Brilliant
young physicist, Andrei Sakharov, helped to develop the Soviet
nuclear bomb, but after witnessing the devastating effects of
nuclear tests, he became concerned about the weapon he had helped
create. In the 1960s, he began to speak out against the dangers
of the nuclear arms race and nuclear testing, and played a major
role in convincing the Soviets to agree to the Partial Test Ban
Treaty in 1963. But in 1967 when he advised the Soviet government
to work with the US to reduce the nuclear arms race, he was forbidden
to discuss his ideas in public. The next year he wrote an essay
entitled "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual
Freedom", expressing his ideas of halting the arms race and calling
for greater freedoms in his country, and was banned from participating
in all military-related research.
Sakharov
continued his activism, co-founding the Committee on Human Rights
in the USSR in 1970, and faced more pressure and condemnation
from the Soviet government. In 1980, after openly protesting against
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he was exiled and kept under
strict police surveillance. In the mid-1980s his wife, who had
also been exiled, was in desperate need of medical attention,
but the Soviet government would not let her leave the country
to have heart surgery. Sakharov went on several near-fatal hunger
strikes over the next two years until she was finally allowed
to receive the medical treatment she needed. In 1986, Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev, who helped bring about more political and social
freedoms in the Soviet Union, allowed the Sakharov's to return
from exile. Andrei Sakharov helped to create the first legal independent
political party and was elected to the new parliament in 1989.
During
his years of struggle for human rights and calls for international
cooperation despite the oppression by his government, Sakharov
was an international source of inspiration. He was awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1975, although he wasn't allowed to leave
the country to receive it; was the inspiration for the Sakharov
Prize for Freedom of Thought created by the European Parliament;
and was honored as Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist
Association in 1980.
