“Each megaton of explosions takes away 10 thousand lives”: Andrei Sakharov – the path of a scientist and dissident
Scientists are glorified for their discoveries and contributions to science, but this man is almost more glorified for his steadfast beliefs. The name of Andrei Sakharov is known all over the world: he is known as the creator of lethal thermonuclear weapons and at the same time a fighter for a world in which these weapons should never be used; he was one of the brightest scientists and political thinkers of his time, an invaluable cadre of Beria and an ardent opponent of the socialist regime. Academician Sakharov would have turned 100 years old today. His reflections on scientific and technological progress, issues of global security and strategic balance turned out to be invaluable for all mankind, and even those who, at the end of his life, branded him as a traitor to the Motherland, willy-nilly listened to the advice of this wise and unusually conscientious person.
Andrei Sakharov left behind many books, articles and memoirs, but his personality continues to remain a mystery to many. At what point did the devoted nuclear physicist, who created a secret super-bomb on the instructions of the party, suddenly turned into a dissident, a defender of political prisoners and an implacable opponent of nuclear weapons? From what (or rather, from whom) did he have to save domestic genetics? Finally, how did he manage to endure 200 days of hunger strike in exile and why did the relationship with his only son become almost the most terrible test for the scientist? We tried to reveal these and other details of the life of Andrei Sakharov in our material.
Solved problems relying on intuition
Andrei Sakharov was born on May 21, 1921 in Moscow. The craving for science, apparently, was passed on to him from his father – a physics teacher and author of the popular problem book Dmitry Ivanovich Sakharov. Andrei's mother, Catherine, Sophiano had Greek roots and came from a military family. The Sakharovs had two children, as well as numerous relatives with whom they huddled in a typical Soviet communal apartment.
For a long time Andrei studied at home and only in the seventh grade went to school. The boy was quiet, reserved and did not communicate with almost anyone. But classmates noted his talent for the exact sciences and invited him to a mathematical circle – first a school one, and then the one that operated at Moscow State University. The teenager demonstrated success, but sometimes he solved even the most difficult problems intuitively, on a whim. Here is how his school friend, later a prominent Soviet physicist and mathematician Akiva Yaglom, recalled this:
“Andryusha Sakharov, although a strong mathematician, turned out to be not very adapted to this style. He often solved the problem, but could not explain how he came to the solution. The decision was correct, but he explained in a very clever way, and it was difficult to understand him. He has an amazing intuition, he somehow understands what should turn out, and often cannot properly explain why it turns out this way. But just in atomic physics, which he later took up, this turned out to be what was needed. There (at that time, anyway) there were no rigorous equations and mathematical techniques did not help, and intuition was extremely important. “
In the tenth grade, Sakharov dropped out of the math circle and decided to take physics seriously. After graduating from school, he entered the physics department of Moscow State University. When the war began, Andrei applied to the military academy, but failed for health reasons and remained at the university. At the end of 1941, when the enemy approached Moscow, most of the students and teaching staff were evacuated to Ashgabat, the training took place on the basis of the Turkmen Pedagogical Institute. In 1942, Sakharov graduated from Moscow State University with a degree in Defense Metallurgy. The young graduate was first sent to work in Kovrov, and then assigned to a large military plant in Ulyanovsk. Here he began his career as an engineer-inventor: he created a device for monitoring the cores of armor-piercing shells and a number of other inventions designed to help the front.
“Each megaton of explosions takes away 10 thousand lives”: Andrei Sakharov – the path of a scientist and dissident
In addition, Sakharov was not going to stop in his scientific research. In 1945 he entered the graduate school of the Physics Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Lebedev (FIAN), where he later taught until the end of his life. The famous Soviet theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize laureate in physics Igor Tamm became the scientific supervisor of the future academician. It is interesting that he did not immediately see the potential in his student. There is a funny tale according to which Tamm, being a teacher at Moscow State University, once gave Sakharov a “troika”, but then admitted his mistake. This is how this story sounds in the retelling of physicist Mikhail Katsnelson:
“Sergei Vasilievich Vonsovsky told, according to Tamm, how Tamm and [Mikhail] Leontovich (Soviet specialist in plasma physics and radiophysics, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences – ed.) Took an exam in the theory of relativity from student Sakharov – and gave him a three … Then, almost at night after the exam, Tamm called Leontovich and said something like: “Listen, did this student say everything correctly ?! You and I didn’t understand anything – we need to put triplets! We still need to talk to him. ” So Sakharov became a student of Tamm. “
In 1947, Andrei Sakharov defended his Ph.D. thesis. Soon, at the request of the scientific instructor, he was hired by the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MEI). And a year later, the same Tamm invited the young scientist to join a secret research group, created by him on the basis of FIAN. This group was engaged in the creation of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. Sakharov became its member and began work at KB-11, the country's main nuclear center. Tamm appointed him head of the laboratory, and soon made him his deputy. In parallel with his work in the laboratory, Sakharov gave lectures at the MPEI on nuclear physics, the theory of relativity and electricity.
Of course, together with Sakharov, a whole team of scientists worked on the creation of supernova weapons. But it was his contribution that played a decisive role in the development of the hydrogen bomb. In 1950, together with Tamm, he managed to develop a theory of a magnetic thermonuclear reactor and thereby understand the specifics of thermonuclear fusion. On the basis of this discovery, in 1953, Andrei Dmitrievich defended his doctoral dissertation. At that time he was only 32 years old.
Death that changed everything: the birth of Sakharov the dissident
In the conditions of the Cold War and the arms race with the United States, the development of nuclear weapons for the Soviet Union was one of the priorities. In his developments, Sakharov relied on the experience of foreign scientists, but proposed a fundamentally new model of a thermonuclear charge. The result of his labors was the creation of the world's first hydrogen bomb. The development received the official name RDS-6s, but scientists called it “Sakharovskaya puff” because the charge consisted of radioactive elements (deuterium, tritium and their compounds), interspersed with layers of heavy substances.
The bomb was tested on August 12, 1953 at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. In terms of power, the explosion surpassed even the first atomic bombs dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All brick buildings within a radius of four kilometers were completely destroyed, and a railway bridge weighing several hundred tons, located one kilometer from the epicenter of the explosion, was thrown 200 meters away by a blast wave.
After that Sakharov was called “the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb.” In the same 1953 he was elected a full member of the Academy of Sciences and awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor. Also, the entire team involved in the development of the bomb was awarded the Stalin Prize.
However, the work of KB-11 was just beginning with this. Although the “puff” had a huge destructive power (400 kilotons), it was in many ways inferior to the weapons of the Americans. At that time, the United States did not have its own transportable thermonuclear devices, but American scientists managed to design a hydrogen bomb with a capacity of 15 megatons. By 1954, Sakharov had figured out the secret of their two-stage model, which made it possible to increase the power of the explosion. This is how the development of an improved version of the RDS-6s began, which worked on a completely different principle.
On November 22, 1955, tests of the first Soviet two-stage thermonuclear bomb, RDS-37, took place at the same Semipalatinsk test site. The explosive device was dropped from a Tu-16 fighter jet, which rose to a height of 12 kilometers. Those who watched the tests were blinded by a powerful flash of light and felt a sharp surge of heat from the explosion, although they were 35 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion. The diameter of the nuclear mushroom reached 30 kilometers, during the activation of the bomb 1.6 megatons of energy were released. Thus, the RDS-37 became the world's first hydrogen bomb with a capacity of more than 1 megaton, tested by means of an air release.
But the consequences of the tests were extremely destructive. Unsuspecting residents of the surrounding areas in horror ran out of their houses, in which glass shattered and walls collapsed. In 36 kilometers from the center of the explosion, a dugout collapsed, in which there were six soldiers – one of them died of suffocation. And in one of the houses of the village of Malye Akzhary, a three-year-old girl died – the ceiling collapsed on her. In total, about 50 people were injured and bruised; buildings in 59 settlements were damaged or completely destroyed.
It is assumed that these events became a point of no return for Sakharov. The death of the little girl shocked him especially hard. For the first time he began to realize what lethal power the weapon he created possessed, and most importantly – in whose hands it would soon be.
For a long time he was convinced that he was working to maintain the balance of power, for the sake of preserving peace. In addition, the academician assumed that the possibilities of nuclear fusion would be used to obtain fuel for nuclear power plants. But all his convictions collapsed when he saw with his own eyes what a weapon created by his hands was capable of.
“I could not help but realize what terrible, inhuman things we were doing. But the war has just ended – also an inhuman affair. I was not a soldier in that war – but I felt like a soldier in this scientific and technical one. Over time, we learned or thought of such concepts as strategic balance, mutual thermonuclear deterrence, etc. I still think that these global ideas do contain some (perhaps not entirely satisfactory) intellectual justification for the creation of thermonuclear weapons and our personal participation in this. Then we felt all this rather on an emotional level.
A monstrous destructive force, huge efforts required for development, funds taken from a poor and hungry country destroyed by war, human sacrifice in hazardous industries and in forced labor camps – all this emotionally strengthened the feeling of tragedy, forced to think and work in such a way that everyone the sacrifices (implied inevitable) were not in vain. Today, thermonuclear weapons have never been used against humans in war. My most passionate dream is that this never happens, that thermonuclear weapons hold back the war, but never be used, “Sakharov wrote in his book” Memoirs “30 years after these events.
In addition to the physical destruction caused by the shock wave, the scientist was also concerned about the state of the environment. In 1958, he published an article on the effects of radioactive emissions from a hydrogen bomb. Sakharov, as a true scientist, most of all trusted the calculations: he calculated how many human lives each test of thermonuclear weapons takes.
“With an average human life span of 20 thousand days, each X-ray of global exposure will reduce it by a week. I have calculated that every megaton of test explosions in the atmosphere takes 10,000 human lives. Nuclear tests in the atmosphere are a direct crime against humanity, no different from, say, secretly pouring a culture of pathogenic microbes into a city water supply, ”wrote the physicist.
Fight against nuclear weapons and Lysenkoism
Thus, by the end of the 1950s, Academician Sakharov had turned from the “father of the hydrogen bomb” into the most fierce enemy of nuclear weapons in the USSR. Many colleagues, for example, academician Igor Kurchatov, supported his struggle. Together with them, Sakharov called on the government of Nikita Khrushchev to stop nuclear testing and not support the American desire to drain the Soviet Union with an endless arms race. He was one of the initiators of the signing of the Soviet-American Treaty banning nuclear tests in three environments in the atmosphere, space and under water, signed in 1963.
Such an active position, in many ways contrary to the party's line, as well as calls for establishing peaceful relations with the West and the fact that Sakharov was actively published there – all this attracted attention from the KGB to the scientist. He was under surveillance, searches were periodically carried out in his apartment, and custom-made articles were published in the press, where the scientist was branded in every way.
But this did not stop Sakharov: on the contrary, in the late 60s he turned into one of the leading human rights defenders in the Soviet Union. After Khrushchev was replaced as Secretary General by Brezhnev, the scientist's dissidence became even more pronounced: he opposed the rehabilitation of Stalin, condemned the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the persecution of dissidents, political repression, etc. In 1968, his brochure “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” was published. This work has been translated into many languages of the world and had a tremendous impact on the intelligentsia in different countries. The text of the brochure was also published by the American newspaper “The New York Times”. After that, Sakharov was removed from participation in the next secret project.
Around the same time, he met Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Deprived of the opportunity to engage in science, which for a long time was the meaning of his life, Sakharov delved deeper into politics. He increasingly began to attend secret meetings of dissidents, participated in trials over those convicted on political charges. At one of the courts in Kaluga, he met human rights activist Elena Bonner. They got married in 1972.
In addition, Sakharov was one of those to whom we owe the salvation of Russian genetics. He was among the scientists who actively fought against Lysenkoism, a political campaign aimed at completely banning genetic research in the USSR, organized by the agronomist Trofim Lysenko. As a result of his destructive activities, by the end of the 30s, classical genetics in the USSR began to be called “fascist science”, and genetic scientists were persecuted, sent to camps and even shot. As a result, almost all genetic research in the country was stopped for almost 30 years. Atomic physicists, including Sakharov, undertook to restore the reputation of genetics. In their closed institutes, scientists began to create laboratories dealing with radiation genetics. Thanks to them, by the mid-60s, the “disgraced” science was rehabilitated.
Exile, son's betrayal and “ideal” constitution
In 1975, Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At home, this did not go unnoticed: letters from various figures of science and culture appeared in newspapers, condemning Sakharov and his political activities.
In the winter of 1979-80, the academician opposed the introduction of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. At this point, the authorities' patience ran out: on January morning, Sakharov was detained on his way to work. There was no trial – the dissident and his wife were sent into exile in the city of Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod), depriving them of all awards and prizes.
“Each megaton of explosions takes away 10 thousand lives”: Andrei Sakharov – the path of a scientist and dissident
But even in exile, Sakharov continued to fight for justice. Hunger strikes became his weapon. In Gorky, he announced them three times: the first time in 1981 – then he and his wife refused food for 17 days, demanding that their daughter-in-law go to her husband abroad; then, in May 1984, Sakharov went on an even longer hunger strike (26 days), this time to protest Bonner's prosecution; finally, in 1985, the scientist survived 178 days of fasting – so he defended his wife's right to travel abroad for heart surgery.
All these ordeals severely shaken the health of the no longer young academician. During the entire period of exile, he was hospitalized several times, forced to eat, but then he still returned to the hunger strike.
Meanwhile, all over the world, the disgraced scientist found many supporters. While he was in exile, actions in support of him were organized in different countries, the so-called “Sakharov hearings” were held, and the square where the Soviet embassy in Washington was located was even renamed Sakharov Square.
With the advent of perestroika, concepts such as “glasnost”, “democratization” began to penetrate into Soviet society, and they started talking about reforms, freedom of speech, the fight against corruption, and so on. Many political prisoners were released, at the end of 1986 Sakharov returned from exile. It is noteworthy that he could have returned earlier, even under Andropov. But he refused to go against his conscience.
“Yuri Vladimirovich [Andropov] was ready to release Sakharov from Gorky, provided that he wrote a statement and asked about it himself. But Sakharov [refused] outright: “In vain Andropov hopes that I will ask him for something. No repentance. ” Later, when Gorbachev became General Secretary of the Central Committee, he personally dialed Sakharov's number … “- recalled the Soviet engineer, public figure Arkady Volsky.
Returning to Moscow, Sakharov continued to work at the Lebedev Physics Institute as a chief researcher. In 1988, he began to travel abroad and met with the top officials of many Western powers: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, François Mitterrand, Margaret Thatcher.
It seemed that Sakharov was again ready to focus on scientific activity, but at the same time he saw that many problems that worried him back in the 50s remained unresolved. And he could not remain indifferent.
In 1989, Andrei Dmitrievich was elected People's Deputy of the USSR from the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and in May – June of the same year he took part in the I Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR in the Kremlin Palace of Congresses. Finally, Sakharov's invaluable contribution to politics was his draft of the new Soviet Constitution, which was based on the protection of human rights and the right of all peoples to statehood.
“It was a utopian project based on the ideas of convergence, internationalism, democracy, idealism and the idea of a world government popular among physicists, which was defended by Albert Einstein. Sakharov explained that he stands for the unification of all people on Earth, regardless of their race, nationality and religion, gender, age and social status – he addresses not nations, but people, ”said Roy Medvedev.
Sakharov presented this project to the public on November 27, 1989, and a little more than two weeks later he was gone. Many people still question the sudden death from cardiac arrest, claiming that Sakharov could have been killed. For example, Anatoly Sobchak, who personally knew Sakharov, and his son Dmitry spoke about this.
The latter did not have a good relationship with his father. Dmitry was the youngest child of Sakharov and his first wife, Klavdia Vikhireva. In total, the couple had three children. In 1969, Klavdia Alekseevna died of cancer, and a few years later Sakharov remarried. Dmitry then barely turned 15. After the death of his ex-wife, Sakharov paid almost no attention to children: Dima was cared for by his older sisters – Tatiana and Lyubov.
Many contemporaries of the scientist note that his son never forgave him for leaving the family. How strong and deep his offense was – one can only guess. But in some of Sakharov's biographies, there is one very dark episode. It is known that in exile Sakharov was constantly harassed by the special services. Including the manuscript of “Memoirs” was stolen from him several times – the scientist twice had to restore the book from memory. They say that once Sakharov found out that his own son helped the KGB officers steal papers … This news was a terrible blow for the academician – almost worse than a bomb explosion in Semipalatinsk.
Fortunately, Sakharov managed to finish writing his Memoirs. On December 13, 1989, he concluded the epilogue with the words: “The main thing is that Lucy and I (Elena Bonner – ed.) Are together. And this book is dedicated to my dear, beloved Lucy. Life goes on. We are together”. The next day, Andrei Sakharov died.
