Word: sakharovs
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...Sakharov has continued to this day to produce important work in physics. But his attention has increasingly grown to focus on the problem of human rights and what he sees as the single most serious threat to them, nuclear proliferation. He was instrumental in fashioning a bilaterally acceptable proposition for the 1962 U.S.-USSR nuclear test ban, and has continued to protest against the arms race. As his consciousness of the human rights issue has increased, he has championed the cause of political prisoners and oppressed peoples all over the world--ethnic minorities in the USSR, Indonesians, Afghans, Palestinians...
That influence shines through clearly in On Sakharov, first printed in Russian on the occasion of Sakharov's 60th birthday and just published in English. The collection celebrates Sakharov's life, accomplishments and indomitable spirit, and at the same time presents a brief for the importance of carrying on the struggle for human rights. Two dozen Russian intellectuals and scientists, almost all involved on some front of the crusade Sakharov still leads, and two American physicists who knew Sakharov as a scientists and as a human rights advocate, reminisce about Sakharov and his work. The book also includes poetry, short...
Some passages are redundant or weightless, like the disjointed, if heartfelt, letter from a Russian orthodox priest who vaguely knew Sakharov, which dissolves into a pious "holy meditation." And some sections seem superfluous, particularly the overly technical descriptions of Sakharov's physics research. But the overwhelming balance of the book is valuable and fascinating, both for the personal glimpses of Sakharov and for the astute and seemingly fearless social criticism Sakharov and the other dissident contributors present...
Under one of the most repressive and authoritarian regimes history has known. Sakharov appears oblivious to the danger of official retribution for his statements. As another dissident scientist writes...
What distinguished Sakharov from many others was the fact that for him there never existed any distance between conviction and action, between words and the main strategy of life...