As the 1960s drew on, Andrei Sakharov inched toward a break with the regime he had served so ably as the master builder of its thermonuclear-weapons program. His convictions and the growing repression in the U.S.S.R. during the Brezhnev years moved him to identify ever more closely with dissent in his own country and abroad. In 1966 he took part in his first human rights demonstration, a one-minute silent protest in Pushkin Square. In 1967 he wrote a letter to Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev defending imprisoned dissidents. That prompted an angry reaction from Efim Slavsky, head of the Ministry of...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
