Word: sakharov
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...honesty and informal style of Sakharov's newly published Memoirs truly makes you feel like you are his intimate acquaintance. Like a sweeping Russian novel, the book contains such a vast array of material it cannot be characterized or summarized easily. It is a treatise on particle physics, an inside account of the Soviet development of the hydrogen bomb, a look at the Soviet government, education, and legal systems, a love story, a journey from political naivite to passionate struggle against authorities, and a gallery of personal profiles that show a novelist's instinct for description, all imbued a deep...
...lively accounts of his work comprise the first half of Memoirs. Sakharov relates the zeal with which he and his colleagues patriotically pursued a design for the hydrogen bomb, and his accounts sound strikingly similiar to those of the Manhattan Project. Despite the bold sense of purpose and bonds he formed with fellow engineers, his tales of his applied work are tinged with some wistfulness. He expresses his wish that he could have spent more time working in "grand science...
...activities then began his transition to the more fervid activism he document in the latter half of Memoirs. His tales of his evolution to widely-acclaimed human rights champion and critic of the Soviet regime are fascinating--never does Sakharov consciously break ties with the past. Sakharov humbly relates the succession of events where he faithfully follows his conscience, and his eventual publication of the essay, "Reflections of Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom" in the New York Times in 1968 which overnight garnered the scientist international fame...
...Though Sakharov criticizes the Soviet regime, it is clear from his book that he truly loves his country. He is no defector to the West. On several issues he is intentionally vague to protect state secrets. He writes a whole chapter about the "Third Idea," his crucial contribution to hydrogen bomb, which even 30 years later, he will not reveal...
...Sakharov is indisputably a Russian, but his ideals, in contradiction to the other great Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn, are very Western. The driving force behind his protests is an unshakable faith in the importance of freedom of the individual to belief, speech, religion, from persecution and from want. The scope of his protests cover foreign affairs, prisoners of conscience, the death penalty, the environment, even cruelty to animals. The freedom of the individual is the driving force behind all of his activism...