tested over the Arctic Sea.
Tsar Bomba
Codenamed Ivan by its developers, the Soviet hydrogen bomb was known as Tsar Bomba in the West.
The 50 megaton bomb was so big, a parachute had to be attached to make the bomb drop slow enough for the release and observation planes to escape the range of the eventual 25-mile-wide mushroom cloud.
Blast damage reached 600 miles away. The seismic shock was measured circling the earth three times. The energy produced was 1% of the power output of the sun.
Sakharov Turns World Dissident
After failing to prevent further nuclear tests, Sakharov decided he could no longer participate in the murder of innocent people. By the end of 1962, he realized that freedom, compassion, and truth could not coexist with a nuclear arms race and state communism. He risked everything to start campaigning for disarmament, and he denounced the Soviet system’s intolerance of dissent. And his voice did have an effect, such as the Soviets signing the first Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963.
Then in 1968 Sakharov wrote Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. In part, the essay reads:
Intellectual freedom is essential to human society — freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open-minded and unfearing debate and freedom from pressure by officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economics and culture.
A copy of the essay was smuggled out from behind the Iron Curtain and published in the New York Times. Following the publication, Sakharov was fired from the Soviet weapons program and found himself in the international human rights spotlight.
Hard-boiled Gorky Exile
Sakharov’s wife of twenty years died in 1969, but he remarried in October 1971. His new bride was fellow human rights activist, Yelena Bonner. With her help, Sakharov became a figurehead in the Soviet dissident movement, and in 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. Although Sakharov wasn’t allowed to go to Norway, Bonner, who was out of the country for an eye operation, accepted the prize for him and read his acceptance speech.
Then, in 1979, Sakharov denounced the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet authorities had had enough, and were quick to exile Sakharov to Gorky, a small city 250 miles east of Moscow. There, for seven years, he was cut off from friends and colleagues, and constantly harassed by the KGB.
Finally, in December 1986 under the new policies of perestroika and glasnost, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev invited Sakharov to return to Moscow. For the next three years, Sakharov got to travel the world. He died of a heart attack in his home in 1989.
Dissident Hero
Sakharov’s crusade for human rights and his refusal to be silenced have made him a hero to common citizens around the world. And his fight to protect freedom of thought and expression from overwhelming intolerance and fanaticism has made him one of my favorite 10 Dissidents Who Changed the World.
Go to the next article in this series:
Daniel Ellsberg - Dissident Leaker of Pentagon Papers
Go to the previous article in this series:
Samuel Adams - Dissident Founding Father.
Go to the series index:
10 Dissidents Who Changed the World.
Read More: Sakharov, dissident, hydrogen bomb, Tsar Bomba, USSR
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March 27th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Very inspiring. But also be prepared for a lot of grief.
Good series Joe. I really need to balance all my negative with some positive.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:57 am
Thanks for this. Like Xman says, I also need to balance all my negative with some positive.
March 27th, 2007 at 10:14 am
Sometimes I like to think of the world as an exercise gymn. There’s a lot of “evil” to push against, and pushing against it exercises and tones up our souls. But we shouldn’t get discouraged because we don’t get rid of evil anymore than a person entering a gymn should get discouraged because the free weights didn’t stick to the ceiling. Probably a bad analogy, but…well, I’m full of bad analogies ;-)
March 27th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Sakharov impressed me in his last days. I remember the gutsy outspoken way he shook things up.
I reckon good and evil are always latent in us all. It’s up to us what we manifest.
March 28th, 2007 at 9:02 am
I get you, Joe.
My problem is depending on my perspective upon waking everyday, is that the weights change position….which ties in with Indigo: I see the bushie types defining good as killing, robbing and raping, while wrapped in the flag and the church…at the same time they are telling us to murder, rob and rape is bad and they will put us away if we do (evil). Then when I used to go to the Zen ranch north of SF, the Zen types would say there is no good or evil. While my mother says I know instinctively what is good and evil. Then I watch “Planet Earth” on Discovery and see the wolves or hunting dogs just going about their business in a way that is just nature….and very much like the bushies do.
March 28th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Lynne touches on something that’s been bugging me lately. It sort of goes to shooting the messenger:
Am I being negative for commenting on a an observation of something easily taken as negative? Or am I just being neutral? Like if I say “You puked on my shoes…” am I being negative? And it wouldn’t really help to square the circle by following it up with “Lovely day, innit?
March 29th, 2007 at 6:52 am
I think every situation can be reframed as positive or negative. For instance, you could react, “You puked on my shoes, idiot–you got cancer or something?” Or, you could react, “You puked on my shoes…you’ll feel a lot better now that it’s all out.”
For me, it takes a lot more life energy to be positive, but it’s something to strive for…to reframe every situation into a positive. But I think there’s a big difference between being positive and blind to truth (like when the Prez says the situation in Baghdad has been improving) and manipulative lying needs to be revealed and laid out in the open. Just my $.02 (and I haven’t had my coffee yet, so I don’t know if any of this made any sense…)
March 29th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
So, Joe, everything is subjective?
I thought I made a good case for the dispassionate, objective perspective.
We are speaking more of reactionary response (and delusion), rather than actual analysis of the nature of value judgment.
My views on this changed once I learned to set aside my personal tastes and to recognize, as art, work that I personally thought of as something akin to puke on shoes.
So, say you make coffee, and discover the beans have turned rancid… when you then say “this coffee sucks”, you’re not being negative, you’re just making an honest, and objective, observation.
On the other hand, I think positivism feeds on itself, but it’s just plain fun to be cynical and sarcastic…and downright negative.
March 29th, 2007 at 5:37 pm
I agree, it’s fun to be cynical…Andy Rooney has taken it to an art form. I wanna be like him. I Like Andy, darn it. I have two of his books. He’s a real American Hero.
But, as to your coffee comment, saying it sucks is not objective, because “suck” is a negative judgement, right? I’m sure somebody would decide they prefer rancid coffee. After all, somebody decided to try coffee that came out of a monkey’s butt. Now it’s the most expensive coffee in the world. ;-)
March 29th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Good point, that some might like rancid coffee, but, nominally, it is just an observation that the coffee has gone bad, it has no intrinsic negativity (especially if rancidity is valued). It is positively rancid. Absolutely. Cheers!?
A negative would be derisive, like someone saying “Joe, your coffee making sucks.” Which might be said to be an objective observation, unless you used your Mr. Coffee just like millions of others, precisely as per Joe D.’s instructions. Then, it might be said “Joe, your coffee-maker sucks.”
Sucking can be positive, negative, or neutral -it all depends on the situation, the sucker, and the suckee. (Sorry for this, but I had to jolt my attention from monkeybutt coffee).
March 29th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
HahhahaaAHhahha…LOL at that last paragraph. You explained it all well, and I agree wit’ ya’, Indigo…rancid is really just a state of the coffee. I get it now. And thanks for reminding me of those Dimaggio commercials…I think we all miss Dimaggio, even if he was just pitching coffee makers.
May 10th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
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