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« Back to Unexpected Dissident: Andrei Sakharov main page   Transcript for: Unexpected Dissident: Andrei SakharovBen Wattenberg: Hello, Im Ben Wattenberg. The life of Russian physicistAndrei Sakharov spanned the years from Lenin to Gorbachev, from an expanding Soviet empire to the collapse of that empire. Sakharov was father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, a much-decorated hero of the Soviet Union, an exiled human rights activist, a Nobel Peace Prize-winner and a man who, with his wife, stared down the most dangerous government in the world. Who was Andrei Sakharov? To find out, Think Tank is joined by: Richard Lourie, translator of Sakharovs Memoirs and author of the first full biography of the Russian physicist. And Tatiana Yankelevich, daughter of Sakharovs wife Elena Bonner and assistant director of the Andrei Sakharov Archives and Human Rights Center at Brandeis University. (animation) Ben Wattenberg: Andrei Sakharov was an unlikely candidate to rock the Soviet ship of state. In 1948, the Kremlin chose the gifted young scientist to spearhead development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. Sakharovıs success in 1953, led to his designation as an official ³hero of the Soviet Union.² But in the early 1960s, Sakharov became deeply troubled by the deadly potential of the weapons he helped to create. As a leader of the dissident movement, he criticized the Soviet Unionıs human rights record. His courage in the face of Soviet repression won him the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. When Sakharov condemned the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, the Kremlin exiled him to the closed city of Gorky. Six years later, Mikhail Gorbachev ordered the physicist released as a symbol of the ³new openness.² In the last years of his life, Sakharov became an elected politician and was writing a new Soviet constitution. Ben Wattenberg: Welcome to Think Tank Tatiana Yankelevich and Richard Lourie. It is an honor to have you here. Richard Lourie: Thank you. Tatiana Yankelevich: Thank you, Ben. Ben Wattenberg: Let me begin by asking you a brief question. In the year 2000, Time magazine nominated Andre Sakharov as one of the hundred most important people in the world during the Twentieth Century. Why? Richard Lourie: He made the Soviet Union a super power by giving it the hydrogen bomb and by his human rights activity he helped to bring the Soviet Union down. Either one would have been a grand accomplishment, and he did both. Tatiana Yankelevich: No one in the post Second World War history did so much to furthering the course of democracy and freedom. Ben Wattenberg: Youıre the biographer Richard, start out at zero and give us a quick fill-in. Then weıll get up to the more political stuff. Richard Lourie: Well, he was born in 1921, that is just after the Revolution and the Civil War so he was born into Soviet history, although he was born into a family of the true Russian intelligentsia here with its values and virtues. He was schooled largely at home because it was a tradition in the family, and also to avoid the indoctrination that went along with Soviet education. Heıs a physicsı student at the University of Moscow. Now his is a fairly apolitical family. They were neither pro-Soviet nor anti-Soviet. I think everybody, in the early Twenties especially, was sick of war and suffering and the Communists promised a certain stability and there was this certain attraction to the intelligentsia anyway. Ben Wattenberg: But in 1939, when heıs what, a teenager, the big war starts. Richard Lourie: Sure. Right. The big war starts. Well, it starts in Thirty-nine, but Russia was only attacked in June of Forty-one and then in the Fall of Forty-one his class from Moscow State University is evacuated to Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, almost to Iran. Ben Wattenberg: Now, my understanding is that almost everyone served in the armed services during that war and yet Sakharov did not. What was that? Richard Lourie: Well, I think probably it waswhat? Tatiana Yankelevich: The whole class was actuallypractically the entire class of that year was shipped off, evacuated. Ben Wattenberg: Because they were regarded as an asset to Tatiana Yankelevich: Becauseyes, as some sort of intellectual asset. Yes. Richard Lourie:. It was simply a decision of why waste the brainy guys in the trenches. Weıll put the tough guys in the trenches and weıll put the brainy guys in the research end. It was a smart decision. It was a good one. Ben Wattenberg: Sakharov at that time was a communist? Tatiana Yankelevich: No. He never joined the party. Richard Lourie: Never joined the party, but Tatiana Yankelevich: He never joined the party. They probably tried to persuade him because a person of his standing, by the time he was involved in the hydrogen bomb project and working on the Installation, was considered someone fairly high up in the hierarchy, actually quite up in the hierarchy. And he was offered the chance. And then, in fact, they would have liked him in the party being the purely Russian guy that he is ethnically. But he has never joined the party. He always kept his distance and he stated his differences very clearly. Richard Lourie: Hereıs the distinction that I would make there, he was a very Soviet person in his early part of his career, a patriotic Russian and a patriotic Soviet Russian, I would call him. But not a Communist at all. He hadnıt thought much about these things but he was sort of a natural socialist. The intelligencer was not greedy. They didnıt believe in having too many material possessions. They believed in social justice. Socialism looked like a better avenue to that end. Ben Wattenberg: Now, itıs at about this time the atomic bombs are exploded in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and what does this do to the world of physics and Russian physics? Had they been at work on atomic weapons before the bomb? Richard Lourie: Sure. Tatiana Yankelevich: They were. Richard Lourie: Yes, they were. There was pause in it but then in sort of midway in the war was a funny little incident. I even knew this soldier, an old tough soldier, whoıd fought in four wars, much wounded, much decorated guy. They found a dead German, or they killed a German. They found this notebook full of these strange formulae, which they sent back to headquarters, which turned out that the Germans were looking for uranium in the parts of the Russia that they had conquered and that set off alarm bells all the way to the Kremlin. Ben Wattenberg: Was Sakharov uh? Richard Lourie: He wasnıt involved yet. He was asked a couple of times if heıd like to join in the project. Again, like with joining the Communist Party, he said, thanks but no thanks, because he wanted to do what he called cutting edge physics right after the war. He had devoted himself to defense work during the work. He wanted to get back to pure physics. And so twice he turned down invitations to work on atomic weapons development, and the third time they just said essentially youıre going. Ben Wattenberg: Right. When he is called the Father of Soviet H-bomb, what does that mean the Father of? He was the key scientist? Tatiana Yankelevich: Well, he always insisted that this was teamwork and that it could not have been done by any one person. But, in truth, his idea, his design, was the most productive and the most promising design. Ben Wattenberg: Does he have any misgivings about the nature of making such a horrific weapon at that point? Richard Lourie: He never seemed to. I mean, my take on Sakharov was that he was a very realistic person. When he was doing the war work, he believed in it. He saw that parity and patriotism was somehow a relateda related concept. Ben Wattenberg: Parity meaning that if the United States had the bomb? Richard Lourie: No, sure. Ben Wattenberg: There would be a balance of power. Richard Lourie: Sure, parity and patria were somehow related concepts. I mean they had just been invaded by a civilized western country known as Germany, thereıs no reason to have any special belief that the United States, which had just dropped two atomic weapons on Japan, then it would have been foolhardy for the Russians not to, especially given the climate after Forty-six. They wanted to have their own weapons. Ben Wattenberg: So the Russians make an A-bomb and then they make an H-bomb and can you tell us the distinction? Briefly, very briefly, very simply. Richard Lourie: No. One uses fission and the other one uses fusion. Essentially what Sakharov loved about the work was that stars like our sun work on the same principles. If you could understand how to unlock that energy essentially you would be unlocking the power of the sun. In fact, the temperatures created by these bombs are even greater than the temperatures on the sunon the surface of the sun. Itıs a magnificent achievement by human beings to be able to reach so deeply into the nature of matter and energy and come up with this, even though itıs being used to decimate cities, but in principle itıs a fantastic achievement. Ben Wattenberg: There was an argument in the United States among American atomic physicists, sort of between Edward Teller and J. Robert Oppenheimer, as to whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Did that split occur within the Soviet scientific community? I mean ultimately Sakharov changes and comes out for arms control and... Richard Lourie: He said that split existed in him. He said he was Teller in his youth and Oppenheimer later on. But in the beginning, he had no doubts and no guilt. Iım thinking he was not a kind of a person who was in that classic Russian Dostoevsky, self-lacerating tradition. He wasnıt like that at all. He was a man of great of integrity and equilibrium and not given to emotional excess. When he did the work on the bomb, he did it for the right reasons and when he turned against it, he did it for the right reasons. And so it was huge change, but not accompanied by operatic dramas. Tatiana Yankelevich: I would argue that there was no change. This is a very popular misconception that Sakharov went to human rights work, not that you have said anything of the sort, but itıs a popularitıs like a myth that exists in the popular consciousness in Russia as well as in this country. And everyone thinks that he repented and in remorse for what he has done he started doing human rights work and that is absolutely not the case. And actually to the very end of his life, he kept maintaining that the bomb was not only necessary in the immediate, but it was in the interest of humankind to create the parity, the balance most strategic weapons in the world and Ben Wattenberg: Did he also turn because he dwelt on the idea that the above-ground testing would ultimately cause cancer among people. Tatiana Yankelevich: Well he was actually the first person to write about it. Until he wrote about it no one really understood how terrible these effects may be in the long-run genetically speaking and so forth. Ben Wattenberg: Sakharov was already in the civil rights and human rights movement before he met your mother, before his first wife died, I think? Tatiana Yankelevich: Yes he was. He was being drawn into it after 1968 publication of his ³Reflections on Peaceful Existence and Intellectual Freedom,² which was a completely kind of maverick, if Iım using the word correctly, work because he was a complete loner.. He was not a part of any group. Ben Wattenberg: Well now, the Soviet government in 1968 was not allowing people to write freely about what they wanted to write about, were they? Richard Lourie: No. No, in fact; they were visibly invading Czechoslovakia because they were trying Ben Wattenberg: Reinvading them or whatever. So in that sense he breaks with the government. Are they displeased with this? Richard Lourie: To say the least. Well, just Tatiana Yankelevich: Not only displeased and not his career as it was is over. Richard Lourie: Itıs the end of his career as an atomic scientist. When he first calculated that there would be ten thousand deaths from cancer down the line invisibly for every megaton tested in the atmosphere, that was the beginning of his departure from the Soviet line And then he said, but of course we have to have weapons and of course we have to test them, but what we donıt need to do is have unnecessary tests because itıs putting fallout in the air thatıs going to kill people for no reason and thatıs when he began clashing with the leadership, of which he was a member. Not the political leadership, but he was a member of elite of the elite in the Soviet Union. Ben Wattenberg: This is still Stalinıs time? Richard Lourie: No, this is Khrushchev time. Tatiana Yankelevich: Nothatıs correct, under Khrushchev. Under what I like to call more vegetarian times. Ben Wattenberg: So he just lost his job. He wasnıt sent out to the gulag? Tatiana Yankelevich: No, he was not. He was too highly placed for that and, in fact, up until 1980 Politburo would not allow any action to take him forcibly out of Moscow. Richard Lourie: Heıs deeply at odds with the State and his thinking is now becoming much more independent and heıs starting to hammer out a view of the world for himself which he had never really bothered to do. He had a scientific vision of the universe before but he had never given great thought to the actual humanyou know, the world of international affairs. Ben Wattenberg: And then his first wife dies, and he meets your mother, right? Tatiana Yankelevich: His first wife died in March of 1968. The article was published uh, in New York Times in July of 1968 though it appeared in Europe it appeared sooner, in May I think. And then he leads a very lonely life except for several new friends from the human rights movement or dissident movement, which was at that time very vague, and of course he experiences the Prague Spring of which the elections is a result of, a direct one, and then August of 1968, which was of tremendously powerful shock and realization that this whole Socialist system will not allow itself to be rid of to be reformed into anything with a human face. Richard Lourie: Right. Thatıs right. Tatiana Yankelevich: And uh, another year and a half later he meets my mother and that was also a very important moment in his life. Ben Wattenberg: Richard, why donıt you tell me about that? Richard Lourie: Sakharov had already created a world sensation with this piece in the New York Times, which was really a book-length essay that the Times chose to publish in full. He had been fired from his job at the Installation. That was their name for their Los Alamos. He had already made his connections with the world of the dissidents of the human rights movement people, the activists. He knew a few of them. And itıs in fact itıs through one of him that he first spies Tanyaıs mother and is very taken with this woman that he sees as sort of this dynamic and vivid, very alive, dramatic woman who actually was so involved with talking to this other person that she never even noticed Sakharov. But he was instantly taken with her and thennow, why I want to go back and say that is because many people, this is another one of the myths about Sakharov. Much too much is made about the influence of Tanyaıs mother, Elena Bonner on Sakharov as if she radicalized him, as if she politicized him, as if she somehow seduced him from the straight and narrow of a good Soviet Russian way into this sort of world of dissidents and Jews and poets and Refusniks. She actually did have an enormous influence on him but in a completely different way. She opened him up emotionally. She was the great love of his life. He said, at one point I think, that he had what Goethe had called the great luck of a late love, which you know, they were both around fifty and they wanted to make every year count for three because they didnıt know how much time they were going to have together. And anyone who was with them for a minute felt this tremendous delight, almost embarrassing to be in their presence, the delight that they took in each other. Ben Wattenberg: How does the human rights movement develop? Richard Lourie: Historically I would say that under Khrushchev anti-Stalinism was part of his politics. He allowed the publication of One Day in the Life Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn, which created a sensation. Russians got a taste of free speech. They got a taste of free press. I mean in very relative terms. And then when the lid came back on people said, no, weıre not going to revert back to this subservience of Stalinist times, and so an underground formed Ben Wattenberg: How are they uh, organized? I mean, I was there a couple times during this time and youıd meet in peopleıs apartments and they would hold discussions and I gathered that their principle aim, or one of their principle aims was to gain publicity in the West, so that the Soviets would have to relax their hold on them. Is that about correct? Tatiana Yankelevich: Well yes and no. You have to remember that this was not a political movement. It was not a movement to overthrow power and to gain power. This was something that, forgive the high-flying style. This was something of an ethical movement Richard Lourie: Sakharov realized that his position was unique because he could speak to the West. He was essentially almost immune. He thought he was immune. He was immune until they finally forcibly exiled him. Ben Wattenberg: Shipped them off to the city of Gorky, which was a closed city. Right? Whatwhat does that mean, a closed city? Tatiana Yankelevich: Oh, closed. That means that foreigner couldnıt get there, but thatıs not the point. Throughout the Seventies the circle around the Sakharovıs was being closed up, tightened by the authorities, by the KGB. And finally the KGB gained what they always wanted, and free reign basically in Sakharovıs case, They have sent him away where they could monitor his every movement and control, and even manipulate his every movement. That they have never gained. Richard Lourie: The apartment was totally bugged so that if they really wanted to communicate to each other they would have to write each other notes. Sometimes using even those childrenıs magic slates, which they used to do in Moscow, but you knew your apartment was bugged. Every phone booth within blocks would be out of order so you couldnıt make a phone. People could not come up to you on the street. There was a policeman sitting out in front of your door. There was a police station across the street, a special post set up to monitor Sakharov. His radio was personally jammed. Ben Wattenberg: Tell us what happens when the electrifying news is received that Andrei Sakharov wins the Nobel Peace Prize? What happens within the movement? Tatiana Yankelevich: Well, this was a tremendous symbol of recognition of Human Rights Movement and thatıs what Sakharov said in his remarks, that were actually read by my mother because he was not allowed to go to Norway to accept his Nobel Peace Prize which is given by the Committee of the Norwegian Parliament and itıs the only prize thatıs not given in Sweden. She gave his address and that is exactly one of the things that he said, that this is a recognition of the contribution of the Soviet human rights movement into the peace movement. And I think that in this regard itıs very appropriate to remember that Sakharov was actually--we always say Father of Hydrogen Bomb but he also was the Father, or certainly the author of whatıs called Sakharov Doctrine, which is the indivisibility of human rights and international security. Ben Wattenberg: How does Gorbachev when suddenly the Perestroika and the Glasnost starts? Tatiana Yankelevich: Oh, Gorbachev needed Sakharov., and Gorbachev was smart enough at that time even though not immediately. He was in power for a year and a half before he realized that he needed Sakharov for the intelligentsia and for anyone who had any sense and heart in him to believe the policy of Perestroika. He needed Sakharov to be out of exile, so he finally liberated him after having been in power for a year and a half, and I wouldnıt say that itıs because Gorbachev was such a humanist or such a humanitarian figure. I think he was just being pragmatic. He realized that he needed Sakharov out of exile and he brought him back to Moscow. Ben Wattenberg: And yet they clash on certain issues. Richard Lourie: They clashed on the very first one. from the beginning to the end. Tatiana Yankelevich: They clashed. Sakharovıs support was never unconditional and he spoke of it openly. Richard Lourie: But he respected Gorbachev and he had hopes in Gorbachev. From the veryfrom the first time he saw Gorbachev speak, was while he was on a hunger strike and had been forcibly hospitalized, and he said, Russia lucked out this time. Weıve got an intelligent man. Tatiana Yankelevich: I just want to say that, to me, the Sakharov lesson if you will, or example and the meaning of his legacy is that not being a political man he assumed the responsibility of political activity. Ben Wattenberg: He actually becomes a political leader of some of the forces in Congress. Hereıs this man who had been exiled and then under Gorbachev he becomes a political leader with press conferences and everything else. Tatiana Yankelevich : Yes, and he was widely respected not only by dissidents and human rights activists of the former Soviet times but by general public and he won this respect and this trust in their in amazingly short period of time between his release in December of 1986 and his death less than three years later. Richard Lourie: Heıs a winner. I mean, Sakharovthereıs things that we should remember about Sakharov because his life sounds very serious. But I think he was a happy man. I think he was a lucky man and he was definitely a successful man. Nearly everything he did ultimately he succeeded. Towards the end of his life he quite clearly said that he couldnıt think of the universe as cold and dead and mechanistic. For him it pulsed with warmth, life, and meaning. Even in his Nobel Prize speech, the concluding phrases of his Nobel Prize speech rise almost to a kind of a mystic sense of the universe. And in the end he died as part of the Russia that he had envisioned and fought for. Ben Wattenberg: Thank you, Richard Lourie Richard Lourie: Thank you Ben Wattenberg. Ben Wattenberg: And Tatiana Yankelevich. Richard Lourie: Very good. Ben Wattenberg: And thank you. Please remember to send us your comments via e-mail. For Think Tank, Iım Ben Wattenberg. (credits) We at Think Tank depend on your views to make our show better. Please send your questions and comments to New River Media, 1219 Connecticut Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036. Or e-mail us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learn more about Think Tank, visit PBS on line at www.pbs.org, and please, let us know where you watch Think Tank. At Pfizer weıre spending nearly five billion dollars looking for the cures of the future. 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