Andrei Sakharov: The Physics of Protest

seems so twentieth century. Yes, I am showing my privilege, but I think of old black and white videos of duck and cover drills, of children hiding under their desks in their school classrooms with their heads down, of mushroom clouds, and guys with nasally accents warning me about the threat of communism. You are the target of those who would travel the liberties of free men. You are in the cross hairs of the bomb site. An enemy is centering

on you. You are a citizen of the pre world, a citizen of the United States of America and the sanctity of US democracy. I think of the Cold War and a time when segregation was the norm and people were free from the soul sucking grasp of social media. But I know that's a skewed perspective. It's not just a problem of the past. It could still happen within our lifetime, not saying that in an alarmist way, just in a realistic way. That's a scary proposition, and it

always has been. But the violence of war is justified by those who wage it, the messages the path towards justice or peace will be littered with casualties, and that nuclear destruction may be the price you have to pay to reach that end. Many people support the use of nuclear weapons if they believe will save lives of people

in their own nation or in their favored group. And even when the threat of nuclear war looms, the issue is not top of mind for many people, and they don't take action to try to prevent it, sometimes because it's not clear whether their action would even make a difference. But some people have rejected the encouragement of nuclear warfare compelled to political action in order to protect human rights.

I'm eas Jeff Coote and This Is Unpopular a podcast about people in history who didn't let the threat of persecution keep them from speaking truth to power. Andre Dmitrivich Saharov was born into a family of relatively well off intelligentsia in Moscow in ninety one, the year before the Soviet Union was established in Stalin became General Secretary of

the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. His father was a physicist who wrote tech books and taught at the Linen Pedagogical Institute, and his mother took care of the family. Andre was educated at home by his father and private tutors, perhaps due to his parents distrust of schooling and standards of Soviet education, until he was about thirteen when he

started going to school. But Andre continued learning outside of school, developing an interest in science fiction and science books, photography, and physics. In nineteen thirty eight, he enrolled in the physics program at Moscow State University. Three years later, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. At this point, physics students began contributing to the war effort. Andre extinguished bombs, repaired radio equipment for the army, and invented a magnetic device for

finding strapnel and injured horses. While other physics students were accepted into the Air Force Academy, Andre did not pass his medical exam. Instead of going into military service, he was moved with the remaining university students and faculty to Ashkhabad in Central Asia, where he finished his studies. He graduated with honors in nineteen forty two. Andre turned down an opportunity to go to graduate school and study theoretical physics, opting to work at a cartridge factory in Olyanovsk, a

city on the Volga River. Soon he was transferred to the Central Laboratory's metallurgical department, where he met his first wife and created a method for testing the armor piercing steel corps of fourteen point five millimeter bullets for anti tank guns. But in nineteen forty five, the same year the world's first atomic bombs were dropped over Japan, Andre decided to return to physics and began graduate work at the p n Elevative Institute of Physics of the Soviet

Academy of Science. There he worked under Russian physicist Igor tam who went on to see the nineteen fifty eight Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with his colleagues for discovering

Charon cough radiation. He produced scientific papers and gave lectures on nuclear physics and electricity, and he earned his candidate of Doctor of Science degree similar to a doctorate, for his research into cosmic right theory in nineteen forty seven, Andre had turned down invitations to work on the Soviet atomic bomb project twice, choosing to continue working with Tam, but as fate would have it, he would soon began

working on bombs anyway. In nineteen forty eight, he and Tam co authored the paper the Outlined a principle for the magnetic isolation of high temperature plasma, the last the mainstream science world heard from them for two decades. As the Cold War geared up and the Soviet Union prepared to go up against you as nuclear power, Tam and his team, including Saharof, were pegged to help research the

feasibility of a thermoew clear bomb. The hydrogen bomb or H bomb, nicknamed the super bomb, was the next step in the evolution of nuclear weapons. Saharrof helped develop the first Soviet thermonuclear bomb. Realizing the so called Trouba design that the Soviets were initially working off of for the H bomb was problematic, he proposed a new design on as sloka, or a layer cake as it's been translated.

In this design, alternating layers of deuterium and uranium will be placed between the fisile core of an atomic bomb and the surrounding chemical high explosive. Another of Tamp's students, Vatali Ginsburg, built on this design. Sahhar Off was also instrumental in the conceptualization of the Tacomac reactor, a device

that can produce controlled thermonuclear fusion power. In nineteen fifty the H bomb team was transferred to what was known as the Installation, a research and develop upment center in a secret Soviet city. On August twelfth, nineteen fifty three, a layer cake model hydrogen bomb was detonated. Saharof was honored with full membership in the Soviet Academy of Sciences with the first of three Hero of Socialist Labor medals he received and with a Stalin Prize, a huge salary,

and a country house. And he went on to do more work on the H bomb, making major contributions to the design used in the Soviet H bomb tested in nineteen fifty five. Throughout all this time he was improving the AGE bomb. He was convinced that his work would help defend the Soviet Union and prevent a nuclear war. He maintained a perspective of socialist idolism and thought this was a path toward peace. He felt it was essential work. I couldn't ignore how horrible and inhuman our work was.

But the war that had death ended was also inhuman. I wasn't a soldier in that war, but I felt like one in the scientific and technological war. He said that it was psychological that the work made it seem like all the sacrifices they had made in devastation they had suffered through the Second World War was not for nought.

But in the late nineteen fifties, the potential consequences of atmospheric nuclear testing began to weigh on his conscience, leading to a complete one eight in his beliefs about nuclear weapons. We'll be right back after this quick break. The ethics of the work Andre saw her Off and everybody else working on nuclear bombs was doing is sticky stuff. The morality of building and constantly refining a weapon specifically made to kill hundreds of thousands of people in service of

political goals is questionable, regardless of a person's intent. I mean, the topic of the ethics of war as a whole is a can of worms that you probably don't want to open at a dinner table. Saharab's thermonuclear research does have more practical applications and peaceful uses. But I think it's fair to say that Sav's work, despite the brainwashing influence of Soviet propaganda and Saharav's noble intentions, was not

the most honorable and decent work. At the bottom line, he would be implicated in thousands of potential deaths in all the other health and environmental effects nuclear weapons have. It's hard to change our minds on the big issues and things we feel strongly about, let alone change other people's minds. Climate change, for instance, is pulling people in

different directions right now. Some say the world is changing as it always has, while others believe we're living in the anthroposcene, a new epoch where humans are causing a major change on the climate and environment. Pew Research Center survey showed that in most of the twenty six countries surveyed, majorities saw climate change as a major threat to the nation. At the same time, many people in those countries saw climate change as a minor threat or no threat at all.

And in the US, there is a wide gap between Democrats and Republicans on the issue, with Republicans being way less likely to say climate change is a major threat. All that's to say that opinion can be split on an issue even when a scientific consensus has been reached, in this case, that human activities have caused climate change, Especially when the issue goes beyond disagreement over facts and

into the territory of politics and emotions. Still, people's opinions do shift, as a study out of Yale and George Mason University showed people change their minds about global warming for a number of self reported reasons, but mainly because they experienced the impacts of it, because they took it more seriously, and because they became more informed on the issue. Everybody thinks they're right, Everybody has an opinion. No one

reads anymore. Everyone's divided. The Internet is making us stupid. No one thinks for themselves. Tribalism, YadA, YadA, YadA. I can be that grumpy get off my lawn person if I want. The fact is we're capable of switching our tunes and reaching new conclusions on issues over our lifetime.

And when it comes to challenging other people to think differently and opposing accepted values and systems, it is possible to get people to evaluate their beliefs and potentially change them, even when it's about super controversial issues like warfare and weapons of mass destruction. Garian American physicist Edward Teller, dubbed the father of the hydrogen bomb, claimed that the US had developed a so called clean bomb with a negligible

amount of radioactivity. He claimed that the dangers of radioactive fallout from such bombs was equivalent to being an ounce overweight or smoking one cigarette every two months. Most of the physicists at the installation agreed that radioactive fallout was not an issue that anyone needed to really worry about. In nineteen fifty seven, Igor Kurchatov asked Andre to write an article denouncing the clean bomb without talking about regular

thermal nuclear weapons. But Andre went beyond the political and propagandistic aims of the assignment in his nineteen fifty eight journal article. Based on his calculations made using available biological data, a megatent blast from a clean h bomb would create enough radioactive carbon to kill six thousand, six hundred people over eight thousand years. That assessment was pretty similar to Tellers,

but framed differently. Rather than minimize the effect on human lives, Sahrov's numbers emphasized that people were actually going to die because of the fallout, not just have days chopped off for their lifespan. The more testing of h bombs, the more people would die, and people should not take lightly their responsibility in this harm. What moral and political conclusions

must be made from these numbers, he wrote. Stopping tests, he said, would save thousands of lives and reduce international tensions. The Soviet government had called for a temporary moratorium on nuclear tests, and that moratorium lasted for about two and a half years, But in nineteen sixty one, when Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev revoked the moratorium, saw Harov objected. He argued that starting testing again would not do much for

them technically, but he had next to no Soviet support. Still, saw Harov obey orders from Kruschev to start preparations for testing. He headed the development of the fifty megatime so called star bomb, tested in October of nineteen sixty one, It was the most powerful bomb ever exploded on Earth. Saaf began to feel a personal and professional responsibility for preventing

the harms of fallout. He believes that, in his words, atmospheric nuclear testing was a crime against humanity and no different than pouring deadly germs into a city water reservoir. He tried unsuccessfully to prevent the testing of two bombs in nineteen sixty two, but his efforts to stop atmospheric nuclear testing did pay off. Saw her Off, with the help of his colleague Victor Adomski, proposed the idea of

a partial band. In nineteen sixty three, the US, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union signed the Limited Test Band Treaty, which banned the testing of nuclear weapons in outer space, the atmosphere, and underwater, but let tests continue underground. Sahrov stayed at the installation, which he said would allow him to continue his work in banning testing, but he began

focusing on fundamental science again, publishing papers on cosmology. He supported people who faced political discrimination and persecution, and he continued to write about nuclear disarmament, intellectual freedom, and the need to establish civil liberties in the Soviet Union. When anti ballistic missile defense became a key issue in US Soviet relations, saw Harof advised Soviet leaders to accept an American proposal for a moratorium on the defenses. He feared

the technology. When an insight in arms rates and undermine the stability that mutually assured destruction brought. He asked to publish his argument in the Soviet press, but leadership denied that request, so in nineteen sixty eight he self published an essay called Reflections on Progress. He full coexistence in intellectual freedom, circulating it in an underground typewritten format. The

essays spread to other countries. In the essay, Saharof called for disarmament and warned people of the threats humanity faced. Those included thermo nuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine and uncontrolled population explosion, alienation and dogmatic distortion of our conception of reality. As Saharof put it, he denounced stalinism and criticized repression

in the Soviet Union. He promoted the conversions of communists and capitalist systems in a form of democratic socialism, as well as cordial relations between the US and Soviet Union, and he emphasized the importance of freedom of opinion. Intellectual freedom is essential to human society. Freedom to obtain and distribute information, freedom for open minded and unfearing debate, and

freedom from pressure, officialdom and prejudices. Such a trinity of freedom of thought is the only guarantee against an infection of people by mass myths, which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be transformed into bloody dictatorship. Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific, democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.

But freedom of thought is under a triple threat in modern society from the deliberate opium of mass culture, from cowardly, egotistic and philistine ideologies, and from the ossified dogmatism of a bureaucratic oligarchy and its favorite weapon, ideological censorship. Therefore, freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people. Let's take a quick break. The essay got

lots of attention in the Soviet Union and abroad. After its publication, Sahrov was banned from all military related research. He turned to theoretical physics and human rights work. In nineteen seventy, he and other Soviet dissidents formed the Moscow Human Rights Committee. He wrote text criticizing the Soviet government

that earned him international recognition. After his wife died, he remarried to a doctor named Yelena Bonner, who was also an activist Saharav spoke out on many different issues of human rights, from the exile of the Tatar people of the Crimea to the government's use of punitive psychiatry. As he became known more for his activism, the Soviet Union and the press expressed their discontent with Saharov and his actions. Members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences signed open letters

that denounced him, newspapers published letters attacking him. Still, in nineteen seventy Sarev won the Nobel Peace Prize for his human rights activism in opposition to the abuse of power. The Soviet Union refused to give him permission to travel to Norway to get the prize, so his wife got

it for him. When Saharav publicly opposed the nineteen seventy nine Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and called for a boycott of the Olympics in Moscow, the Soviet Union responded by stripping him of his honors and exiling him in Gorky, a city on the Volga River, and cutting off his contact with friends and colleagues. He remained there for seven years, subject to surveillance and harassment by the KGB or Soviet secret police. Bonnard was also banished to Gorky for her

anti Soviet activities. During his time in exile, Sahara wrote memoirs and appeals for persecuted human rights activists. He also wrote essays that were published in the Western press and went on hunger star in protest of the Soviet government's actions. In December of nineteen eighty six, with a new policy of Paris Stroika or moderate political and economic restructuring, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev let Bonner and Saharof return to Moscow.

Sahara began traveling abroad and meeting with politicians. In nineteen eighty nine, he was elected a member of the First Congress of People's Deputies representing the Academy of Sciences, and his honors were restored. Saharaf continued to advocate for human rights in Soviet reform until he died of a heart attack on December fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine, in Moscow. Andre Saharov's story is far from a tale of lifelong commitment

to human rights, fearless resistance, and perfect human decency. It's not quite the tale of the apathetic, cruel grinch growing his heart to three times its original size, either, but his story does have a reversal worthy of any well written by a graphical drama. Sahrov had a hand in the production and testing of weapons that would do harm to and kill a lot of people. He continued to work in the military industrial complex even as his advocacy

for peace, human rights, and disarmament grew. His willingness to think and reevaluate the work he was doing and its consequences, led to him using the power and the privilege he had to fight for human rights and speak out against Soviet ideology and actions. Sahrov's dissidents took time to develop, but the outcome was a person who promoted peace and progress and inspired political change. What Sav's evolution can show us is that drastic changes in thought and action are

not impossible. Education, critical thinking, and awareness of actionable solutions can spark a consciousness that empowers people to question values and systems that may be right for cha. Ange our producer is Andrew Howard, Holly Fry and Christopher Hasciotis are our executive producers, and you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, the I Heart Radio app, or wherever you get your podcast and if you are so inclined, You can send us an email at Unpopular at I

heart media dot com. We'll be back next week with another episode of Unpopular