WEBVTT - Andrei Sakharov: The Physics of Protest 0:00:00.600 --> 0:00:04.360 Nuclear explosions are caused by weapons such as h bombs 0:00:04.480 --> 0:00:08.240 or atom bombs. They are like ordinary explosions, only many 0:00:08.280 --> 0:00:12.520 times more powerful. They cause great heat and blast. They 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.120 also make a cloud of deadly dust which falls slowly 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:19.599 to the ground. This is what is called fall out. 0:00:22.600 --> 0:00:26.599 In my mind, real visceral fear of nuclear war just 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:31.840 seems so twentieth century. Yes, I am showing my privilege, 0:00:32.320 --> 0:00:35.519 but I think of old black and white videos of 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:43.920 duck and cover drills, of children hiding under their desks 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:48.159 in their school classrooms with their heads down, of mushroom clouds, 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.840 and guys with nasally accents warning me about the threat 0:00:51.880 --> 0:00:55.440 of communism. You are the target of those who would 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:58.280 travel the liberties of free men. You are in the 0:00:58.320 --> 0:01:01.280 cross hairs of the bomb site. An enemy is centering 0:01:01.360 --> 0:01:04.520 on you. You are a citizen of the pre world, 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:09.600 a citizen of the United States of America and the 0:01:09.720 --> 0:01:15.959 sanctity of US democracy. I think of the Cold War 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:19.800 and a time when segregation was the norm and people 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:23.319 were free from the soul sucking grasp of social media. 0:01:24.360 --> 0:01:28.240 But I know that's a skewed perspective. It's not just 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:31.880 a problem of the past. It could still happen within 0:01:31.920 --> 0:01:35.920 our lifetime, not saying that in an alarmist way, just 0:01:36.160 --> 0:01:40.080 in a realistic way. That's a scary proposition, and it 0:01:40.160 --> 0:01:43.679 always has been. But the violence of war is justified 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:47.559 by those who wage it, the messages the path towards 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:51.120 justice or peace will be littered with casualties, and that 0:01:51.240 --> 0:01:53.920 nuclear destruction may be the price you have to pay 0:01:54.040 --> 0:01:57.920 to reach that end. Many people support the use of 0:01:58.040 --> 0:02:01.440 nuclear weapons if they believe will save lives of people 0:02:01.480 --> 0:02:04.680 in their own nation or in their favored group. And 0:02:04.800 --> 0:02:07.760 even when the threat of nuclear war looms, the issue 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:10.560 is not top of mind for many people, and they 0:02:10.600 --> 0:02:13.919 don't take action to try to prevent it, sometimes because 0:02:14.000 --> 0:02:17.200 it's not clear whether their action would even make a difference. 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:21.640 But some people have rejected the encouragement of nuclear warfare 0:02:22.200 --> 0:02:26.040 compelled to political action in order to protect human rights. 0:02:30.240 --> 0:02:33.760 I'm eas Jeff Coote and This Is Unpopular a podcast 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.760 about people in history who didn't let the threat of 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:42.679 persecution keep them from speaking truth to power. Andre Dmitrivich 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:46.560 Saharov was born into a family of relatively well off 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:51.320 intelligentsia in Moscow in ninety one, the year before the 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.200 Soviet Union was established in Stalin became General Secretary of 0:02:55.200 --> 0:02:58.639 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His father was 0:02:58.680 --> 0:03:01.320 a physicist who wrote tech books and taught at the 0:03:01.400 --> 0:03:05.240 Linen Pedagogical Institute, and his mother took care of the family. 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:09.880 Andre was educated at home by his father and private tutors, 0:03:10.320 --> 0:03:13.680 perhaps due to his parents distrust of schooling and standards 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:17.120 of Soviet education, until he was about thirteen when he 0:03:17.200 --> 0:03:22.200 started going to school. But Andre continued learning outside of school, 0:03:22.520 --> 0:03:26.520 developing an interest in science fiction and science books, photography, 0:03:26.560 --> 0:03:29.800 and physics. In nineteen thirty eight, he enrolled in the 0:03:29.840 --> 0:03:34.560 physics program at Moscow State University. Three years later, Germany 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.760 invaded the Soviet Union. At this point, physics students began 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:43.520 contributing to the war effort. Andre extinguished bombs, repaired radio 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.040 equipment for the army, and invented a magnetic device for 0:03:47.120 --> 0:03:51.360 finding strapnel and injured horses. While other physics students were 0:03:51.400 --> 0:03:55.120 accepted into the Air Force Academy, Andre did not pass 0:03:55.200 --> 0:03:59.400 his medical exam. Instead of going into military service, he 0:03:59.480 --> 0:04:02.200 was moved with the remaining university students and faculty to 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:06.200 Ashkhabad in Central Asia, where he finished his studies. He 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:15.000 graduated with honors in nineteen forty two. Andre turned down 0:04:15.040 --> 0:04:18.920 an opportunity to go to graduate school and study theoretical physics, 0:04:19.320 --> 0:04:22.720 opting to work at a cartridge factory in Olyanovsk, a 0:04:22.839 --> 0:04:27.000 city on the Volga River. Soon he was transferred to 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.760 the Central Laboratory's metallurgical department, where he met his first 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:33.880 wife and created a method for testing the armor piercing 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:37.599 steel corps of fourteen point five millimeter bullets for anti 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:42.920 tank guns. But in nineteen forty five, the same year 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:46.520 the world's first atomic bombs were dropped over Japan, Andre 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.320 decided to return to physics and began graduate work at 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.560 the p n Elevative Institute of Physics of the Soviet 0:04:53.560 --> 0:04:58.200 Academy of Science. There he worked under Russian physicist Igor 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:01.720 tam who went on to see the nineteen fifty eight 0:05:01.800 --> 0:05:05.440 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with his colleagues for discovering 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:10.480 Charon cough radiation. He produced scientific papers and gave lectures 0:05:10.480 --> 0:05:14.120 on nuclear physics and electricity, and he earned his candidate 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:17.400 of Doctor of Science degree similar to a doctorate, for 0:05:17.520 --> 0:05:20.640 his research into cosmic right theory in nineteen forty seven, 0:05:23.360 --> 0:05:25.960 Andre had turned down invitations to work on the Soviet 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:30.440 atomic bomb project twice, choosing to continue working with Tam, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.000 but as fate would have it, he would soon began 0:05:33.120 --> 0:05:38.400 working on bombs anyway. In nineteen forty eight, he and 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.039 Tam co authored the paper the Outlined a principle for 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:45.400 the magnetic isolation of high temperature plasma, the last the 0:05:45.440 --> 0:05:49.480 mainstream science world heard from them for two decades. As 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.359 the Cold War geared up and the Soviet Union prepared 0:05:52.400 --> 0:05:55.240 to go up against you as nuclear power, Tam and 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.520 his team, including Saharof, were pegged to help research the 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:02.720 feasibility of a thermoew clear bomb. The hydrogen bomb or 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.520 H bomb, nicknamed the super bomb, was the next step 0:06:06.560 --> 0:06:14.680 in the evolution of nuclear weapons. Saharrof helped develop the 0:06:14.760 --> 0:06:19.799 first Soviet thermonuclear bomb. Realizing the so called Trouba design 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:22.080 that the Soviets were initially working off of for the 0:06:22.240 --> 0:06:25.600 H bomb was problematic, he proposed a new design on 0:06:25.720 --> 0:06:29.000 as sloka, or a layer cake as it's been translated. 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:33.480 In this design, alternating layers of deuterium and uranium will 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:36.320 be placed between the fisile core of an atomic bomb 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:40.400 and the surrounding chemical high explosive. Another of Tamp's students, 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:44.719 Vatali Ginsburg, built on this design. Sahhar Off was also 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:48.679 instrumental in the conceptualization of the Tacomac reactor, a device 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:54.080 that can produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. In nineteen fifty 0:06:54.120 --> 0:06:57.280 the H bomb team was transferred to what was known 0:06:57.320 --> 0:07:00.680 as the Installation, a research and develop upment center in 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:05.000 a secret Soviet city. On August twelfth, nineteen fifty three, 0:07:05.400 --> 0:07:13.680 a layer cake model hydrogen bomb was detonated. Saharof was 0:07:13.720 --> 0:07:17.320 honored with full membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences 0:07:17.360 --> 0:07:20.480 with the first of three Hero of Socialist Labor medals 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:23.880 he received and with a Stalin Prize, a huge salary, 0:07:24.040 --> 0:07:26.760 and a country house. And he went on to do 0:07:26.800 --> 0:07:30.080 more work on the H bomb, making major contributions to 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:32.720 the design used in the Soviet H bomb tested in 0:07:32.800 --> 0:07:37.120 nineteen fifty five. Throughout all this time he was improving 0:07:37.120 --> 0:07:40.280 the AGE bomb. He was convinced that his work would 0:07:40.280 --> 0:07:44.120 help defend the Soviet Union and prevent a nuclear war. 0:07:45.000 --> 0:07:48.880 He maintained a perspective of socialist idolism and thought this 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:52.640 was a path toward peace. He felt it was essential work. 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:56.640 I couldn't ignore how horrible and inhuman our work was. 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.800 But the war that had death ended was also inhuman. 0:08:00.280 --> 0:08:02.920 I wasn't a soldier in that war, but I felt 0:08:02.960 --> 0:08:06.800 like one in the scientific and technological war. He said 0:08:06.840 --> 0:08:09.560 that it was psychological that the work made it seem 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:12.400 like all the sacrifices they had made in devastation they 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:15.480 had suffered through the Second World War was not for nought. 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.320 But in the late nineteen fifties, the potential consequences of 0:08:20.360 --> 0:08:25.200 atmospheric nuclear testing began to weigh on his conscience, leading 0:08:25.240 --> 0:08:28.480 to a complete one eight in his beliefs about nuclear weapons. 0:08:31.120 --> 0:08:47.040 We'll be right back after this quick break. The ethics 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:49.480 of the work Andre saw her Off and everybody else 0:08:49.520 --> 0:08:53.040 working on nuclear bombs was doing is sticky stuff. The 0:08:53.080 --> 0:08:56.960 morality of building and constantly refining a weapon specifically made 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.920 to kill hundreds of thousands of people in service of 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:04.800 political goals is questionable, regardless of a person's intent. I mean, 0:09:05.080 --> 0:09:07.480 the topic of the ethics of war as a whole 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.480 is a can of worms that you probably don't want 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:16.600 to open at a dinner table. Saharab's thermonuclear research does 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:20.880 have more practical applications and peaceful uses. But I think 0:09:20.920 --> 0:09:25.120 it's fair to say that Sav's work, despite the brainwashing 0:09:25.160 --> 0:09:29.760 influence of Soviet propaganda and Saharav's noble intentions, was not 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:34.120 the most honorable and decent work. At the bottom line, 0:09:34.559 --> 0:09:37.839 he would be implicated in thousands of potential deaths in 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:41.280 all the other health and environmental effects nuclear weapons have. 0:09:44.760 --> 0:09:47.040 It's hard to change our minds on the big issues 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.760 and things we feel strongly about, let alone change other 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:54.720 people's minds. Climate change, for instance, is pulling people in 0:09:54.800 --> 0:09:59.880 different directions right now. Some say the world is changing 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.280 as it always has, while others believe we're living in 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.679 the anthroposcene, a new epoch where humans are causing a 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:11.240 major change on the climate and environment. Pew Research Center 0:10:11.360 --> 0:10:14.640 survey showed that in most of the twenty six countries surveyed, 0:10:14.960 --> 0:10:18.240 majorities saw climate change as a major threat to the nation. 0:10:18.800 --> 0:10:21.920 At the same time, many people in those countries saw 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:25.120 climate change as a minor threat or no threat at all. 0:10:25.880 --> 0:10:28.520 And in the US, there is a wide gap between 0:10:28.520 --> 0:10:32.800 Democrats and Republicans on the issue, with Republicans being way 0:10:32.880 --> 0:10:35.480 less likely to say climate change is a major threat. 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:38.679 All that's to say that opinion can be split on 0:10:38.720 --> 0:10:42.280 an issue even when a scientific consensus has been reached, 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:46.160 in this case, that human activities have caused climate change, 0:10:47.000 --> 0:10:49.920 Especially when the issue goes beyond disagreement over facts and 0:10:50.040 --> 0:10:56.320 into the territory of politics and emotions. Still, people's opinions 0:10:56.400 --> 0:10:59.200 do shift, as a study out of Yale and George 0:10:59.200 --> 0:11:03.480 Mason University showed people change their minds about global warming 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:06.720 for a number of self reported reasons, but mainly because 0:11:06.720 --> 0:11:09.520 they experienced the impacts of it, because they took it 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.080 more seriously, and because they became more informed on the issue. 0:11:14.400 --> 0:11:18.400 Everybody thinks they're right, Everybody has an opinion. No one 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:22.400 reads anymore. Everyone's divided. The Internet is making us stupid. 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:27.320 No one thinks for themselves. Tribalism, YadA, YadA, YadA. I 0:11:27.559 --> 0:11:30.600 can be that grumpy get off my lawn person if 0:11:30.640 --> 0:11:33.840 I want. The fact is we're capable of switching our 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:37.559 tunes and reaching new conclusions on issues over our lifetime. 0:11:38.120 --> 0:11:40.480 And when it comes to challenging other people to think 0:11:40.520 --> 0:11:45.480 differently and opposing accepted values and systems, it is possible 0:11:45.520 --> 0:11:50.360 to get people to evaluate their beliefs and potentially change them, 0:11:50.400 --> 0:11:54.520 even when it's about super controversial issues like warfare and 0:11:54.600 --> 0:12:03.040 weapons of mass destruction. Garian American physicist Edward Teller, dubbed 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.280 the father of the hydrogen bomb, claimed that the US 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.720 had developed a so called clean bomb with a negligible 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.920 amount of radioactivity. He claimed that the dangers of radioactive 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.920 fallout from such bombs was equivalent to being an ounce 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:21.600 overweight or smoking one cigarette every two months. Most of 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:25.200 the physicists at the installation agreed that radioactive fallout was 0:12:25.240 --> 0:12:28.319 not an issue that anyone needed to really worry about. 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:32.800 In nineteen fifty seven, Igor Kurchatov asked Andre to write 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:36.720 an article denouncing the clean bomb without talking about regular 0:12:36.760 --> 0:12:40.880 thermal nuclear weapons. But Andre went beyond the political and 0:12:41.000 --> 0:12:44.160 propagandistic aims of the assignment in his nineteen fifty eight 0:12:44.200 --> 0:12:49.360 journal article. Based on his calculations made using available biological data, 0:12:49.800 --> 0:12:53.360 a megatent blast from a clean h bomb would create 0:12:53.520 --> 0:12:57.559 enough radioactive carbon to kill six thousand, six hundred people 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:02.840 over eight thousand years. That assessment was pretty similar to Tellers, 0:13:02.880 --> 0:13:07.600 but framed differently. Rather than minimize the effect on human lives, 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.400 Sahrov's numbers emphasized that people were actually going to die 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:15.160 because of the fallout, not just have days chopped off 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.680 for their lifespan. The more testing of h bombs, the 0:13:18.760 --> 0:13:21.800 more people would die, and people should not take lightly 0:13:21.840 --> 0:13:27.199 their responsibility in this harm. What moral and political conclusions 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.040 must be made from these numbers, he wrote. Stopping tests, 0:13:31.040 --> 0:13:35.240 he said, would save thousands of lives and reduce international tensions. 0:13:36.000 --> 0:13:39.200 The Soviet government had called for a temporary moratorium on 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:43.120 nuclear tests, and that moratorium lasted for about two and 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:46.400 a half years, But in nineteen sixty one, when Soviet 0:13:46.480 --> 0:13:51.480 leader Nikita Krushchev revoked the moratorium, saw Harov objected. He 0:13:51.559 --> 0:13:54.560 argued that starting testing again would not do much for 0:13:54.600 --> 0:13:58.839 them technically, but he had next to no Soviet support. Still, 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:02.800 saw Harov obey orders from Kruschev to start preparations for testing. 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:06.280 He headed the development of the fifty megatime so called 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:10.480 star bomb, tested in October of nineteen sixty one, It 0:14:10.640 --> 0:14:14.840 was the most powerful bomb ever exploded on Earth. Saaf 0:14:15.120 --> 0:14:19.720 began to feel a personal and professional responsibility for preventing 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:23.280 the harms of fallout. He believes that, in his words, 0:14:23.680 --> 0:14:27.720 atmospheric nuclear testing was a crime against humanity and no 0:14:27.960 --> 0:14:31.720 different than pouring deadly germs into a city water reservoir. 0:14:32.680 --> 0:14:36.360 He tried unsuccessfully to prevent the testing of two bombs 0:14:36.400 --> 0:14:40.200 in nineteen sixty two, but his efforts to stop atmospheric 0:14:40.280 --> 0:14:43.560 nuclear testing did pay off. Saw her Off, with the 0:14:43.560 --> 0:14:47.160 help of his colleague Victor Adomski, proposed the idea of 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:51.920 a partial band. In nineteen sixty three, the US, Great Britain, 0:14:52.000 --> 0:14:55.720 and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Band Treaty, 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.840 which banned the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:04.800 the atmosphere, and underwater, but let tests continue underground. Sahrov 0:15:05.120 --> 0:15:08.400 stayed at the installation, which he said would allow him 0:15:08.440 --> 0:15:11.760 to continue his work in banning testing, but he began 0:15:11.920 --> 0:15:17.080 focusing on fundamental science again, publishing papers on cosmology. He 0:15:17.200 --> 0:15:21.680 supported people who faced political discrimination and persecution, and he 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:25.960 continued to write about nuclear disarmament, intellectual freedom, and the 0:15:26.040 --> 0:15:30.480 need to establish civil liberties in the Soviet Union. When 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.960 anti ballistic missile defense became a key issue in US 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:38.360 Soviet relations, saw Harof advised Soviet leaders to accept an 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:42.720 American proposal for a moratorium on the defenses. He feared 0:15:42.760 --> 0:15:45.480 the technology. When an insight in arms rates and undermine 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:50.120 the stability that mutually assured destruction brought. He asked to 0:15:50.160 --> 0:15:53.760 publish his argument in the Soviet press, but leadership denied 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:57.480 that request, so in nineteen sixty eight he self published 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.120 an essay called Reflections on Progress. He full coexistence in 0:16:01.120 --> 0:16:06.280 intellectual freedom, circulating it in an underground typewritten format. The 0:16:06.400 --> 0:16:10.960 essays spread to other countries. In the essay, Saharof called 0:16:11.040 --> 0:16:14.640 for disarmament and warned people of the threats humanity faced. 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:21.520 Those included thermo nuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine and uncontrolled 0:16:21.560 --> 0:16:27.400 population explosion, alienation and dogmatic distortion of our conception of reality. 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:32.320 As Saharof put it, he denounced stalinism and criticized repression 0:16:32.320 --> 0:16:36.000 in the Soviet Union. He promoted the conversions of communists 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.840 and capitalist systems in a form of democratic socialism, as 0:16:39.880 --> 0:16:43.080 well as cordial relations between the US and Soviet Union, 0:16:44.080 --> 0:16:49.479 and he emphasized the importance of freedom of opinion. Intellectual 0:16:49.520 --> 0:16:53.920 freedom is essential to human society. Freedom to obtain and 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:58.680 distribute information, freedom for open minded and unfearing debate, and 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:03.520 freedom from pressure, officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:06.600 freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.960 of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:14.920 treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:18.640 Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility 0:17:18.960 --> 0:17:23.320 of a scientific, democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture. 0:17:24.119 --> 0:17:26.359 But freedom of thought is under a triple threat in 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:31.000 modern society from the deliberate opium of mass culture, from cowardly, 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:35.560 egotistic and philistine ideologies, and from the ossified dogmatism of 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:41.880 a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship. Therefore, 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.480 freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and 0:17:45.560 --> 0:18:02.080 honest people. Let's take a quick break. The essay got 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.480 lots of attention in the Soviet Union and abroad. After 0:18:05.520 --> 0:18:09.800 its publication, Sahrov was banned from all military related research. 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:14.199 He turned to theoretical physics and human rights work. In 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:18.200 nineteen seventy, he and other Soviet dissidents formed the Moscow 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:22.800 Human Rights Committee. He wrote text criticizing the Soviet government 0:18:22.840 --> 0:18:27.080 that earned him international recognition. After his wife died, he 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:30.600 remarried to a doctor named Yelena Bonner, who was also 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:34.240 an activist Saharav spoke out on many different issues of 0:18:34.320 --> 0:18:37.359 human rights, from the exile of the Tatar people of 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:42.200 the Crimea to the government's use of punitive psychiatry. As 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:45.480 he became known more for his activism, the Soviet Union 0:18:45.480 --> 0:18:48.760 and the press expressed their discontent with Saharov and his actions. 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.959 Members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences signed open letters 0:18:53.000 --> 0:18:57.720 that denounced him, newspapers published letters attacking him. Still, in 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:01.720 nineteen seventy Sarev won the Nobel Peace Prize for his 0:19:01.880 --> 0:19:05.479 human rights activism in opposition to the abuse of power. 0:19:06.200 --> 0:19:08.840 The Soviet Union refused to give him permission to travel 0:19:08.920 --> 0:19:11.560 to Norway to get the prize, so his wife got 0:19:11.600 --> 0:19:15.919 it for him. When Saharav publicly opposed the nineteen seventy 0:19:16.000 --> 0:19:19.640 nine Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and called for a boycott 0:19:19.680 --> 0:19:23.199 of the Olympics in Moscow, the Soviet Union responded by 0:19:23.280 --> 0:19:26.440 stripping him of his honors and exiling him in Gorky, 0:19:26.920 --> 0:19:29.320 a city on the Volga River, and cutting off his 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:33.679 contact with friends and colleagues. He remained there for seven years, 0:19:34.040 --> 0:19:37.679 subject to surveillance and harassment by the KGB or Soviet 0:19:37.760 --> 0:19:41.280 secret police. Bonnard was also banished to Gorky for her 0:19:41.359 --> 0:19:51.560 anti Soviet activities. During his time in exile, Sahara wrote 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:56.000 memoirs and appeals for persecuted human rights activists. He also 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:58.840 wrote essays that were published in the Western press and 0:19:58.960 --> 0:20:02.600 went on hunger star in protest of the Soviet government's actions. 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:06.280 In December of nineteen eighty six, with a new policy 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:10.560 of Paris Stroika or moderate political and economic restructuring, Soviet 0:20:10.680 --> 0:20:14.680 leader Mikhail Gorbachev let Bonner and Saharof return to Moscow. 0:20:15.640 --> 0:20:20.280 Sahara began traveling abroad and meeting with politicians. In nineteen 0:20:20.320 --> 0:20:22.920 eighty nine, he was elected a member of the First 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:27.280 Congress of People's Deputies representing the Academy of Sciences, and 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:31.840 his honors were restored. Saharaf continued to advocate for human 0:20:31.960 --> 0:20:34.800 rights in Soviet reform until he died of a heart 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:41.439 attack on December fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine, in Moscow. Andre 0:20:41.600 --> 0:20:45.120 Saharov's story is far from a tale of lifelong commitment 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:49.840 to human rights, fearless resistance, and perfect human decency. It's 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:53.240 not quite the tale of the apathetic, cruel grinch growing 0:20:53.400 --> 0:20:56.480 his heart to three times its original size, either, but 0:20:56.640 --> 0:20:59.440 his story does have a reversal worthy of any well 0:20:59.520 --> 0:21:05.480 written by a graphical drama. Sahrov had a hand in 0:21:05.560 --> 0:21:07.920 the production and testing of weapons that would do harm 0:21:08.000 --> 0:21:11.080 to and kill a lot of people. He continued to 0:21:11.119 --> 0:21:14.800 work in the military industrial complex even as his advocacy 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:19.040 for peace, human rights, and disarmament grew. His willingness to 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.000 think and reevaluate the work he was doing and its consequences, 0:21:23.119 --> 0:21:25.480 led to him using the power and the privilege he 0:21:25.560 --> 0:21:28.240 had to fight for human rights and speak out against 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:33.000 Soviet ideology and actions. Sahrov's dissidents took time to develop, 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:36.000 but the outcome was a person who promoted peace and 0:21:36.160 --> 0:21:44.520 progress and inspired political change. What Sav's evolution can show 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:47.920 us is that drastic changes in thought and action are 0:21:48.040 --> 0:21:53.320 not impossible. Education, critical thinking, and awareness of actionable solutions 0:21:53.640 --> 0:21:57.280 can spark a consciousness that empowers people to question values 0:21:57.440 --> 0:22:10.560 and systems that may be right for cha. Ange our 0:22:10.640 --> 0:22:15.399 producer is Andrew Howard, Holly Fry and Christopher Hasciotis are 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:18.600 our executive producers, and you can subscribe to the show 0:22:18.720 --> 0:22:22.280 on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:26.640 you get your podcast and if you are so inclined, 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:30.200 You can send us an email at Unpopular at I 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:37.399 heart media dot com. We'll be back next week with 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:39.600 another episode of Unpopular