Star of the era. How academician Sakharov became a Nobel laureate. Academician A. D. Sakharov. The sudden departure of A.D. Sakharov was elected a People's Deputy of the USSR

Andrei Sakharov is hailed as a cult figure by his supporters. the creator of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. The measure of morality. Freedom fighter. And many others. A symbol of something bright and good. Even selfless. But who was he really?

An avenue in Moscow bears his name, on which he never lived. And a nearby museum, where people who receive grants from Russia's geopolitical rivals usually gather for their events.

In the late 1980s, when Gorbachev brought him back from Gorky to Moscow, there were people who expected either political or moral revelations from Sakharov.

Andrei Sakharov. RIA Novosti / Igor Zarembo

True, after he took the rostrum of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, many were clearly disappointed: poor diction, slurred speech, empty thoughts.

And there was also a clear unethicalness of the statements: many then, under the influence of “perestroika propaganda”, were negatively disposed against the participation of Soviet troops in the war in Afghanistan and were traumatized by rumors about closed coffins coming from there, but they were also jarred by the words of this man, who named those who fought there Soviet soldiers"occupiers".

Was he the creator of the hydrogen bomb in fact - to judge the physicists. Officially, he was a member of the group that worked on it. True, his colleagues in the specialty are somehow evasive about his contribution, vaguely asserting that "he, of course, was a competent physicist." And sometimes it was said that his part of the contribution to the development of the bomb echoed too much with the contents of a letter from some obscure provincial colleague.

Others also say that Igor Kurchatov signed his submission for election to the Academy of Sciences in order to solve his housing problem.

Some, in response to a question about his role in creating the bomb, suggest thinking about why the person proclaimed to be its creator did not create anything in science equal to this invention. Not even in military affairs, but in peaceful nuclear physics.

But these are issues of corporate recognition. And here to understand the physicists. He himself became more interested in politics. And appeals to morality.

For example, when he was once told that in the struggle for the happiness of people and the future of mankind, there are no sacrifices, he was indignant and said: “I am convinced that such arithmetic is fundamentally wrong. We, each of us, in every deed, both "small" and "large", must proceed from concrete moral criteria, and not from the abstract arithmetic of history. Moral criteria categorically dictate to us - do not kill.

And in the draft Constitution he composed, he pathetically wrote: "All people have the right to life, freedom and happiness." Whether the people of the country, in whose destruction he took part, have become freer and happier - everyone can judge this for themselves.

In 1953 he was made an academician - at the age of 32.

By the end of the 1950s, he would propose to stop new developments in the field of weapons and simply place heavy-duty explosive devices of 100 megatons each along the US coast. And if necessary, blow up the entire American continent.

What would happen to the people living there and to all the other continents, he did not particularly care: the idea was bold and beautiful.

Roy Medvedev later wrote: “He lived too long in some extremely isolated world, where they knew little about the events in the country, about the lives of people from other strata of society, and about the history of the country in which and for which they worked.”

Even the extravagant Khrushchev was not inspired by Sakharov's idea to blow everyone up. And their relationship began to deteriorate.

The last meeting of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR, attended by Andrei Sakharov. RIA News"

And when the question of new tests arose, they dispersed. Khrushchev believed that it was necessary to study the possibilities and consequences of using nuclear weapons. Sakharov believed that this was unnecessary: ​​and so with the available ones, everything can be blown up, without really thinking about the consequences. And when the first one suggested that he not put forward his exotic ideas, but take up science, albeit not a military one, the academician decided to fight for "human rights."

Once he began to deal with the problems of the peaceful use of thermonuclear energy, but rather quickly moved away from the topic: it took a long time to work, and no quick result was expected.

Yes, he will win the Nobel Prize. But not for scientific discoveries- Peace Prize. Like Gorbachev, for the fight against his country. And after Keldysh and Khariton, Simonov and Sholokhov and dozens of other iconic figures, scientists and writers come out with a public condemnation of Sakharov.

Sakharov will often swear in the name of morality and appeal to the commandment: "Thou shalt not kill." But in 1973 he would write a welcome letter to General Pinochet, calling his coup and execution the beginning of an era of happiness and prosperity in Chile. The academician has always believed that people have the right to life, freedom and happiness.

His human rights followers don't like to talk about it. Just as they deny in every possible way that at the end of the 70s he wrote a letter to the President of the United States with a call to inflict - in order to force the observance of "human rights" in the USSR - a preventive intimidating nuclear strike.

In 1979, he published a letter condemning the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan on the pages of leading Western publications. Before that, he had not published such letters either condemning the American war in Vietnam or Israel's Middle East wars. And he will not condemn either the war between England and Argentina over the Falkland Islands, or the American invasion of Granada or Panama.

As a true intellectual and humanist, he could only condemn his own country. Obviously, believing that the condemnation of other countries is the business of their intellectuals and humanists.

In general, as the mathematician Yaglom, who knew him in his school years, recalled, even when solving the problem, Sakharov “could not explain how he came to the solution, he explained it very somehow abstrusely, and it was difficult to understand him.”

And Academician Khariton, giving a posthumous interview after Sakharov’s funeral, in which, of course, the rule “either good or nothing” was in effect, was nevertheless forced to say that Sakharov “could not even imagine that someone would understand something better than him. Somehow one of our colleagues found a solution to a gas-dynamic problem that Andrei Dmitrievich could not find. For him, this was so unexpected and unusual that he began to look with exceptional energy for flaws in the proposed solution. And only after some time, not finding them, I was forced to admit that the decision was correct.

And even then, in 1989, in conditions of hysteria, when it was simply dangerous to say anything in condemnation of Sakharov or in defense of Soviet society, Khariton will say, assessing his political activity: “I have great respect for that part of his activity, when he fought against obvious injustice. My skepticism relates to his ideas concerning economic issues. The fact is that I did not agree with some of the provisions that Andrei Dmitrievich developed, in particular, concerning the characteristics of socialism and capitalism.

Gorbachev brought him back from Gorky, and Sakharov became a deputy of the Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR from the Academy of Sciences. However, at the first vote voters will fail it. The media supervised by Alexander Yakovlev will throw a tantrum, and Gorbachev will cancel the results of the elections, instructing him to hold a second vote - with an expansion of the circle of voters and a tough installation: "We must elect."

Sakharov will be made a deputy in violation of the electoral norm: Gorbachev recruited supporters for the congress. But having become a deputy, Sakharov will immediately turn away from his patron and become one of the leaders of the opposition to him, the “Interregional Deputy Group”, co-chaired by Boris Yeltsin, Gavriil Popov, Yuri Afanasiev.

But, what the last two do not admit today, and Sakharov began to burden them more and more with his unintelligible speeches from the podium, his discrediting manner of speaking and his claim to be absolutely right.

It is difficult to say what happened there, on December 14, 1989, at a meeting of this "group", but in the evening of the same day Sakharov died of heart attack. And it's strange - he became much more useful and profitable for his dead comrades-in-arms than for the living.

And a month before that, Sakharov would present his draft of a new Constitution, where he would proclaim the right of all peoples to statehood, that is, to proclaim their own states and to destroy the Soviet Union.

Andrey Sakharov with Elena Bonner. RIA News"

It is generally accepted that his new wife, Elena Bonner, had the main influence on his departure from scientific work and the transition to the struggle against his country. This is not entirely true: Sakharov met her in 1970 at the trial of a group of "dissidents" in Kaluga. He already then wrote “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom”, the main idea of ​​which contained a call for the country to abandon its socio-economic structure and move towards Western-style development. And then he regularly went to such trials.

But the truth is that it was after this acquaintance (they officially married two years later) that he almost completely focused on "dissident activities."

As he himself writes in his diary about the role new wife: “Lucy told me (the academician) a lot that I otherwise would not have understood and would not have done. She is a great organizer, she is my think tank.” She prompted so much and so strongly that he not only adopted her children, but also almost forgot about his own. How bitterly he will joke later own son Dmitry: “Do you need the son of Academician Sakharov? He lives in the USA, in Boston. And his name is Alexei Semyonov. For almost 30 years, Alexei Semyonov gave interviews as “the son of Academician Sakharov,” foreign radio stations voiced in every way in his defense. And when my father was alive, I felt like an orphan and dreamed that dad would spend with me at least a tenth of the time that he devoted to the offspring of my stepmother.

The son recalled that once he felt especially embarrassed for his father. He, already living in Gorky, in Once again went on a hunger strike, demanding that the bride of his son Bonner, who had already remained in the United States without any permission, be allowed to go there too. Dmitry came to his father. He tried to persuade him not to risk his health on this matter: “It is clear that if he thus sought to stop nuclear weapons testing or demanded democratic reforms ... But he just wanted Lisa to be allowed into America to Alexei Semyonov. But Bonner’s son might not have draped abroad if he really loved the girl so much. ”After marrying Bonner, Sakharov would move in with her, leaving fifteen year old son to live with a 22-year-old sister, he considered that they were already adults, and they could do without his attention. Until the age of 18, he helped his son with money, after that he stopped. Everything is according to the law.

The father was indeed self-tortured. Sakharov had a severe heart ache, and there was a huge risk that his body would not withstand the nervous and physical activity. But the bride of his stepson, because of which he was starving ... “By the way, I found Lisa at dinner! As I remember now, she ate pancakes with black caviar", - recalls the son. But the emigration of Dmitry Sakharov and Bonner strongly opposed: “The stepmother was afraid that I could become a competitor to her son and daughter, and - most importantly - she was afraid that the truth about Sakharov's real children would be revealed. Indeed, in this case, her offspring could get less benefits from foreign human rights organizations.”

In 1982, a young artist Sergei Bocharov, fascinated by the legend of the "freedom fighter", came to Sakharov in Gorky - he wanted to paint a portrait of the "people's defender". Only he will see something completely different from the legend: “Andrei Dmitrievich sometimes even praised the government of the USSR for some successes. Now I don't remember why. But for each such remark, he immediately received a slap in the face on his bald head from his wife. While I was writing the sketch, Sakharov got at least seven times. At the same time, the world luminary meekly endured cracks, and it was clear that he was used to them.

And the artist, having understood who really makes decisions and dictates to the “celebrities”, what to say and what to do, instead of his portrait, he painted a portrait of Bonner. She became furious and rushed to destroy the sketch: “I told Bonner that I don’t want to draw a “stump”, which repeats the thoughts of an evil wife and even suffers beatings from her. And Bonner immediately kicked me out on the street.

Those who made and are making him their banner declare him a "great humanist."

Andrei Sakharov with Elena Bonner, her daughter and grandchildren. Photo ITAR-TASS

Him, who first called on the USSR to blow up the American continent, then called on the United States to launch a nuclear strike on the USSR in the name of "human rights."

Him, who greeted Pinochet and declared the soldiers of his country to be occupiers.

Him, in fact, who abandoned his own children and was ruled by their stepmother, who dutifully took down slaps from her when trying to praise his country. Who did not know his country, nor its people, nor its history, and who endured everything from his wife who turned him into her political instrument.

Of course, anyone who wants to can read it further. But at least you need to tell the truth about him to the end. Who is he. Who was he. What destroyed. And what actually has to do with humanism and morality. And at least to admit that the citizens of the country he hates have no obligation, no need to talk about him with reverence.

Sergei CHERNYAKHOVSKY

(1921-1989) Russian scientist, public figure

There were many unexpected turns in the fate of this man. He was awarded the Stalin Prize for the development of the hydrogen bomb, and twenty years later received the Nobel Peace Prize. “Hater of mankind”, “lost honor and conscience”, “the greatest humanist”, “honor and conscience of our era” - this is how the same people sometimes called him for just some ten years.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born in Moscow into the family of a physicist. After graduating from school with a gold medal, he entered the Physics Department of Moscow University, from which he graduated in 1942. During the war years, he worked at a military plant, and after its completion he entered the graduate school of the P. N. Lebedev Physics Institute.

After graduating from graduate school and brilliantly defending his Ph.D. thesis, Sakharov was included in the group on the creation of thermonuclear weapons. Just five years later, on August 12, 1953, the first thermonuclear bomb. After that, a real waterfall of awards fell on Andrei Sakharov. At the age of only 32, he was elected an academician, became a laureate of the Stalin Prize and a Hero of Socialist Labor. He was awarded the last title three times, also receiving it in 1956 and 1962.

However, while working on the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind, Sakharov understood better than others the enormous danger that it posed to civilization. Therefore, starting in 1961, he began to advocate a ban on nuclear weapons tests. Naturally, this caused a sharply negative reaction from the authorities. Nevertheless, a year after his speech, he was concluded international treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons tests in three areas (in the atmosphere, in water and in space).

In the spring of 1968, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov wrote an article "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom." In it, he defended the idea of ​​glasnost, called for Stalin's personality cult to be completely exposed, and noted the moral advantages of socialism. In addition, Sakharov put forward the idea of ​​a gradual convergence of capitalism and socialism.

The article was a huge success in the world. As Sakharov himself later wrote, its circulation exceeded the circulation of books by Georges Simenon and Agatha Christie. However, in the USSR, it caused a completely different reaction. Sakharov was suspended from scientific work and subjected to harassment in the press. But this did not break the scientist.

Since 1970, his human rights activities began. He becomes one of the founders of the Human Rights Committee, which helped many people who suffered for their civic beliefs.

October 9, 1975 Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was awarded Nobel Prize peace. This event caused a new wave of slander and attacks on the outstanding scientist. He was not even allowed to travel abroad to receive the award because he was a bearer of state secrets. Instead, his second wife, Elena Bonner, received the award. Subsequently, she will continue the work of her husband and also become a prominent public figure, defender of human rights.

The persecution of the scientist continued. At a meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, the question of expelling Sakharov from its membership was raised. When discussing this issue, Academician P. Kapitsa noted: “A similar precedent already took place when Einstein was expelled from the German Academy of Sciences. Is it worth repeating? »

After that, Sakharov was left among the academicians. However, contrary to the opinion of P. L. Kapitsa, as well as other prominent scientists of the country and the world, who called for him to be left alone, the persecution of the scientist continued. And after the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was detained on the street in Moscow and sent into exile in the city of Gorky. His political exile continued until 1986, when perestroika processes began in society. After telephone conversation with M. Gorbachev, Sakharov was allowed to return to Moscow and begin again scientific work. Soon he was elected a people's deputy of the USSR.

It would seem that fate was again favorable to him. However, the possibilities of democracy turned out to be limited, and Sakharov was never able to speak out loud about the problems that worried him. He again had to fight for the right to express his views from the rostrum of the people's assembly. This struggle undermined the strength of the scientist, and on December 14, 1989, returning home after another debate, Sakharov died of a heart attack. In memory of the scientist, a square in Washington and an avenue in Moscow are named.

May 21, 2011 marks the 90th anniversary of the birth of the "father" of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and Nobel Peace Prize winner - Soviet physicist, public figure, human rights activist Andrei Sakharov.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921 in Moscow in the family of a physics teacher, Dmitry Ivanovich Sakharov, the author of many popular science books. His mother Ekaterina Alekseevna (before her marriage, Sofiano) was a housewife.

Andrei Sakharov spent his childhood and early youth in Moscow. He received his primary education at home. I went to school to study from the seventh grade.

In 1938, Andrei Sakharov graduated from high school with honors and entered the Physics Department of Moscow University.

In 1942, while evacuated to Ashgabat, he graduated with honors from Moscow State University. In September 1942, he was assigned to the People's Commissariat for Armaments, from where he was sent to a large military plant in Ulyanovsk, where until 1945 he worked as an engineer-inventor and became the author of a number of inventions in the field of product control methods.

From 1943 to 1944, Andrei Sakharov made several scientific papers on his own and sent them to the P.N. Lebedev (FIAN) to Igor Tamm.

In 1945 he entered the FIAN graduate school, in November 1947 he defended his PhD thesis.

In 1948, Andrei Sakharov was included in the research group for the development of thermonuclear weapons, led by Igor Tamm, where he worked until 1968.

Together with Tamm, Sakharov became one of the initiators of work on the study of a controlled thermonuclear reaction. He put forward the idea of ​​magnetic cumulation to obtain superstrong magnetic fields and the idea of ​​laser compression to obtain a pulsed controlled thermonuclear reaction. Sakharov is the author of several key works in cosmology, works on field theory and elementary particles.

In 1953, Sakharov defended his doctoral dissertation and in the same year was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Since the late 1950s, Andrei Sakharov, considered the "father" of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, has been a vocal advocate for an end to nuclear weapons testing. In 1957 he wrote an article on the harm nuclear testing, in 1958 he spoke out (together with Kurchatov) against the planned nuclear tests. He was one of the initiators of the conclusion of the Moscow Treaty of 1963 on the prohibition of tests in three environments (in the atmosphere, in water and in space), in 1967 he participated in the Committee for the Protection of Baikal.

In 1966-1967, the first appeals of Andrei Sakharov in defense of the repressed appeared, in 1968 he wrote the brochure Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, which was published in many countries. Since July 1968, after the publication of this article abroad, Sakharov was suspended from work at the "object" and dismissed from all posts related to military secrets.

In 1969 he returned to scientific work at the FIAN. On June 30, 1969, Sakharov was enrolled in the department of the institute, where his scientific work began, to the position of senior researcher - the lowest that a Soviet academician could occupy.

From 1967 to 1980, he published more than 15 scientific papers: on the baryon asymmetry of the Universe with the prediction of proton decay (as Sakharov himself believed, this is his best theoretical work, which influenced the formation of scientific opinion in the next decade), on cosmological models of the Universe, on the relationship of gravity with quantum fluctuations of vacuum, about mass formulas for mesons and baryons, etc.

Since 1970, the protection of human rights, the protection of people who have become victims of political violence, has come to the fore for the scientist. In 1970, Sakharov became one of the founders of the Moscow Committee for Human Rights, spoke out on the problem of pollution environment, for the abolition of the death penalty, for the right to emigrate, against the forced treatment of "dissidents" in psychiatric hospitals Oh.

Andrei Sakharov became the most famous Soviet human rights activist. In 1971, he addressed the Soviet government with a "memorandum" on urgent issues of internal and foreign policy, in 1974 published abroad the article "The World in Half a Century", in which he reflected on the prospects for scientific and technological progress and outlined his vision of the structure of the world.

In 1975, Andrei Sakharov wrote the book "On the Country and the World". In the same year "for the fearless support fundamental principles peace among peoples and for the courageous struggle against abuses of power and any form of suppression of human dignity" Andrey Sakharov was awarded the title of Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

In 1976, Sakharov was elected Vice President International League human rights. In September 1977, he sent a letter to the organizing committee on the problem of the death penalty, in which he advocated its abolition in the USSR and throughout the world. In December 1979 - January 1980, Sakharov repeatedly opposed the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan.

On January 8, 1980, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was adopted to deprive Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov of all government awards and prizes (the Order of Lenin, the title of three times Hero of Socialist Labor and the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR - the title of laureate of the Stalin (1953) and Lenin (1956) prizes).

On January 22, 1980, Andrei Sakharov was exiled without trial to the city of Gorky (because the city was closed to foreigners). In Gorky, he was in conditions of almost complete isolation and under round-the-clock police surveillance. Here Sakharov spent three long hunger strikes. In 1981 - seventeen days (together with his wife Elena Bonner) in protest against the illegal actions of the authorities in relation to his relatives, in May 1984 - 26 days - in protest against the criminal prosecution of Elena Bonner, in April-October 1985 - 178 days for Bonner's right to travel abroad for heart surgery. Sakharov was forcibly hospitalized and force-fed.

With the beginning of perestroika, in December 1986, by order of Mikhail Gorbachev, Andrei Sakharov was released from Gorky's exile. He and his wife returned to Moscow, where he continued to work in Physics Institute them. P.N. Lebedev.

The Theoretical Department of FIAN, which after Tamm's death was headed by Academician Ginzburg, ensured that Andrei Dmitrievich remained an employee of the department (for all seven years, a plaque with his name was kept on the door of his room at FIAN).

In November-December 1988, Sakharov's first trip abroad took place; he met with Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Mitterrand.

The last years of his life, Sakharov was actively engaged in human rights activities. In March 1989, he was elected a People's Deputy of the USSR from the Academy of Sciences, becoming one of the leaders of the group of the most radical deputies.

Andrei Sakharov was a foreign or honorary member of many scientific associations. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the American Physical Society, the French Academy (Institut de France), the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences (France), the Accademia dei Lincei (Italy), the Venice Academy, Dutch Academy (Sakharov is its first and only foreign member).

He was the recipient of many international and national awards: the Nobel Peace Prize, the Cino del Duco Prize, the Eleanor Roosevelt Prize, the Freedom House Prize (USA), the Human Rights League Prize (at the UN), the International Anti-Defamation League Prize, the Benjamin Franklin (Physics), Leo Szilard Prizes, Tamall Prizes (Physics), St. Boniface; Albert Einstein Peace Prize, etc.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov died on the evening of December 14, 1989 from a heart attack. The day before, at a meeting of the Interregional Deputy Group (II Congress of People's Deputies), he made his last speech in the Kremlin.

He was buried in Moscow at the Vostryakovsky cemetery.

The first wife of Andrei Sakharov was Claudia Vihireva (1919-1969), a native of Ulyanovsk, a laboratory chemist, whom they married in 1943. They had three children - two daughters and a son. Since 1972, Sakharov has been married to Elena Bonner, whom he met in the autumn of 1970. They did not have common children.

May 21, 1992 at the main entrance to the P.N. Lebedev (FIAN), where Sakharov worked in 1945-1950 and 1969-1989, a commemorative plaque dedicated to Academician Sakharov was unveiled. The author of the memorial plaque is the sculptor Leonid Shtutman.

In Moscow there is Academician Sakharov Avenue, as well as a museum and community Center his name. The Sakharov Museum also exists in Nizhny Novgorod; this is an apartment on the ground floor of a 12-storey building where Sakharov lived during his seven years of exile.

In Riga, Dubna, Chelyabinsk, Kazan, Lvov, Haifa, Odessa, Sarov, Sukhumi there are streets named after him. In St. Petersburg, a park and a square with a monument to him are named after Andrei Sakharov; the same square is in Yerevan, where a monument to Sakharov is also erected, and named after him high school number 69. In the center of Barnaul there is Sakharov Square, where the annual City Day and other city mass events are held. In Belarus, Sakharov named the International State environmental university. Sakharov Gardens in Jerusalem.

A mountain peak in Altai is named after Academician Sakharov. The peak is located on the Severo-Chuysky ridge in the area of ​​the Shavlo gorge. His name was given to one of the mountain peaks of the Caucasus, which a group of climbers from Moscow, North Ossetia, Kabardino-Balkaria, the Volga region, the Urals conquered on July 31, 1996.

In 1979, an asteroid was named after Andrei Sakharov.

In 1988, the European Parliament established the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded annually for "achievements in the defense of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as for respect for international law and the development of democracy."

In 1991, the USSR Post issued a stamp dedicated to Sakharov.

Since 1992, the Sakharov International Arts Festival has been held.

In 1993, the Sakharov Archive was established at Brandeis University and was soon transferred to Harvard University. Archive documents refer to the period from 1968 to 1991.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Andrey Dmitrievich Sakharov

Scientific work

Liberation and last years

Contribution to science

Awards and prizes

Performance evaluations

In the names of streets and squares

In other countries

In the encyclopedias of the world

Sakharov archive

In culture and art

Bibliography

(May 21, 1921, Moscow - December 14, 1989, ibid) - Soviet physicist, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, one of the creators of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. Subsequently - a public figure, dissident and human rights activist; People's Deputy of the USSR, author of the draft constitution of the Union Soviet Republics Europe and Asia. Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975.

For his human rights activities, he was deprived of all Soviet awards and prizes and was expelled from Moscow.

Origin and education

Father, Dmitry Ivanovich Sakharov, a teacher of physics, author of a well-known problem book, mother Ekaterina Alekseevna Sakharova (ur. Sofiano) - the daughter of a hereditary military Greek origin Alexei Semyonovich Sofiano - a housewife. maternal grandmother

Zinaida Evgrafovna Sofiano - from the kind of Belgorod nobles Mukhanovs.

The godfather is the famous musician Alexander Borisovich Goldenweiser.

Childhood and early youth were spent in Moscow. Sakharov received his primary education at home. I went to school to study from the seventh grade.

After graduating from high school in 1938, Sakharov entered the Physics Department of Moscow State University.

After the start of the war, in the summer of 1941 he tried to enter the military academy, but was not accepted for health reasons. In 1941 he was evacuated to Ashgabat. In 1942 he graduated from the university with honors.

In another version of this story, the exam takes place while studying at graduate school, together with I. E. Tamm, S. M. Rytov and E. L. Feinberg take the exam, and Sakharov receives only a “four”.

In 1942, he was placed at the disposal of the People's Commissar for Armaments, from where he was sent to a cartridge factory in Ulyanovsk. In the same year, he made an invention for the control of armor-piercing cores and made a number of other proposals.

Scientific work

At the end of 1944 he entered the FIAN graduate school (supervisor - I. E. Tamm). An employee of the FIAN them. Lebedev remained until his death.

In 1947 he defended his PhD thesis.

In 1948 he was enrolled in a special group and until 1968 worked in the development of thermonuclear weapons, participated in the design and development of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb according to the scheme called "Sakharov's puff". At the same time, Sakharov, together with I. E. Tamm, carried out pioneering work on a controlled thermonuclear reaction in 1950-1951. At the Moscow Power Engineering Institute he taught courses in nuclear physics, the theory of relativity and electricity.

Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (1953). In the same year, at the age of 32, he was elected a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences, becoming the second youngest academician in history at the time of his election (after S. L. Sobolev). The recommendation accompanying the nomination for academicianship was signed by Academician I. V. Kurchatov and Corresponding Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences Yu. B. Khariton and Ya. B. Zel'dovich. According to V. L. Ginzburg, in the election of Sakharov as an academician right away - bypassing the stage of a corresponding member - nationality played a certain role:

“He lived too long in some extremely isolated world, where they knew little about the events in the country, about the lives of people from other sectors of society, and about the history of the country in which and for which they worked,” said Roy Medvedev.

In 1955, he signed the "Letter of Three Hundred" against the notorious activities of academician T. D. Lysenko.

According to Valentin Falin, Sakharov, trying to stop the ruinous arms race, proposed a project to deploy super-powerful nuclear warheads along the American maritime border:

Human rights activities

From the late 1950s, he actively campaigned for an end to nuclear weapons testing. Contributed to the conclusion of the Moscow Treaty on the prohibition of tests in three environments. A. D. Sakharov expressed his attitude to the question of the justification of possible victims of nuclear tests and, more broadly, human victims in general in the name of a more optimal future:

From the late 1960s, he was one of the leaders of the human rights movement in the USSR.

In 1966, he signed a letter from twenty-five cultural and scientific figures to the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, L. I. Brezhnev, against the rehabilitation of Stalin.

In 1968 he wrote the pamphlet Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom, which was published in many countries.

In 1970 he became one of the three founding members of the Moscow Committee of Human Rights (together with Andrei Tverdokhlebov and Valery Chalidze).

In 1971, he addressed the Soviet government with a Memorandum.

In the 1960s and early 1970s, he went to the trials of dissidents. During one of these trips in 1970 in Kaluga (the process of B. Weil - R. Pimenov) he met Elena Bonner, and in 1972 he married her. There is an opinion that the departure from scientific work and switching to human rights activities occurred under her influence. He indirectly confirms this in his diary: “Lucy told me (the academician) a lot that I otherwise would not have understood and would not have done. She is a great organizer, she is my think tank.”

In the 1970s - 1980s, campaigns against A. D. Sakharov were carried out in the Soviet press (1973, 1975, 1980, 1983).

On August 29, 1973, the Pravda newspaper published a letter from members of the USSR Academy of Sciences condemning the activities of A. D. Sakharov (“Letter from 40 Academicians”).

In September 1973, in response to the campaign that had begun, mathematician Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences I. R. Shafarevich wrote: open letter” in defense of A. D. Sakharov.

In 1974, Sakharov held a press conference at which he announced the Day of Political Prisoners in the USSR.

In 1975 he wrote the book "On the Country and the World". In the same year, Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Soviet newspapers published collective letters of scientific and cultural figures condemning political activity A. Sakharova.

In September 1977, he addressed a letter to the organizing committee on the problem of the death penalty, in which he advocated its abolition in the USSR and throughout the world.

In December 1979 and January 1980, he made a number of statements against the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, which were printed on the front pages of Western newspapers.

Link to Gorky

On January 22, 1980, he was detained on his way to work, and then, together with his wife Elena Bonner, was exiled without trial to the city of Gorky. At the same time, by decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, he was deprived of the title of three times Hero of Socialist Labor and by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR - the title of laureate of the Stalin (1953) and Lenin (1956) prizes (also the Order of Lenin, the title of member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR was not deprived). In Gorky, Sakharov held three long hunger strikes. In 1981, together with Elena Bonner, he endured the first, seventeen-day period - for the right to travel to her husband abroad L. Alekseeva (the daughter-in-law of the Sakharovs).

In big Soviet encyclopedia(published in 1975) and then in the encyclopedic reference books published before 1986, the article about Sakharov ended with the phrase “In recent years, I have moved away from scientific activity» . According to some sources, the wording belonged to M. A. Suslov. In July 1983, four academicians (Prokhorov, Skryabin, Tikhonov, Dorodnitsyn) signed the letter "When honor and conscience are lost" condemning A. D. Sakharov.

In May 1984, he held a second hunger strike (26 days) in protest against the criminal prosecution of E. Bonner. In April-October 1985 - the third (178 days) for the right of E. Bonner to go abroad for heart surgery. During this time, Sakharov was repeatedly hospitalized (the first time was forcibly on the sixth day of the hunger strike; after his announcement of the end of the hunger strike (July 11), he was discharged from the hospital; after its resumption (July 25), he was again forcibly hospitalized two days later) and forcibly fed (tried to feed, sometimes succeeded). During the entire time of A. Sakharov's exile in Gorky, a campaign was going on in his defense in many countries of the world. For example, the area five minutes walk from the White House, where the Soviet embassy in Washington was located, was renamed "Sakharov Square". Since 1975, Sakharov Hearings have been regularly held in various world capitals.

Liberation and final years

He was released from Gorky's exile with the beginning of perestroika, at the end of 1986 - after almost seven years of imprisonment. On October 22, 1986, Sakharov asks to stop his deportation and exile of his wife, again (previously he turned to M. S. Gorbachev with a promise to focus on scientific work and stop public speaking, with the proviso: "except in exceptional cases", if his wife's trip for treatment would be allowed) promising to finish his social activities(with the same caveat). On December 15, a telephone was unexpectedly installed in his apartment (he did not have a telephone during the entire exile), before leaving, the KGB officer said: “They will call you tomorrow.” The next day, MS Gorbachev actually rang, allowing Sakharov and Bonner to return to Moscow. Arkady Volsky testified that, as General Secretary, Andropov also wanted to return Sakharov, in Volsky's statement: "Yuri Vladimirovich was ready to release Sakharov from Gorky, provided that he writes a statement and asks about it himself ... But Sakharov [refused] flatly:" In vain Andropov hopes that I will ask him for something. No repentance." Later, when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee, he personally dialed Sakharov's number...". Academician Isaak Khalatnikov wrote in his memoirs that Andropov told Anatoly Petrovich Alexandrov, who was busy about Sakharov being exiled to Gorky, that this exile was the most "mild" punishment, when other members of the Politburo demanded much more severe measures.

On December 23, 1986, Sakharov returned to Moscow with Elena Bonner. After his return, he continued to work at the Physical Institute. Lebedev.

In November-December 1988, Sakharov's first trip abroad took place (he met with Presidents R. Reagan, George W. Bush, F. Mitterrand, M. Thatcher).

In 1989 he was elected a people's deputy of the USSR, in May-June of the same year he participated in the I Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses, where his speeches were often accompanied by clapping, shouting from the hall, whistling from some of the deputies, who were later the leader of the MDG, historian Yuri Afanasiev and the media characterized it as an aggressively obedient majority.

In November 1989, he presented the "draft new constitution”, which is based on the protection of individual rights and the right of all peoples to statehood.

December 14, 1989, at 15:00 - Sakharov's last speech in the Kremlin at a meeting of the Interregional Deputy Group (II Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR).

He was buried at the Vostryakovsky cemetery in Moscow.

Family

In 1943, Andrei Sakharov married Claudia Alekseevna Vikhireva (1919-1969), a native of Simbirsk (she died of cancer). They had three children - two daughters and a son (Tatiana, Lyubov, Dmitry).

In 1970 he met Elena Georgievna Bonner (1923-2011), and in 1972 he married her. She had two children (Tatiana, Alexei), by that time already quite old. As for the children of A. D. Sakharov, the two elders were quite adults at that time. The youngest, Dmitry, was barely 15 years old when Sakharov moved in with Elena Bonner. She began to take care of her brother elder sister Love. The spouses did not have common children.

Contribution to science

One of the creators of the hydrogen bomb (1953) in the USSR. Proceedings on magnetic hydrodynamics, plasma physics, controlled thermonuclear fusion, elementary particles, astrophysics, gravitation.

In 1950, A. D. Sakharov and I. E. Tamm put forward the idea of ​​implementing a controlled thermonuclear reaction for energy purposes using the principle of plasma magnetic thermal insulation. Sakharov and Tamm considered, in particular, the toroidal configuration in stationary and non-stationary versions (today it is considered one of the most promising).

Sakharov is the author of original papers in elementary particle physics and cosmology: on the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, where he related the baryon asymmetry to the nonconservation of combined parity (CP violation) experimentally found in the decay of long-lived mesons, the symmetry breaking in time reversal, and the nonconservation of the baryon charge ( Sakharov considered the decay of the proton).

A. D. Sakharov explained the origin of the inhomogeneity of the distribution of matter from the initial density perturbations in the early Universe, which had the nature of quantum fluctuations. After the discovery of cosmic microwave background new analysis fluctuations in the early Universe was made by Ya. B. Zeldovich and R. A. Sunyaev and, independently of them, by J. Peebles with J.T. Yu. Zel'dovich and Sunyaev predicted the existence of peaks in the angular spectrum of the CMB distribution. Discovered by astrophysicists in the 2000s in the WMAP experiment and other experiments, the acoustic oscillations of the relic radiation (“Sakharov oscillations”) are an imprint of the very density perturbations that Sakharov theoretically described in his 1965 paper.

Has works on muon catalysis (1948, 1957), magnetic cumulation and explosive magnetic generators (1951-1952); put forward the theory of induced gravity and the idea of ​​a zero Lagrangian (1967), the study of arrogant spaces with a different number of time axes (“Cosmological transitions with a change in the metric signature”, ZhETF, 1984), “Evaporation of black mini-holes and high-energy physics” (“Letters to JETF, 1986).

Prediction of the development of the Internet

In 1974 Sakharov wrote:

The Internet became a socially significant phenomenon in the early 1990s, after Sakharov's death, but much earlier than 50 years after the article was written.

Awards and prizes

• Hero of Socialist Labor (01/04/1954; 09/11/1956; 03/07/1962) (in 1980 "for anti-Soviet activities" was deprived of the title and all three medals);
• Stalin Prize (1953) (in 1980 he was deprived of the title of laureate of this prize);
• Lenin Prize (1956) (in 1980 he was deprived of the title of laureate of this prize);
• Order of Lenin (01/04/1954) (in 1980 he was also deprived of this order);
• Awards of foreign countries, including:
• Grand Cross of the Order of the Cross of Vytis (January 8, 2003, posthumously)

Performance evaluations

A. I. Solzhenitsyn, in general, highly appreciating the activities of Sakharov, criticized him for missing “the possibility of the existence of living national forces in our country”, for excessive attention to the problem of freedom of emigration from the USSR, especially the emigration of Jews.

A. A. Zinoviev in a number of his books ironically called him the “Great Dissident”.

According to Pavel Pryanikov, to this day Academician Sakharov remains the last moral authority most popular among the public in the USSR/Russia. According to Pryanikov's data, if in 1981 40% of Soviet people saw him as their leader, and after his death, in 1991 - more than 50%, in 2010 - more than 70%.

A negative assessment of Sakharov is found in the communist, ultra-right and Eurasian press. Some publicists (for example, A. G. Dugin) consider A. D. Sakharov an enemy of the USSR and an assistant to the United States in geopolitical confrontation.

Memory

• In 1979, an asteroid was named after A. D. Sakharov.
• At the main entrance to the capital of Israel, Jerusalem, there are Sakharov Gardens; Streets in some Israeli cities are named after him.
• In Nizhny Novgorod, there is a Sakharov Museum - an apartment at 214 Gagarin Ave., apt. 3, on the first floor of a 12-storey building (Shcherbinki microdistrict), where Sakharov lived during his seven years of exile. Since 1992, the Sakharov International Arts Festival has been held in the city.
• There is a museum and public center named after him in Moscow.
• In Belarus, Sakharov is named after the International State Ecological University. HELL. Sakharov
• In 1988, the European Parliament established the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which is awarded annually for "achievements in the defense of human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as for respect for international law and the development of democracy."
• In 1991, the USSR Post issued a stamp dedicated to A. D. Sakharov.
• In December 2009, on the twentieth anniversary of the death of A. D. Sakharov, the RTR channel showed documentary“Exclusively science. No politics. Andrey Sakharov.
• In FIAN them. Lebedev in front of the entrance there is a bust of Sakharov.
• In Yerevan, secondary school No. 69 was named after A. D. Sakharov.
• In the city of Arnhem (Netherlands) there is an Andrey Sakharov Bridge (netherl. Andrey Sacharovbrug).

In the names of streets and squares

In Russia

60 streets in cities and villages of Russia bear the name of Sakharov

In other countries

• In August 1984, in New York, the intersection of 67th Street and 3rd Avenue was renamed the Sakharov-Bonner Corner, and in Washington, the square where the Soviet embassy was located was renamed Sakharov Square. Sakharov Plaza) (appeared in protest of the American public against the retention of A. Sakharov and E. Bonner in Gorky's exile).
• In Yerevan, the square on which a monument was erected was named after A. D. Sakharov.
• In Lviv there is a street named after Academician Sakharov
• In Lyon there is Andrey Sakharov Avenue (fr. avenue Andrei Sakharov)
• Andrei Sakharov Square is in Vilnius (lit. Andrejaus Sacharovo aikste), Los Angeles Andrei Sakharov Square), Nuremberg (German) Andrej-Sacharow-Platz)
• In Sofia, a boulevard is named after him. Boulevard Academician Andrey Sakharov)
• There is Sakharov Street in Amsterdam, The Hague, Yerevan, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kolomyia, Krivoy Rog, Odessa, Riga, Rotterdam, Stepanakert, Sukhum, Ternopil, Utrecht, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Schwerin (it. Andrej-Sacharow-Strasse).
• Sakharov Gardens at the entrance to Jerusalem.

In the encyclopedias of the world

Sakharov archive

The Sakharov Archive was founded at Brandeis University in 1993, but was soon transferred to Harvard University. The Sakharov archive contains KGB documents relating to dissident movement. Most of the archive documents are letters from KGB leaders to the Central Committee of the CPSU about the activities of dissidents and recommendations for interpreting or hushing up certain events in the media. mass media. Archive documents refer to the period from 1968 to 1991.

In culture and art

The painting “Saharov” by the Italian artist Vinzela is dedicated to the personality of Academician Sakharov.

In 1984, American director Jack Gold directed the biopic Sakharov (in leading role Jason Robards).

In 2007, the English channel BBC released the TV movie "Nuclear Secrets", where the young Sakharov was played by Andrew Scott.

Bibliography

• A. D. Sakharov, “Gorky, Moscow, then everywhere”, 1989 htm
• A. D. Sakharov, Memoirs (1978-1989). 1989 htm
• Constitutional ideas of Andrey Sakharov. M., "Novella", 1990. 96 p., 100,000 copies. ISBN 5-85065-001-6
• Edward Kline. Moscow committee of human rights. 2004 ISBN 5-7712-0308-4htm
• Yu. I. Krivonosov. Landau and Sakharov in the developments of the KGB. TVNZ. August 8, 1992.
• Vitaly Rochko "Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov: fragments of a biography" 1991
• Memories: in 3 volumes / Comp. Bonner E. - M.: Time, 2006.
• Diaries: in 3 volumes - M .: Time, 2006.
• Anxiety and hope: in 2 volumes: Articles. Letters. Performances. Interview (1958-1986) / Comp. Bonner E. - M.: Time, 2006.
• And one warrior in the field 1991 [Collection / Compiled by G. A. Karapetyan]
• E. Bonner. - Free notes to the genealogy of Andrei Sakharov
• Nikolai Andreev "Sakharov's Life", 2013, M. "New Chronograph". Biography.