SAKHAROV

This is the story of a brilliant scientist who was at the heart of the 20th century developments in sub-atomic physics and cosmology, but yet also was a social visionary, an activist for human rights, and at the end of his life reached out towards a synthesis between mankind's scientific understanding and its spiritual yearnings. Such a person would be well worth a biography whoever they were, but what makes this book especially poignant is that it is the life history of Andrei Sakharov who was born just after the Russian revolution, grew up in the time of Stalin's terror, and is generally recognised as the father of the Russian H bomb. Sakharov's father's family came from the liberal intelligentsia who opposed the Tsars. but who were overwhelmed by the revolution when it came. His mother came from the military aristocracy. The Sakharovs kept their heads down and Andrei's father was a science teacher. Their lives were squalid and poor, but better than the famine and destitution around them. Bookish, reserved, with few friends, and uneasy with girls, Andrei Sakharov was the typical scientific genius. Although his academic record was uneven, his teachers recognised his exceptional talents. His interest was in theoretical physics, but he was quickly recruited into the team that was to develop the Soviet H bomb. This was at the end of Stalin's reign of terror, but Sakharov was a patriotic Russian who wilfully blinded himself to the horrors of the Soviet state, and like the rest of the privileged elite, ignored the prison slave labour that made their work possible. In producing a Russian H bomb, it was never his intention to obliterate London or New York. His intention was to protect Russia from nuclear blackmail by the West and achieve a balance through mutual disarmament. After the successful test of the Russian H bomb, Sakharov bombarded the Soviet leadership with ideas on how to achieve mutual disarmament with the USA. The more his appeals to Communist ideals of world brotherhood were ignored, the more he began to question the legitimacy of the Soviet state. At first he was regarded as a naive eccentric who had allowed the honours heaped upon him to go to his head. But then he began to be regarded as a dissident, particularly when he took up the cause of other dissidents less highly placed than himself. After Stalin, political unreliability was no longer rewarded with a bullet in the back of the head or exile north of the Arctic circle, but Sakharov and his second wife were subject to all the humiliations and restrictions of an oppressive police state including internal exile. Only after Gorbachev came to power was Sakharov able to enjoy the international esteem to which his work in theoretical physics entitled him. He died in 1989 still involved in agitation for a new democratic constitution for Russia. This is a moving story, but it leaves several mysteries. The first, which should not now be a mystery at all, is how exactly did the Russian H bomb work. Readers of this book should be capable of understanding a diagram, and even the odd formula. The second mystery is what exactly Sakharov's contribution was. The crucial nature of his work was recognised by everyone, but at no time was he nominally the man in charge. The third mystery is the inner life of a man who comes to recognise the corruption of a regime that everyone else is brainwashed into accepting, and then has the courage to denounce it, when those around him he respects keep silent. How does a scientist who has been a life long rationalist come to recognise a spiritual dimension to existence? Of necessity Lourie can only catalogue the outward actions. The gestation of the private thoughts was inevitably secret, but how one longs to know them. This is the saga of someone brought up in a closed repressive society who sought for truth, and then proclaimed it courageously. Sakharov's story is heartening, just the account of the cowardice of most of his colleagues is depressing. It is a book worth reading.