Sakharov, Andrei Dmitriyevich


Sakharov, Andrei Dmitriyevich,

1921–89, Soviet nuclear physicist and human-rights advocate; first Soviet citizen to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (1975). From 1948 to 1956 he helped to develop the USSR's hydrogen bomb. In the 1960s he emerged as a prominent critic of the arms race and of Soviet repression, and in 1971 Yelena Georgiyevna Bonner, 1923–2011, a pediatrician who also was a human-rights activist, became his second wife. In 1980 he was exiled to Gorky; in 1984 Bonner was convicted of anti-Soviet activities and also restricted to Gorky. Sakharov's banishment inspired worldwide protest, and in 1986, after GorbachevGorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich
, 1931–, Soviet political leader. Born in the agricultural region of Stavropol, Gorbachev studied law at Moscow State Univ., where in 1953 he married a philosophy student, Raisa Maksimovna Titorenko (1932?–99).
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's rise to power, both Sakharov and Bonner were pardoned. In 1989 he was elected to the Soviet parliament, and briefly served before he died. Bonner remained a liberal critic of the Soviet and Russian governments until her death.

Bibliography

See Bonner's Alone Together (tr. 1986); biography by R. Lourie (2002); study by J. Bergman (2009).