Word: sakharovs
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...contrast, desperately needs to refurbish his credentials as a peacemaker. In December he could not even go to Oslo to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize because of all his troubles at home. After troops from the Ministry of Interior slaughtered unarmed Lithuanians last month, the widow of Andrei Sakharov, who won the prize in 1975, said her late husband's name should be stricken from any list of laureates that included Gorbachev...
While his actions on behalf of human rights permeate the book, Sakharov's incredible perceptiveness and extreme humility strike the reader most forcefully. Early in the book Sakharov engages in what appears to be indescriminate name-dropping--Thatcher said this, Mitterand that, Gorbachev another thing. However, Sakharov shows that each of these seemingly irrelevant anecdotes provide essential insight into a leader's character...
...example, in one anecdote Sakharov berates then president-elect Bush for his refusal to renounce a nuclear first strike. Bush then takes out a photo of his family and says he would never willingly kill them in a nuclear war. "You should announce that publicly, write it into law," Sakharov declares, and in response "Bush was silent...
Although a sense of urgency pervades this book, one realizes that Sakharov acknowledges many personal accomplishments, even if he has failed to fulfill all of his plans. At every turn Sakharov describes another setback for perestroika and predicts that without real reform the Soviet Union will descend into anarchy or renewed despotism. He specifically warns against increasing the Soviet government's authority, even if the head of the central government is the architect of perestroika...
...Sakharov realized that as the two icons of Soviet opposition, he and Solzhenitsyn felt a deep responsibility to the Soviet people. His constant work for freedom, even against those who purported to be refashioning Soviet society, showed him to be one of the real leaders of perestroika. Because of Gorbachev's caution, the U.S.S.R. is now even more of a shambles than when perestoika began. Would that Gorbachev had listened to this physicist-prophet before his chances faded...