When genius becomes the greatest scourge
Published 08 June, 2009, 09:13
Andrey Sakharov’s scientific genius gave the U.S.S.R nuclear equality with the U.S. Some believe his invention helped prevent a Third-World War. But he was later to become a vigorous advocate of nuclear disarmament.
For Russian scientist Andrey Sakharov – the man behind the Soviet Union's hydrogen bomb – the enormity of his creation became his scourge. When embarking on the race to build the first Soviet atom bomb at the start of the Cold War, Sakharov believed the U. S. should not have a monopoly on thermonuclear weapons. His brilliance helped the USSR join the U.S. as a nuclear power – an atomic stalemate which, some say, helped avoid another world war.
“It determined the fate of mankind after all. We didn't have the third world war perhaps because the balance was restored,” says Boris Altshuler, physicist and Sakharov's colleague.
But as the two superpowers intimidated each other with their nuclear military might, Sarakhov became troubled by the power his scientific genius had helped unleash. He became vocal in demanding an end to nuclear testing – believing radioactive fall-out threatened all mankind.
Life of Andrey Sakharov, H-bomb creator and prominent humanitarian
The Tsar Bomb, developed by the Soviet Union under Sakharov, was the most powerful device ever exploded on Earth. It was tested in 1961 in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, despite Sakharov's desperate pleas not to. He later described his remorse with the words: “A terrible crime had been committed and I couldn’t prevent it! This was probably the most horrible lesson of my life – you can’t sit on two chairs.”
Andrey Sakharov said the arms race was pushing the world to the brink of catastrophe, and the only way out would be a reconciliation between socialism and capitalism. In 1968 he put pen to paper and called for greater freedoms in the Soviet Union. The article made huge news in the West, but got him fired from his work on nuclear weapons back home.
“It was terrible situation. Newspapers wrote that he was a foolish idiot, he had degraded as a scientist and was mentally ill; he became Mr. Nobody. It's the first step of killing someone, you know,” remembers Boris Altshuler.
Against all odds, Sakharov continued openly to support political prisoners in the Soviet Union, even at the expense of his friends’ and family's security.
“We suffered very much seeing that people around us were being arrested, some of them just for being close to us,” Helena Bonner, Sakharov’s wife, once said.
In 1975, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, but five years later he was sent to internal exile for condemning the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
“It was a major crime! It cost the lives of almost a million Afghan people. That's a terrible sin we have to deal with,” said Andrey Sakharov at the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR in 1989.
A man who spent almost twenty years making nuclear bombs was to become dubbed ‘The Conscience of the Soviet Union’. Through his later advocacy of nuclear disarmament, he was to become better known as a man trying to make peace, rather than weapons of war.
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