Of Arms and Reforms

In February, barely two months after Soviet authorities unexpectedly released him from internal exile, Andrei Sakharov created a worldwide sensation by turning up at an international forum in Moscow. Sakharov, 65, a nuclear physicist often described as the "father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb" and a courageous defender of human rights in his homeland, spent nearly seven years under virtual house arrest with his wife Elena Bonner in the closed city of Gorky. During the February forum, Sakharov delivered three speeches eloquently expressing his concerns about human rights, U.S.-Soviet relations and the nuclear arms race. He made a slightly edited version...

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