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What is Sakharov's legacy today? With the cold war ended and the Soviet threat gone, his exhortations against totalitarianism might seem anachronistic. Yet in China, where political freedom continues to be suppressed and intellectuals face harassment and arrest, his voice is still one of encouragement. For scientists his career remains a model of the moral responsibility that must accompany innovation. And Sakharov might remind the West too that freedom is fragile, that if democratic societies are not protective of their liberties, even they may lose it. On the night of his death, after returning from a tempestuous meeting of the Congress of People's Deputies, Sakharov told his wife Yelena Bonner, "Tomorrow there will be a battle!" That battle--at its core, the battle of individuals striving to shape their own destinies--must continue to be fought in the century to come.
Astrophysicist Fang Lizhi helped inspire the Tiananmen Square demonstrations