Word: sakharovs
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Like nearly all Soviet intellectuals, Sakharov bitterly attacks the trial of Writers Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel, which he says "has been condemned by the progressive public in the Soviet Union and abroad and has compromised the Communist system. These two writers languish in a camp with a strict regime and are being subjected (especially Daniel) to harsh humiliations and ordeals...
Such a man is Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov, partner in a major scientific discovery at the age of 29, a full member of the prestigious Academy of Sciences at 32 and now, at 47, a leading Soviet research physicist. Last week, after circulating underground for some time in Russia, an extraordinary manuscript by Sakharov was published in the U.S. by the New York Times. In it, the physicist boldly denounces major aspects of Soviet policy and practice, goes so far as to urge an East-West "convergence" to provide a safe and single world leadership. It is, as Library of Congress...
...Sakharov's 10,000-word essay, entitled "Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom," begins with two principles that the author considers axiomatic: that ."the division of mankind threatens it with destruction," and that "intellectual freedom is essential to human society." He then catalogues the clear and present dangers to physical survival: thermonuclear war, hunger, police dictatorship and atmospheric pollution. The threats to intellectual survival, he says, are the propaganda of mass culture, spreading bureaucracy and, again, dictatorship. The world's only hope in overcoming these menaces, he says, lies in a rapprochement between socialist and capitalist...
...Every rational creature, finding itself on the brink of disaster, first tries to get away from the brink, and only then does it think about the satisfaction of other needs," writes Sakharov. Beyond the brink, of course, is nuclear war, and Sakharov speaks so authoritatively on the destructive power of nuclear weaponry, on its low-cost production and "the practical impossibility of preventing a massive rocket attack" that U.S. analysts are certain that he has engaged in military research. Present foreign policy in both Washington and the Kremlin, he says, is aimed "at maximum improvement of one's position...
...distinguished member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences and a Stalin prizeholder who helped develop Russia's hydrogen bomb, Sakharov condemns the imprisonment in labor camps of Authors Yuli M. Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky and other intellectual dissidents. He demands the release of all political prisoners. As if that were not bad enough, he says that Russia must "without doubt" support the democratic reforms in Czechoslovakia. Though he censures U.S. involvement in Viet Nam, he also blames the outbreak of the Middle East war on Russia's "irresponsible encouragement" of the Arabs, charges that Russia's continued...