Andrei Sakharov — The Scientist With No Fear
As J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the first successful detonation of a nuclear weapon as part of the Manhattan Project on July 16, 1945, a single piece of Hindu scripture ran through his mind: “Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Ten years later, on the other side of the globe, the USSR was celebrating the young nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov for his crucial role in creating the world’s first hydrogen bomb — but ironically, Sakharov felt exactly the same way Oppenheimer did. He had the choice to remain silent and enjoy a life of privilege. Instead, he chose a much more difficult path. Andrei Sakharov became the voice of conscience for many Soviet Union citizens, his courage and audacity inspiring the generation of our grandparents to rebel and become free thinkers.
The Cold War was a long period of tension between the democracies of the West and the mainly communist countries in Eastern Europe; the main ‘superpowers’ in the war being the USSR and USA. Although these two bodies never directly nor formally declared war on each other, they fought indirectly in proxy wars such as the space race. A majority of the proxy wars involved countries showcasing their technological advancements to each other in a hope of deterring the other party from attacking, and the arms race was exactly that: the idea of a large stockpile of weapons seems appealing to any country experiencing high tensions. On the 29th of August 1949, the USSR successfully tested its first atomic bomb and the world was in shock — no one had expected technological advancement to that extent, which ultimately sparked the rivalries and constant developments from both sides trying to overtake the opposition's latest test. Both sides spent billions on developing arms, and near the end of the Cold War an estimated 27% of the USSR’s total gross national product was being spent on the military — in 1961, it was estimated there were enough nuclear arms in existence to destroy the world. The end of the Arms Race ultimately came alongside the collapse of the USSR in 1991.
One of the masterminds of the USSR’s bomb development program was Andrei Sakharov, a nuclear physicist who is considered to be the father of the hydrogen bomb and an advocate of human rights. Descended from a lengthy line of Orthodox priests, Sakharov grew up in an environment in which he was exposed to physics from an early age, with his father Dimitri being the author of a series of prolific physics books. Although the USSR was founded when Sakharov was just 19 months old, he was mentally raised outside of it, being home-schooled for long developmental periods of his life. From a young age, he possessed a natural flair for and connection with physics — later in life one of Sakharov’s colleagues wrote that he could “mentally transform himself into [electrons or neutrons] as if his very skin could feel what it was to be them.” Although Sakharov’s isolated youth left him socially stunted in certain ways, he uniquely was taught the art of free thinking and grew up in an environment where it was encouraged — a luxury many living under the USSR did not have. In the second world war, he utilized his gifts for physics for patriotic use, developing new forms of bullet core testing in anti-tank guns and began to turn heads with his work. The Cold War began to get more heated in the summer of 1945 upon the USA’s detonation of Oppenheimer’s bomb, and Soviet bodies began scouting for new bright minds to work on bomb development. To Sakharov’s surprise, shortly after reading about the detonation himself, he was shortly contacted by Stalin’s chief of secret police, Lavrentiy, who insisted he join the USSR’s bomb development program.
Although he felt unease related to the possible repercussions of his developments in the future if he began working on bombs after seeing the scale of the 1945 American detonation, ultimately he agreed to join the programme and was torn away from his previous field of theoretical physics. Sakharov and his family were relocated to a secluded research centre known only as “The Installation”, in a secret town that had been removed from all publicly accessible maps for the security of project development. Although the reclusive nature of the research would potentially cause others to recoil and suffer, Sakharov indulged in it given the nature of his upbringing. The Installation was an oasis of free thought despite the fact it was closed to outsiders — the USSR agreed that physicists would need to think freely and explore in order to come up with and develop the research further, and Sakharov would remain there for 18 years. Before turning 30, Sakharov designed the “layer cake” structure of the Soviet hydrogen bomb which gets its name from the alternate layers of fusion fuel, which gets most of its energy from nuclear fission compared to fusion. The Soviet hydrogen bomb was first successfully tested in August of 1953, and Sakharov began to grow uncomfortable seeing the threats and lives his research could ultimately cost. Time went on and his research was expanded and more and more powerful thermonuclear weapons were created and co-designed by Sakharov: on October 30th, 1961 Sakharov would fully see the mass destruction he was able to cause.
The Tsar Bomba is the single-handedly most destructive thermonuclear weapon to ever have been detonated. Spanning over eight meters in length and harbouring a diameter of two meters, it was detonated over the Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean, and it produced the most powerful man-made explosion ever recorded. It yielded 50 megatons or the power of 3,800 Hiroshima bombs detonated simultaneously. The shockwaves from the detonation cracked windows in Norway and Finland, up to 1000 miles away from the blast site, and the hellish-looking mushroom cloud reached about 67.5km into the sky — the height of seven Mt. Everests piled on top of each other. If dropped on London, which has a population of six million, it would cause an estimated 5.8 million deaths and 3.4 million injuries, with a thermal radiation radius of 60km meaning everyone in that vicinity of the capital would receive 3rd-degree burns. Within a 6-mile diameter of the bomb site, known as the fireball, everyone caught within that area would be ‘vapourised.’
Having his doubts about the validity and ethics of bomb development growing inside him for multiple years now, the sheer destructive power of the Tsar Bomba acted as a tipping point for Sakharov. He saw the damage his invention would cause. Even though the victims were anonymous, many still unborn, Sakharov’s mental abilities to combine abstract with the real world helped him to visualise and imagine them.
Starting at this point we can see the journey of one of the most brilliant scientists of the 20th century in becoming one of the most passionate defenders of human rights who became vehemently persecuted and ultimately sent into exile. The first step in Sakharov’s transformation was the publication of his essay under the title “ Reflection on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom.” His ideas were very bold and non-conformist; he suggested that humanity could avoid nuclear and the ecological apocalypse through the “convergence” of the socialist and capitalist systems, which would each “adopt the most humane features of the other”.
What was needed to accomplish this form of global transformation, Sakharov wrote, was intellectual freedom to accept different ideas that can benefit humanity. The essay became known as Sakharov’s Manifesto.
Two years after the publication of his essay, Sakharov began to get further involved and joined a human rights committee created by the dissident Valery Chalidze. The term dissident was used for people who disagreed with Soviet ideologies and who were vocal in speaking out against Soviet leadership. Chalidze encouraged Sakharov to be bolder and more vocal, and he started attending political trials and collaborating with others in the Moscow dissident milieu. He began giving interviews to Western journalists and meeting visiting Western politicians, outwardly stating his views on the potential abuse of the hydrogen bomb among other ideas against the methods the government was using to address certain issues. His retention of free thought throughout his life and permission to function along those grounds only encouraged and amplified his fearlessness to speak out against what he viewed as wrong, making him an outlier of sorts. As his platform began to grow and he became more prolific not only for his scientific progress but for his humanitarian work as well, the Soviet government began to retaliate in the form of a propaganda campaign against him that they put out in the summer of 1973. It was reminiscent in the virulence and scale of Stalin’s era. However, Sakharov remained undaunted by the gradually increasing harassment he began to face and threw down the gauntlet to the Kremlin by continuing to write to Soviet and Western leaders on issues related to political prisoners and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He also addressed an open letter to the US Congress in support of a daring human rights initiative, and his continuous activism led to the West supporting the scientist, and in 1975 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The authorities were quick to react and rekindled an even bigger campaign of harassment that ended in exiling him to the city of Gorky where he remained for 8 years in what was essentially house arrest. He was under constant KGB surveillance, and when his wife was detained he began to go on hunger strikes and was hospitalized. In December of 1986, Sakharov received a phone call from the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev who personally put an end to his forced banishment. He was allowed to return to Moscow where he would become a prominent figure in the new national reforms and Sakharov helped draft a new constitution after being elected to the new parliament in 1989. His influence on Soviet intelligentsia was huge. For many people, he became of symbol of integrity and also a symbol of change and hope that democratic freedoms were possible.
In 2021, the world marked the centenary of the birth of Andrei Sakharov. Today he remains to be a powerful example of determination, honesty, and courage. If he was alive today, he would not approve of the lack of freedom of press and the disrespect of human rights in his country. Sadly, after a short period of tranquillity, the world is yet again threatened by the shadow of war. Voice and courage are needed more than ever today, and Andrei Sakharov’s story makes us reflect on the topic that alongside professional duties, we have civic duties as a citizen of the world.
