The Making of Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov is one of the two or three greatest living Soviet scientists but is now banished and in public disgrace. The full irony of the situation became apparent recently with the Chernobyl disaster during which Sakharov, a renowned expert on radiation, remained unconsulted in the faraway city of Gorky. Sakharov is thought of by the Western public principally as a champion of human rights, but his interest in this and in detente has grown specifically out of his role in the development of thermonuclear weapons: "Without detente and the internal reform which it requires the actual scale of disarmament will be insignificant". As early as 1955 Sakharov had told Russian military strategists that the use of nuclear weapons would be a catastrophe.