July 23, 2019 • 22 mins
Andrei Sakharov was a nuclear physicist whose secret work was instrumental in the secret development of Soviet thermonuclear weapons. Initially committed to the necessity of his contributions to the design, construction, and testing of hydrogen bombs, Sakharov began to feel the pressure of personal and professional responsibility. The testing and deployment of nuclear weapons was a moral and biological issue that Sakharov could no longer condone. And he became a dissident. He said in an essay, “Freedom of thought is the only guarantee of the feasibility of a scientific democratic approach to politics, economy, and culture.”
Sakharov’s activism extended beyond disarmament, though. He campaigned for peace and human rights, and he was exiled for his dissent. If Sakharov’s story carries any weight, major turns in thought and action are not impossible, even though they may take a while.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Nuclear explosions are caused by weapons such as h bombs
or atom bombs. They are like ordinary explosions, only many
times more powerful. They cause great heat and blast. They
also make a cloud of deadly dust which falls slowly
to the ground. This is what is called fall out.
(00:22):
In my mind, real visceral fear of nuclear war just
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
(00:43):
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,
(01:04):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:51):
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
(02:14):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:58):
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,
(03:22):
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
(03:43):
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
(04:06):
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
(04:27):
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
(04:50):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:33):
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
(05:55):
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
(06:19):
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,
(06:40):
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
(07:00):
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,
(07:24):
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.
(07:45):
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
(08:06):
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.
(08:31):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:16):
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
(09:37):
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
(10:00):
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
(10:22):
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,
(10:42):
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
(11:03):
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
(11:27):
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,
(11:50):
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
(12:13):
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
(12:36):
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
(12:57):
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
(13:18):
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
(13:39):
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.
(14:03):
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,
(14:23):
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
(14:47):
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
(15:08):
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
(15:30):
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
(15:53):
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.
(16:15):
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
(16:36):
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
(16:58):
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
(17:18):
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,
(17:42):
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
(18:05):
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
(18:27):
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.
(18:49):
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
(19:11):
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,
(19:34):
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
(19:56):
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
(20:20):
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
(20:41):
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
(21:05):
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
(21:28):
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
(21:53):
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
(22:15):
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
(22:37):
another episode of Unpopular
Nuclear explosions are caused by weapons such as h bombs
or atom bombs. They are like ordinary explosions, only many
times more powerful. They cause great heat and blast. They
also make a cloud of deadly dust which falls slowly
to the ground. This is what is called fall out.
(00:22):
In my mind, real visceral fear of nuclear war just
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
(00:43):
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,
(01:04):
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
(01:28):
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
(01:51):
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
(02:14):
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
(02:36):
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
(02:58):
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,
(03:22):
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
(03:43):
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
(04:06):
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
(04:27):
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
(04:50):
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
(05:10):
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
(05:33):
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
(05:55):
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
(06:19):
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,
(06:40):
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
(07:00):
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,
(07:24):
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.
(07:45):
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
(08:06):
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.
(08:31):
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
(08:53):
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
(09:16):
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
(09:37):
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
(10:00):
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
(10:22):
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,
(10:42):
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
(11:03):
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
(11:27):
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,
(11:50):
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
(12:13):
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
(12:36):
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
(12:57):
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
(13:18):
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
(13:39):
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.
(14:03):
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,
(14:23):
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
(14:47):
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
(15:08):
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
(15:30):
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
(15:53):
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.
(16:15):
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
(16:36):
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
(16:58):
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
(17:18):
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,
(17:42):
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
(18:05):
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
(18:27):
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.
(18:49):
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
(19:11):
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,
(19:34):
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
(19:56):
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
(20:20):
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
(20:41):
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
(21:05):
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
(21:28):
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
(21:53):
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
(22:15):
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
(22:37):
another episode of Unpopular
Unpopular News
Host
Yves Jeffcoat
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