Andrei Sakharov was an unlikely hero in Cold War Russia. A brilliant physicist more inclined to the little miracles of the laboratory than to the glare of public scrutiny. A man of abundant vision, courage and conscience whose mark on Russian history is unmistakable, but whose footsteps have all but vanished. His childhood home is now a police station. His place of exile, the sealed city of Gorky, is now Nizny Novgorod. The Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies, where he made his triumphant return, is now the Russian Duma.
But scan the globe for human rights struggles, and there he is. Where courage and determination in the face of oppression live, so does Sakharov’s spirit. Andrei Sakharov, through the eyes and the recollections of his translator and biographer .
Guests:
Richard Lourie, author, “Sakharov: A Biography.”