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The story of Andrei Sakharov, the nuclear physicist turned human-rights advocate who became the father of the Soviet democracy movement.
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00:00:01Frontline is a presentation of the Documentary Consortium.
00:00:09On August 19th, one hardline communist sent tanks into the streets of Moscow.
00:00:14They were not prepared for the people's response.
00:00:21We don't recognize the emergency committee. No one voted for it. It doesn't exist for us.
00:00:26We don't intend to obey its laws.
00:00:31Fascism won't succeed. Fascism won't succeed.
00:00:34How long are you planning to stay here? Until they start shooting.
00:00:39It was a time of great courage.
00:00:42One of history's great moments.
00:00:48But the man who had given his life for this cause was there only in spirit.
00:00:54His picture carried in the streets.
00:00:56The man who could be called the father of Soviet democracy.
00:01:03Tonight on Frontline, the story of Andrei Sakharov.
00:01:08The leader of the democratic opposition.
00:01:12The clearest dissident voice.
00:01:14A man whose life, from privilege to persecution, was a beacon to his countrymen.
00:01:20Sakharov was a higher law.
00:01:24And not only for simple, uneducated people.
00:01:27He was also an authority for our leaders.
00:01:28Tonight, on the Frontline season premiere.
00:01:32In the shadow of Sakharov.
00:01:41With funding provided by the financial support of viewers like you.
00:01:45And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
00:01:51This is Frontline.
00:01:54This is Frontline.
00:01:55This is Frontline.
00:01:57In the shadow of the country.
00:01:58This is Frontline.
00:01:59In the shadows.
00:02:00This is Frontline.
00:02:01This is Frontline.
00:02:02This is Frontline.
00:02:03This is Frontline.
00:02:07The frontline.
00:02:09December 1986.
00:02:13The longest night in the year was reaching towards dawn.
00:02:17When Andrei Dmitriyevich Sakharov returned to Moscow from seven years in internal exile.
00:02:23I'm overwhelmed. For the last seven months, my wife and I weren't even allowed to talk with anyone.
00:02:31The father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb had grown old during the banishment imposed on him by his country's communist leaders.
00:02:39I hope I will be completely free.
00:02:44Will you speak about political prisoners?
00:02:47I will write and speak about this as long as I have the strength, because their fate is my fate too.
00:02:58For many in his country, the moment of Sakharov's release would mark the real beginning of Glasnost.
00:03:05It came 21 months into the era of Mikhail Gorbachev.
00:03:11He had waged a monumental struggle against the Communist Party, and he would become the leader of the democratic opposition to Gorbachev.
00:03:22That's it. That's it.
00:03:24My speech is crucial. I will continue.
00:03:27Do you respect this Congress or not?
00:03:31I respect this Congress, but I also respect the people listening to me. I respect mankind. My mandate extends beyond the bounds of this Congress.
00:03:42Please. End now. Finish. Please. Take your speech with you. Take it. Take it.
00:03:54He was an instinctive Democrat in a country with little experience at democracy. He would help awaken the people to its promise.
00:04:04And in 1989, he would write a constitution for a union of free citizens and states. A union few thought would ever be possible here.
00:04:14The union of Soviet republics of Europe and Asia shall be a voluntary union of sovereign republics. The principles of pluralism and tolerance shall be the foundation of the political, cultural, and ideological life of the society.
00:04:33He was the very first to speak out several years ago on the need for a union treaty. Something that was repeatedly rejected, crudely and senselessly rejected.
00:04:48He was the first to say that to avoid falling into the trap of nationalist chaos and anarchy, we must immediately, right now ahead of time, determine the conditions and ways for ethnic groups and republics to exist in a democracy.
00:05:09A basic and supreme right of each nation and republic shall be the right to self-determination. A republic shall join the union of Soviet republics of Europe and Asia on the basis of a union treaty adopted in accordance with the will of its population.
00:05:30He was guided not only by what could be done today, but what could be done over decades.
00:05:51Sakharov's most concrete and practical proposals were incorporated into our politics only a year or a year and a half after he made them. He saw farther than others. He was ahead of everyone else.
00:06:10A few days after his constitution was written, Andrei Sakharov died of a heart attack at the age of 68.
00:06:19All revolutions have their martyrs, a Soviet journalist wrote. A Marxist god somewhere sent Sakharov to be the saint and the martyr of Perestroika.
00:06:31When he expressed his condolences to me, I said, I feel very sorry for you, because you've lost your only honest opponent. Someday you'll appreciate that. I think he has already, and he will many times.
00:06:49I first saw him when he was one and a half years old. His character was calm, very agreeable. He was a very gentle little boy.
00:07:08Andrei Sakharov's seven decades of life would span almost exactly the life of communism in the Soviet Union.
00:07:19He was born in Moscow in 1921, as the flames of revolution and civil war were flickering out. He was the first son of a president of the Soviet Union.
00:07:26He was the first son of a prominent Moscow physics teacher, the grandson of a lawyer, the great-grandson of a priest.
00:07:33Andrei Sakharov came upon by the Soviet Union. He was his ass3g14
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00:07:52the great-grandson of a priest.
00:08:10They took us to church when we were little.
00:08:13We were baptized, and then when we were older,
00:08:17we took our first communion.
00:08:20But then both churches we attended were closed.
00:08:23These were traditions that the intelligentsia,
00:08:29the Russian intelligentsia, kept alive.
00:08:42By the time he and his cousins were baptized,
00:08:46hundreds of churches were being closed.
00:08:49Lenin's communist state had already begun
00:08:51trying to destroy the old Russian spirituality.
00:08:57Even as little children,
00:09:00we understood that we shouldn't tell anyone about this.
00:09:03We always kept our guard up.
00:09:08It was frowned upon.
00:09:10Of course, it was a double life.
00:09:12It was frowned upon.
00:09:13Andrei grew up in a communal apartment in the heart of old Moscow,
00:09:22protected by his close-knit family from the world the communists were building.
00:09:25Until he was 12, his parents kept him out of Soviet schools
00:09:31and tutored him at home.
00:09:33We read many of the classics.
00:09:37We read many of the classics.
00:09:38The silver skates.
00:09:39The little women.
00:09:41Those are your books.
00:09:42American books.
00:09:44Little men.
00:09:45Books like that.
00:09:48Uncle Tom's cabin.
00:09:50Oh, how we cried.
00:09:51When he entered Moscow University in the shadow of the Kremlin,
00:10:03he was admitted to the elite physics department
00:10:05without having to take an entrance exam.
00:10:08Already, he was absorbed in science.
00:10:11I don't think Andrei had any really close friends in his university years.
00:10:20He was a bit of a lone wolf.
00:10:23He gave me books to read, which was really something in those days.
00:10:27Books were rare.
00:10:29To this day, as I walked through the neighborhoods of my youth
00:10:32by the old buildings where my friends lived,
00:10:35I remember.
00:10:37In this building, a boy had a book by Stevenson.
00:10:41In this one, a boy had Maine Reed.
00:10:45And here, Dumas.
00:10:47That was my geography of Moscow streets.
00:10:52He was always very quiet.
00:10:59But he liked to get together with us and talk.
00:11:02I think we only talked about science.
00:11:05I don't think we ever tried to talk about politics with him.
00:11:09After all, we met in 1936.
00:11:11Those were the darkest years.
00:11:14And we understood.
00:11:15We shouldn't discuss politics with everyone.
00:11:26Politics was another word for the terror
00:11:28that had begun with Joseph Stalin's forced collectivization of agriculture
00:11:32and his annihilation of land-owning peasants.
00:11:36The truth was also among his victims.
00:11:39For in the midst of murder and famine,
00:11:42the official ideology had begun to insist that the country was living an ideal life.
00:11:46We really didn't know what was going on.
00:11:52We knew that all around us was a horrible distortion of everything.
00:11:57So later, I was rather surprised when Sakharov writes that he didn't know anything
00:12:01and no one had told him.
00:12:03We thought everyone knew.
00:12:04Tens of millions of its own people were designated by the state as enemies.
00:12:15Tens of millions of its own people were condemned to die.
00:12:18They arrested my stepfather when I was nine years old.
00:12:27They arrested him and then they shot him.
00:12:31My mother took him under clothes
00:12:32and they came back torn and bloody.
00:12:34Later, Katya's father was arrested.
00:12:44So we encountered this at a very young age.
00:12:52In 1937, two of my cousins were arrested and shot.
00:12:58See the one with the round face?
00:13:00He was arrested when he was 20.
00:13:02He was shot at 21.
00:13:04Andrei was told less than Irina and me.
00:13:13Uncle Mitya and Aunt Katya sheltered him
00:13:16because, after all, it's hard for a child to live in that kind of a double world.
00:13:28The double world hid a gulag archipelago,
00:13:32labor camps stretching across the land.
00:13:34By 1945, the country outside the barbed wire was a country ravaged by the Second World War.
00:13:44So when the United States exploded its atomic bomb,
00:13:51only the head of Stalin's secret police commanded the resources needed to try to catch up.
00:13:56Many scientists had been arrested and many were imprisoned in the camps.
00:14:05In the camps, they did common labor, in the mines, in the quarries, in construction, cutting timber.
00:14:10No one used them as scientists.
00:14:12Then they decided to take scientists out of the camps, physicists, mathematicians, chemists, and set up special secret laboratories where convict scientists would work.
00:14:24In 1948, Sakharov, by now recognized as a brilliant young physicist, would be drafted into this world of secret Soviet science,
00:14:34working at an installation maintained by prison labor, charged with building the bomb for Stalin.
00:14:42He would join a prestigious group.
00:14:44They were given all they needed.
00:14:46One of them called it the White Archipelago.
00:14:49There are three seconds, two, one, zero.
00:14:54No!
00:15:03Within months, Sakharov would develop the idea that, in 1953, would vault his backward country into the thermonuclear age.
00:15:16We built the bomb, he would say, out of garbage.
00:15:19But if the Soviets didn't yet have the technology to match the American tests, they did have Sakharov.
00:15:26He was 32 years old.
00:15:29We were possessed by a true war psychology.
00:15:33I regarded myself as a soldier in this new scientific war.
00:15:43What was most important to me at the time was the conviction that our work was essential.
00:15:48I had no doubts as to the importance of creating a Soviet superweapon for our country, and for the balance of power.
00:16:04He would three times win the country's highest civilian honor, and be rewarded with a huge salary, as well as this country house,
00:16:11in a community built especially for those who gave their motherland the bomb.
00:16:16He would be elected the youngest member ever of the Academy of Sciences, and extraordinary precautions would be taken to protect his life.
00:16:24Two men armed with pistols, referred to as his secretaries, guarded him around the clock.
00:16:30The moments with his wife, Klaudia, and their three young children would become rare.
00:16:36Throughout my school years, I didn't know what my father did.
00:16:45The secrecy was just awful.
00:16:48It was oppressive for everyone in the family, including the children.
00:16:53They warned me sternly not to tell my Moscow friends where we lived, where we were going, how far it was from Moscow, the name of the city, that it was secret work.
00:17:05But I was always certain that whatever my father was doing, it was very noble.
00:17:11On November 22, 1955, Sakharov's intuitive mind transported the Soviets past enormous problems,
00:17:23and led to the explosion of a hydrogen bomb of unlimited capacity.
00:17:30American scientists were stunned.
00:17:32The Soviets had achieved the possibility of military parity.
00:17:41I experienced a range of contradictory sentiments, perhaps chief among them a fear that this newly released force could slip out of control and lead to unimaginable disasters.
00:17:54The accident reports, especially the deaths of the little girl and the soldier, heightened my sense of foreboding.
00:18:02I did not hold myself personally responsible for their deaths, but I could not escape a feeling of complicity.
00:18:11That evening, Marshal Nijelin, the military commander of the test, threw a party to celebrate.
00:18:18He asked the father of the bomb to give the first toast.
00:18:23Sakharov said, let's drink to exploding these bombs only over test sites and never at a time of war.
00:18:30And Marshal Nijelin made a toast in response.
00:18:39He told a joke about an old couple in a village getting ready for bed.
00:18:42The wife is already lying by the hearth, as the husband is saying his prayers.
00:18:51God, harden me and guide me.
00:18:53And his wife says, just pray to be hard.
00:18:56I can guide it in myself.
00:18:59Marshal Nijelin told a rather obscene joke, the point of which was, it's your job to make it, but how it will be used, how that force will be guided.
00:19:14That's our business.
00:19:21I think I turned pale.
00:19:23Of course, I knew all this already.
00:19:25I wasn't that naive.
00:19:27But understanding something in an abstract way is different from feeling it with your whole being.
00:19:33Like the reality of life and death.
00:19:35The humiliation would lead to questions.
00:19:45And he would calculate that over time, 10,000 people would suffer the effects of the fallout of every one megaton test in the atmosphere.
00:19:54The bombs he was designing were 60 times that powerful.
00:20:05What cannot be determined is the identity of individual victims, lost as they are in the human sea.
00:20:12We can never establish with certainty that a particular cancer victim or a congenitally deformed child is the casualty of nuclear testing.
00:20:20I am baffled by those who simply ignore the problem.
00:20:27When you were at the university, his father told him in his dying words.
00:20:31You said that uncovering the secrets of nature could make you happy.
00:20:36We don't choose our fate.
00:20:38But I'm sorry that yours took a different turn.
00:20:41I imagine you could have been happier.
00:20:50His fate would become more and more bound up with the political fate of his country.
00:21:03In 1956, in a secret speech in the Kremlin, Nikita Khrushchev denounced the crimes of Stalin.
00:21:11Word of the speech got out and ricocheted through the intelligentsia.
00:21:16When it was followed by the release of prisoners from the gulag, a country that had lived in the isolation and mutual suspicion created by Stalin's terror, was opened to the possibility of thinking the truth.
00:21:30I was so on.
00:21:59It was a time of hope, a major turning point for our country.
00:22:11It's comparable to the emancipation of the slaves in America, or the abolition of serfdom
00:22:17here.
00:22:21It was the air of freedom.
00:22:28Unofficial concerts and poetry readings were not exactly permitted, but they happened anyway.
00:22:35People began to act as if they were free and see what happened.
00:22:42These people came together on the basis of personal sympathies.
00:22:47They came together in their opposition to the use of force and lies.
00:22:52Force and lies.
00:22:54For absolutely everything was steeped in lies.
00:23:01Many people simply wanted to make sense of what was going on.
00:23:04There was a growing movement, a striving for truth and freedom.
00:23:10I enjoy recalling these years because they were all such good people, and we all loved
00:23:17and trusted each other so much.
00:23:23Maybe you always remember the past so fondly.
00:23:28At the same time, Sakharov was slowly but surely coming into conflict with the government as
00:23:34as he repeatedly implored Khrushchev to halt atmospheric testing.
00:23:38Khrushchev said something like, in politics the only thing that matters is force, and you can't
00:23:52entrust that to a weakling like Sakharov.
00:23:56And then in 1962, the military decided to test two similar superbombs.
00:24:03While the preparations moved ahead, Sakharov frantically tried to stop them.
00:24:08Exploding a second bomb was not only unnecessary, but would be murder.
00:24:14Hours after calling Khrushchev himself, he discovered the plane with the first bomb was already in the air.
00:24:20The military had feared he might succeed, and so had speeded up the schedule.
00:24:26It was the ultimate defeat for me.
00:24:29A terrible crime was about to be committed, and I could do nothing to prevent it.
00:24:34I was overcome by my impotence, unbearable bitterness, shame, and humiliation.
00:24:39I put my face down on the desk and wept.
00:24:42He'd been defeated by the men who were infinitely stronger because of the weapon he had created.
00:25:01He had seen the leaders up close, he had seen them, and it depressed him.
00:25:16He said, look what kind of monsters are ruling us.
00:25:20I remember the word monster.
00:25:26I was probably about 10 or 12 years old then.
00:25:33Papa sat me down on the couch next to him and began to talk with me about honesty and truth.
00:25:41He told me, you must be an honest person under any circumstances, and people need truth more than anything else.
00:25:52I was still a little girl then, and I thought he was talking about me.
00:25:57I was really astounded because I always told the truth.
00:26:03I remembered that conversation my whole life.
00:26:07Later I realized he wasn't talking about me, about the way I was being brought up.
00:26:13He was talking about his life.
00:26:21When he saw that the tests of the bomb were merciless, terrible, and he was frightened, he saw the real situation, and then he started to think it over.
00:26:40And it was a very, very hard period in his life.
00:26:49In Moscow, Sakharov was a legend.
00:26:55A man known as the father of the bomb, who no one knew.
00:27:01But after 1962, he began to step out of the shadows of the secret world.
00:27:08And he would be drawn to the growing numbers of scientists, writers, and thinkers whose activities were moving from poetry readings to politics.
00:27:18He gave the impression of someone who had been gone for a very long time, and had returned to a strange land.
00:27:27To get to know this land, these people, he hungrily read, spoke, listened, and thought.
00:27:37In 1964, hardliners in the Kremlin would plot the return to Stalinist control.
00:27:53Khrushchev was overthrown while he vacationed on the Black Sea.
00:28:00And they began to curtail the openness, starting with the arrest of two writers who had dared to publish their works abroad.
00:28:08The idea was to make very few arrests, but in the same time, to scare people again.
00:28:14So to get a kind of a second harvest from the terror which was sowed in Stalinist time.
00:28:20And they thought that not many people arrested, we would still get good relations with the West.
00:28:27If they didn't notice millions killed in Stalinist times, why would they notice maybe 20, 30 almost unknown people?
00:28:40The arrests prompted what would become annual protests.
00:28:43In 1966, for the first time, Sakharov took part.
00:28:48He criticized himself for having understood too late.
00:28:52When he started to think about it, he really thought it through.
00:29:01When he began to think, he thought very deeply, perhaps more deeply than all of us.
00:29:09He knew his own power.
00:29:11Khrushchev had signed the Moscow Test Ban Treaty because of his prodding.
00:29:15So in 1966, he would take another step in his journey.
00:29:20Adding his name and prestige to a letter to the party opposing the rumored rehabilitation of Stalin.
00:29:27Every day I saw the resources of thousands of people being poured into the creation of a means of total destruction.
00:29:36One got an increasingly clear picture of the collective might of the military industrial complex and of its vigorous, unprincipled leaders, blind to everything except their job.
00:29:53Gradually, I was approaching an irrevocable step.
00:29:56That step was a wide-ranging essay on repression, the Cold War, disarmament, and the dangers of the nuclear age.
00:30:08It would be smuggled to the West, where its publication created a sensation and made news that was broadcast back into the Soviet Union on Western radio.
00:30:17In the essay, Sakharov laid out a bold plan for cooperation, what he called convergence between the two superpowers and their systems.
00:30:30It is the only alternative, he wrote, to the ruin of mankind.
00:30:36He had gone public. There would be no turning back.
00:30:40His life of privilege would become a life of protest.
00:30:44The die was cast.
00:30:47That evening I had the most profound feeling of satisfaction.
00:30:51The following day I was due to fly to Moscow.
00:30:54I left for the airfield.
00:30:57I was never to set foot in my office again.
00:31:14Andrei Sakharov's 1968 essay had been written at a moment when the idea of change was in the air, stirred by the reforms in Czechoslovakia.
00:31:31But when the Soviet Union invaded Prague, the hopes of the spring collapsed.
00:31:38Only seven people dared to publicly protest the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
00:31:44Within minutes they were arrested.
00:31:46The renewed repressions would force many back into silence.
00:31:52But there were a few who, having inhaled the breath of an inner freedom, refused to give it up.
00:32:02The possibility of arrest was always with us.
00:32:05If I lived the way I wanted, it could happen. I could be arrested.
00:32:08People were constantly being arrested.
00:32:11They were labeled dissidents by the West.
00:32:14The Russian word is more descriptive.
00:32:16Those who think differently.
00:32:18And Sakharov's life would become intertwined with theirs.
00:32:23Someone, I don't remember who, called it a movement of moral resistance.
00:32:30I think that's a very precise term for it.
00:32:34Suddenly we realized that we could do something.
00:32:37It wasn't much, but we could speak out against this outrage.
00:32:41So it was a very good moment in our lives.
00:32:44A kind of liberation.
00:32:51Sakharov's liberation had cost him his job in weapons work and half his salary.
00:32:57But the father of the bomb was too prominent to be dismissed as just another dissident.
00:33:02So in 1970, along with two others, he sent a letter to the leaders of the party.
00:33:08We are seeking to achieve a positive and constructive approach acceptable to the party leadership of the country.
00:33:15There are threatening signs of breakdown and stagnation in our national economy.
00:33:20Without deep-rooted democratization, our society will not be able to solve the problems it faces,
00:33:26and will not be able to develop normally.
00:33:29We will fall behind the capitalist countries in the course of the second industrial revolution,
00:33:34and gradually be transformed into a second-rate provincial power.
00:33:39Economic difficulties will increase.
00:33:42Relations between the party and the intelligentsia will deteriorate,
00:33:46and the nationality problems will be exacerbated.
00:33:49Understanding the need for gradual democratization is the first step on the road to its realization.
00:33:59The letter was never acknowledged.
00:34:02Fifteen years before Perestroika, Sakharov and other dissidents understood the gravity of the crisis the communist system had created.
00:34:11But according to the official ideology, they were already living under the most democratic constitution in the world.
00:34:19Pursuing democracy was not necessary.
00:34:28What they did pursue was the war against anyone who tried to live as if the constitutional freedoms were real.
00:34:36Early in the morning, the doorbell would ring.
00:34:45And when you'd open the door, first you'd see just one person.
00:34:49He'd say he was the mailman or the plumber.
00:34:53So you'd let him in.
00:34:56And suddenly a crowd of fifteen people would rush in, pushing you aside.
00:35:03Sometimes they wouldn't even wait for the door to open, they'd just break it down.
00:35:08Sometimes we would just go into an apartment.
00:35:12I mean, a legal entry.
00:35:14We'd go in and look around, find out where things were, make sure everything was there.
00:35:18The next morning we'd come in for a search.
00:35:20It was really very simple.
00:35:22Party security meant that more and more people would be arrested for the crime of thinking.
00:35:29Their trials were declared open, but only people handpicked by the KGB were allowed in the courtroom.
00:35:35There were never any independent trials of dissidents.
00:35:40All the verdicts were decided ahead of time by the KGB.
00:35:45The KGB started the case and it finished it.
00:35:50Right down to which prison camp.
00:35:53The KGB decided that too.
00:35:57The price of inner freedom was known, and it was high.
00:36:03Seven years in labor camp, followed by five years of exile.
00:36:07But unlike the 1930s when the accused were shunned,
00:36:11the human rights community gathered outside these show trials, determined to offer moral support.
00:36:17Andrei Sakharov was now among them.
00:36:20Academic Sakharov was permitted to attend the trials for a while.
00:36:26They couldn't prevent him at first.
00:36:28And this was important to the person on trial, who knew that Sakharov was there.
00:36:33For us, Sakharov wasn't just someone who could help us.
00:36:39He was also a symbol of everything, intelligence and conscience.
00:36:54His transformation into an activist accelerated when the new widower met and married Yelena Bonner,
00:37:00who was already deeply involved in the movement.
00:37:04Since there was a sharp corner, the paddy wagon couldn't go very fast.
00:37:11We would try to pound on it and shout,
00:37:13Alik, Alik, or Tolia, depending on who was on trial,
00:37:16hoping that they would hear us and it would somehow support them.
00:37:19I remember Andrei Dmitrievich ran behind one paddy wagon, yelling, Alik, Alik.
00:37:37At that moment it braked sharply.
00:37:40They just slammed on the brakes.
00:37:42And the back doors opened from inside.
00:37:44We could see a pile of crates of empty yogurt and milk bottles.
00:37:56Two security guards inside were just doubled over laughing.
00:38:01They could have died laughing, they thought it was so funny.
00:38:05They yelled, ha ha, here's your Alik.
00:38:08It was just a horrible taunt, a malicious and cruel taunt.
00:38:14Andrei Dmitrievich's face looked so awful, as if someone had punched him.
00:38:20He couldn't understand why this was happening.
00:38:22Why such cruelty?
00:38:25Andrei Dmitrievich said it was very sad.
00:38:30He felt sorry for him.
00:38:32He pitied him because his humanity had been taken away.
00:38:41I saw him talk to many people.
00:38:44He approached them with what I call the presumption of decency.
00:38:48He decided ahead of time that the person he was talking to was decent and not lying.
00:38:53That he said what he truly thought.
00:38:55And that there was a need to understand him.
00:38:57It was an astonishing characteristic.
00:39:06Such an absolutely unbiased, open mind.
00:39:11You were mostly.
00:39:14A state-like request of police in uniform and civil
00:39:17had the access to the police.
00:39:19It was hermetically regulated.
00:39:23Only the wife of Uri Olof.
00:39:26Western journalists mingled with the dissidents outside the trials.
00:39:30And through their reports, the world learned some of what was happening.
00:39:34More importantly, so did the Soviet Union.
00:39:38Western broadcasts had become the most important tool in spreading the truth.
00:39:44As people tuned in their shortwave radios to what they called the Voices.
00:39:49The Voice of America.
00:39:51Radio Liberty.
00:39:52The BBC.
00:39:54So in 1973, the three-time hero of socialist labor would break a basic Soviet taboo.
00:40:01He agreed to an interview with a foreign journalist.
00:40:05Although we are not the best society, we pretend that we are.
00:40:12We are a society on the decline.
00:40:15We need greater openness.
00:40:18We need elections.
00:40:19The press must change its character.
00:40:22The ideological structure is anti-democratic in its very essence.
00:40:27It has been very tragic for the state.
00:40:30There is a need to create ideals even when you can't see any route by which to achieve them.
00:40:36Because if there are no ideals, then there can be no hope.
00:40:42And one would be left completely in the dark, in a hopeless, blind alley.
00:40:49People didn't dare to believe what they felt, to say to themselves what Sakharov said.
00:41:02And it was taken at once by many and many as an obvious truth, which only should be told openly.
00:41:17To pronounce the truth, to say the truth, just out of question.
00:41:22Something was wrong with our minds and our souls.
00:41:25No, I know what was wrong, the terrible fear that crept into us.
00:41:30We didn't dare to say what we thought, what we knew.
00:41:33We spoke in whispers in our own bedroom, you see, at night, at home.
00:41:40In other darkened rooms, Sakharov's new colleagues secretly published the backbone of the human rights movement,
00:41:46the chronicle of current events.
00:41:49They tried to document every instance when the state violated its own laws against its citizens,
00:41:54and make them known.
00:41:56Nothing frightened our security agencies more than these tattered type bulletins,
00:42:01which only goes to prove the chronicle's significance and force.
00:42:05It was the clearest and most important expression of our human rights struggle,
00:42:10and our only weapon, glasnost.
00:42:14We couldn't remain voiceless.
00:42:21We couldn't add to the illusion that everyone in the country agreed with the lawlessness that was going on.
00:42:31We couldn't remain voiceless.
00:42:35Reports were smuggled from every republic.
00:42:38Many people helped us in some way.
00:42:42Or they didn't help us, they actually helped themselves.
00:42:46They were terribly frightened, and they had parents or relatives who were also terribly afraid.
00:42:56So a person wouldn't notice the surveillance, you had to constantly change the people and the cars.
00:43:08To keep changing them, you had to have a minimum of three cars to tail one person,
00:43:13with three or four KGB agents in each car.
00:43:17So in one shift, you needed about 10 to 12 people to tail someone.
00:43:23And if it's all three shifts, round the clock,
00:43:27and you need about 30 people just to tail one person.
00:43:33A tremendous amount, just tremendous,
00:43:3830 or 40 percent of our budget went to pressuring the dissidents and cutting off their activities.
00:43:44So I think that's a very important message.
00:43:48Sakharov's apartment on Chukalova Street became a magnet for information for the Chronicle,
00:43:53and for people seeking protection from persecution.
00:43:56The more he learned, the more he himself practiced glasnost, when it was still against the law.
00:44:03As each colleague disappeared into the camps or exile,
00:44:07more and more photos were added to Sakharov's wall.
00:44:11So on the eve of Richard Nixon's arrival in Moscow,
00:44:14he began a hunger strike to get the attention of the world press,
00:44:18and warned that a country with political prisoners could not be trusted.
00:44:23They're living in a world of outdated notions,
00:44:26notions from the era of the Iron Curtain.
00:44:30This just shows that the detente that people are writing about is, in fact, still very superficial.
00:44:48Detente was, in many ways, the product of Sakharov's ideas.
00:44:52But you can't do business, he argued, with a country behind a mask.
00:44:57And a fake detente that could be betrayed would threaten world peace.
00:45:02It was really complicated with Sakharov.
00:45:08Because to stop a figure like him and to put KGB guards at his door,
00:45:14it was really complicated.
00:45:17He's not just some factory engineer.
00:45:22He was a figure of world renown.
00:45:28Sakharov's public challenge to the authorities threatened what Brezhnev needed.
00:45:32Trade with the Western capitalists he outwardly opposed.
00:45:42The power of the regime to silence its citizens could not silence Sakharov.
00:45:47They would begin a furious battle against him,
00:45:51reviving a proven technique to portray him as the enemy.
00:45:56The organized wrath of the people, as a Russian writer characterized it,
00:46:00poured into the pages of the official newspapers.
00:46:04What has Sakharov done to please his Western clients?
00:46:07One letter asked.
00:46:08We farmers, said another,
00:46:10categorically deny his fabrications about our socialist system.
00:46:14And in Pravda, this renegade deserves the contempt of all.
00:46:23But the most insidious was the willingness of colleagues in the Academy of Sciences
00:46:28to take the lead in the denunciations.
00:46:31Their signatures were not faked.
00:46:33They were real.
00:46:34How good people do science which needs free thinking,
00:46:41and at the same time the other half of their mind,
00:46:47of their feelings,
00:46:49was twisted.
00:46:53To some extent it was possible.
00:47:00Turned out possible.
00:47:02It turned out that good physicists was brought up.
00:47:07They are now invited to the United States, a great number.
00:47:12In this various things, huh?
00:47:15People in Russia, people are used to lying.
00:47:18Russia's history has taught Russian people not to be truthful,
00:47:22and not to be open, and it's much safer
00:47:25either to say the lie or to go around the truth somewhere.
00:47:29That's straightforward.
00:47:31He stayed a member of the Academy,
00:47:36but he was increasingly shunned,
00:47:38as the authorities did all in their power to isolate him,
00:47:41to frighten people away.
00:47:44For one and a half or two decades,
00:47:50they lived with the badgering and the vigilance of the KGB.
00:47:53Their apartment was tapped.
00:47:55They went through their things.
00:47:56You can't comprehend how people can survive that.
00:47:59A person can get used to a lot,
00:48:01but to live in such a state for decades,
00:48:04it's just unbelievable.
00:48:07He would come to a singular vision of the nuclear age,
00:48:11that the guarantee of individual freedom
00:48:14was the only guarantee against the inevitability of war.
00:48:20I try to say what I think to warn about the possible dangers,
00:48:25not only in our country, but in the whole world.
00:48:28And most of all, I try to somehow help those people
00:48:31who are suffering for their convictions.
00:48:34I consider that defending a man's right to his convictions,
00:48:37to pronounce them, to defend them,
00:48:39is a beacon of huge fundamental importance.
00:48:42And for me, the defense of such rights is extremely important.
00:48:54In 1975, Andrey Dmitrievich Sakharov
00:48:58was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.
00:49:00His unselfishness and strong humanitarian convictions,
00:49:05the citation said,
00:49:06have turned him into the spokesman for the conscience of mankind,
00:49:10which the world so sorely needs.
00:49:19Yelena Bonner received the award in her husband's name.
00:49:23Soviet authorities had refused to allow him to leave the country.
00:49:29But on the streets of Oslo, he was cheered.
00:49:36It is unbearable to consider that at the very moment we are gathered together,
00:49:42hundreds and thousands of prisoners of conscience are suffering.
00:49:45They shiver from cold, damp and exhaustion in ill-lit dungeons,
00:49:50where they are forced to wage a ceaseless struggle for their human dignity,
00:49:55to maintain their convictions against the indoctrination machine,
00:49:59in fact, against the destruction of their souls.
00:50:01I would ask you to remember that all prisoners of conscience
00:50:06and all political prisoners in my country share with me the honor of the Nobel Prize.
00:50:13We must make good the demands of reason
00:50:16and create a life worthy of ourselves and of the goals which we only dimly perceive.
00:50:24We are seeing a new outbreak of repression against outspoken dissidents.
00:50:29There has been a wave of searches, attempts to plant incriminating evidence,
00:50:34illegal confiscation of money.
00:50:37An entire army of KGB agents has been mobilized.
00:50:44We really suffered because people were being arrested all around us.
00:50:50And we even suspected that several were persecuted because they were close to us.
00:50:55It was hard to endure, but it also strengthened our sense of responsibility and our obligation to carry on.
00:51:12It was a terrifying time.
00:51:19It was a scary time.
00:51:21But I was always afraid when he wasn't home.
00:51:30I thought he'd already been arrested.
00:51:32In the end, they all would be.
00:51:38And the wall in Sakharov's apartment would be filled with their photos.
00:51:43These are my friends.
00:51:45And they are the shining strength of my country.
00:51:47He was tormented by every arrest and every trial.
00:51:57It's really true.
00:51:59I saw how he reacted to every arrest.
00:52:01This was perhaps his most blessed and most marvelous gift.
00:52:09To be able to feel someone else's pain.
00:52:12His most wonderful gift, his talent.
00:52:15Your talent.
00:52:16It feels the wrong way.
00:52:21Sergei Kovalyav was sentenced to seven years in camp, followed by three in exile.
00:52:25Tatyana Velikanova, a grandmother, four years in camp, five in exile.
00:52:35Alexander Lavut was sentenced to three years in camp, re-arrested, and sentenced for three more.
00:52:41Vera Lashkova was sent back into internal exile for a third time.
00:52:46In 1980, Andrei Sakharov was seized on the streets of Moscow.
00:52:54No charges were filed against him.
00:52:57There was no trial.
00:52:59He would spend the next seven years in exile.
00:53:06In the Shadow of Sakharov will return after this intermission.
00:53:10Thank you for viewing.
00:53:11And thank you for your support.
00:53:12It is viewers like you who help make programs like this possible.
00:53:42One part is from the
00:54:00One.
00:54:03We now return to In the Shadow of Sakharov.
00:54:24On his 60th birthday, Andrei Sakharov's photograph was secretly reproduced in dozens of Moscow apartments.
00:54:31Thousands of copies were passed hand-to-hand, giving his address in exile, urging that people send him greetings.
00:54:41He had been in virtual isolation for 17 months.
00:54:51Sakharov was banished to the closed city of Gorky, 400 miles east of Moscow, near the secret weapons installation where he had spent 20 years of his life.
00:55:00It was a city where contact with foreigners would be impossible, a city named after a famous Russian writer whose name means bitter.
00:55:10He and his wife, Lucia, as he called Jelena Bonner, were taken to a four-room apartment in this building at the far edge of town.
00:55:26They were under constant surveillance.
00:55:29KGB cameras would record footage like this of their every move.
00:55:33They were not allowed a telephone.
00:55:48Guards stood outside their door.
00:55:50Yelena Georgievna was driving around Gorky with two cars tailing her.
00:55:59She was in one car.
00:56:00There were two other cars with eight KGB agents.
00:56:04If she so much as threw out an empty pack of cigarettes,
00:56:07one car would stop, someone would get out and check what she threw out.
00:56:11It was life under the microscope.
00:56:12Dear Ina,
00:56:33on the shortest night of the year,
00:56:36when Lucia was here,
00:56:38we went out for a walk around town.
00:56:40It was after two in the morning,
00:56:43but completely light already.
00:56:45We found some freshly made haystacks
00:56:47and lay down on them like little children
00:56:49and looked up at the pre-dawn sky.
00:56:56The problem is that we live very tense lives,
00:57:00very tense lives.
00:57:03Lucia arrives from Moscow every week
00:57:07and goes back on Monday.
00:57:09She travels in cold, packed trains,
00:57:12often on the top berth.
00:57:14That's the price for three days with me.
00:57:18The rest of the time I spend alone in an empty apartment,
00:57:21trying to keep my mind on physics.
00:57:23Sakharov was banned from Moscow.
00:57:40For the first three and a half years,
00:57:41Bonner was not.
00:57:43When he used a magnifying glass
00:57:45to write the words for telegrams
00:57:47on tiny scraps of paper,
00:57:49she smuggled them from Gorky
00:57:50and from Moscow to the west.
00:57:53She filmed his pleas to the world on a home camera.
00:57:56She got them out.
00:58:01Western scientists face no threat of prison or labor camp
00:58:05for their public stance.
00:58:06They cannot be bribed by an offer of foreign travel
00:58:09to forsake such activity.
00:58:12But this in no way diminishes their responsibility.
00:58:17Some Western intellectuals warn against social involvement
00:58:21as a form of politics,
00:58:22but I am not speaking about a struggle for power.
00:58:27It is not politics.
00:58:32The defense of justice,
00:58:34the international defense of individual victims of violence,
00:58:37are the responsibility of every scientist.
00:58:41By 1984,
00:58:46the world's attention had waned.
00:58:48The only visitors allowed
00:58:50were a few scientific colleagues from Moscow.
00:58:56When he and Bonner tried to make long-distance calls,
00:58:59public telephones were suddenly out of order.
00:59:03He had suffered a heart attack.
00:59:06She had suffered two.
00:59:08Exile was wearing them down.
00:59:10Desperate to send her abroad for medical treatment,
00:59:16Sakharov began his third hunger strike in five years.
00:59:20He was taken to the local hospital by force.
00:59:24It will be murder, he said,
00:59:26not suicide.
00:59:27The KGB began this test of wills.
00:59:32At first, they tried to force-feed him through a tube.
00:59:37He put up with that.
00:59:40Then they started to give him injections.
00:59:44He could also endure that for a long time.
00:59:49But then they tied up his hands and legs
00:59:53and threw him on the bed
00:59:54and held his nose so he couldn't breathe.
00:59:57Then they opened his mouth
01:00:02and instead of letting him gasp in air,
01:00:06they threw food in so he choked.
01:00:08When they told him straight out,
01:00:15we won't let you die,
01:00:17but we'll turn you into an invalid.
01:00:19But we'll turn you into an invalid.
01:00:25Then he realized
01:00:30that they were capable of anything.
01:00:32By 1985,
01:00:43the Soviet Union was a country in genuine crisis.
01:00:47The crisis Sakharov had first warned against
01:00:5015 years before.
01:00:51When the third leader in less than three years died,
01:00:56those in the Communist Party
01:00:57who understood something must change
01:00:59elected their candidate general secretary.
01:01:04And Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev
01:01:06began to improvise what he would call perestroika.
01:01:09In the hospital in Gorky,
01:01:14Sakharov saw Gorbachev on television.
01:01:18It looks as if our country's lucky, he said.
01:01:20We've got an intelligent leader.
01:01:23But for 21 months,
01:01:25Gorbachev would do nothing to end Sakharov's exile.
01:01:32Many times,
01:01:33there were conversations in the Politburo.
01:01:35in the Politburo
01:01:36in the Politburo
01:01:36in the Politburo
01:01:36in the Politburo
01:01:36in the Politburo.
01:01:39Alexander Yakovlev
01:01:40was Gorbachev's closest advisor
01:01:42and a chief architect of reform.
01:01:45In the Politburo,
01:01:46he argued for Sakharov's release.
01:01:55There was a certain amount of resistance,
01:01:58not just from those who were involved,
01:02:01but from those who were convinced
01:02:02that they had been right in exiling him.
01:02:05A so-and-so like that deserved it.
01:02:11The extremely negative reaction
01:02:13to dissidents still continued,
01:02:15so to speak,
01:02:16to dance its dance.
01:02:22Bonner was allowed to go abroad
01:02:24for heart surgery.
01:02:25But as 1986 came to an end,
01:02:28she was back in Gorky.
01:02:30Together, they were facing
01:02:31their eighth year in exile.
01:02:33My kisses.
01:02:37I kiss you.
01:02:40Everyone.
01:02:45And then, on December 23rd,
01:02:48Andrei Sakharov was allowed
01:02:49to return to Moscow.
01:02:50What did Mikhail Sergeyevich say to you
01:02:55on the phone?
01:02:57His call was completely unexpected.
01:03:01What will you do first?
01:03:05First, I'll go to the institute
01:03:07and begin the life of a normal scientist.
01:03:09Andrei Dimitriyevich,
01:03:16will you meet with Mikhail Sergeyevich?
01:03:17What?
01:03:19Will Mikhail Sergeyevich see you?
01:03:22That's not up to me,
01:03:24but I never refuse any meeting.
01:03:26But it's not up to me.
01:03:27But it's not up to me.
01:03:29When Gorbachev told him he was free,
01:03:34Sakharov had asked for the release
01:03:36of every other political prisoner.
01:03:38They have been sentenced illegally,
01:03:41unjustly, he said.
01:03:46His release was an act of political
01:03:48and moral repentance.
01:03:50He said,
01:04:20Sakharov had been allowed to return, so had history, in Gorbachev's decision to begin
01:04:28to tell the truth about the past.
01:04:31And now much would depend on the country's ability to come to terms with its own experience,
01:04:37as decades of silence was broken.
01:04:44This was a despicable plague that swept our land, a mad bacchanal of executions across
01:04:51the country.
01:04:52Our very heart was extinguished.
01:04:56We are in shock.
01:04:59Although we knew a lot, now we've learned, now we see it for the first time with our own
01:05:06eyes, and we can't feel at peace with this for a single moment.
01:05:16For two years, the horrors were uncovered, and the revelations helped change the political
01:05:23landscape.
01:05:30Sakharov had concluded that the reforms were real, that the dissidents had won the initial
01:05:35battle in their long struggle against the system.
01:05:44In 1989, when Gorbachev called elections to create a new parliament, dozens of voting districts
01:05:50and organizations would nominate Sakharov to run.
01:05:54I was against his running for deputy, I thought that there were 2,200 deputies and just one
01:06:03Sakharov, and he shouldn't take on that burden, but there was a universal sense that it really
01:06:09was a turning point, a sudden spark of hope that we might be able to make some real changes
01:06:15through the parliament.
01:06:18For the first time in many years, real election contests developed in our country.
01:06:30The people, deceived so often, surrounded by hypocrisy, corruption, crime and inertia, turned
01:06:36out to be alive and kicking.
01:06:41The possibility for change was still only a glimmer, but hope and the will for political
01:06:46action appeared in people's hearts.
01:06:50God help us if their expectations are deceived.
01:06:56When people had had the chance, they generally voted reformers in and the apparatchiks out.
01:07:02But a majority of the contests were stacked in favor of the conservatives.
01:07:08Whatever the limitations, on May 25th, the country embarked on a new experience, as generals
01:07:14sitting next to poets began publicly to debate the future.
01:07:20The first business on opening day was to be the election of Gorbachev to the new Soviet
01:07:24presidency, essentially without allowing opposition or presenting a platform.
01:07:32Gorbachev was determined that the Congress take solid steps to guarantee a parliamentary
01:07:37democracy, to look beyond Gorbachev and his era, to do what was necessary to establish
01:07:45a civil society ruled by law.
01:07:49My personal support for Gorbachev in today's election is conditional.
01:08:02I think this is a question of profound principle.
01:08:03I think this is a question of profound principle.
01:08:15In these circumstances, I do not consider it possible to take part in this election.
01:08:34From the beginning, Sakharov made it clear that support for Gorbachev would depend on his actions.
01:08:44As he became the undisputed leader of the opposition, the whole country watched.
01:08:49I spoke against sending troops into Afghanistan, and for that I was exiled to Gorbachev.
01:08:56I am as proud of my exile to Gorbachev as I would be of a medal.
01:09:02I address our great scientist, comrade Sakharov.
01:09:11What gave him the right to insult our children?
01:09:15Comrades, a major scientist.
01:09:17I'm outraged.
01:09:18It was a great political school for the nation.
01:09:27People immediately realized who was who, who held moral and democratic positions, who was
01:09:33trying to hold on to power, who was a democrat in his soul.
01:09:36It's very hard to deceive the people.
01:09:38They have a very good sense of truth, an intuitive sense of truth and lies.
01:09:43They saw Sakharov's battle for his rights and what he wanted to do for the people, and they
01:09:50saw who was hindering him.
01:09:52You insulted the whole army, the whole nation, all those who gave their lives.
01:10:00I call upon you universal contempt.
01:10:03You should be ashamed.
01:10:06Sakharov left the hall totally alone.
01:10:16I ran up to him through a crowd of deputies and I said, how are you, Andrei Dmitrievich?
01:10:21And he said, not bad.
01:10:23It's fine.
01:10:24He even smiled and said, I'm used to this.
01:10:29I'd been listening on the car radio.
01:10:34It was very insulting.
01:10:37Very insulting.
01:10:38But anyway, he came out.
01:10:43I said, Andrei Dmitrievich, how could they?
01:10:46Oh, Sasha, don't worry.
01:10:49The people will understand.
01:10:52The fledgling opposition's outspokenness in challenging the old guard mesmerized the
01:10:59population.
01:11:00What had long been only whispered was seen on television, printed in the newspapers, said
01:11:05out loud.
01:11:07Even though the Democrats lost every vote they contested, they triumphed nonetheless, as
01:11:13a nation of subjects took another step along its journey to becoming a nation of citizens.
01:11:18And we'd be happy to have such deputies from our district.
01:11:25If we had such deputies, we could be sure our principles were defended.
01:11:33People's deputies exposed the Kremlin criminals.
01:11:41But with no legislative victories, real freedoms of speech and assembly and the press were still
01:11:48only promises.
01:11:50And that left the dark forces, as Muscovites called them, with the old freedom to wield
01:11:55their power as they wished.
01:11:58The party, Sakharov said, was moving to the right, while the country was moving to the left.
01:12:05So on June 1st, he asked Gorbachev to meet him after the session.
01:12:10All day I was on pins and needles.
01:12:13After the evening session, I took a chair.
01:12:16I could see the enormous hall of the Palace of Congresses dimly lit and deserted except
01:12:21for the guards at the door.
01:12:24At the last minute, Gorbachev tried to postpone the meeting.
01:12:28Sakharov said he would wait.
01:12:30He had to tell him that he must choose.
01:12:33Mikhail Sergeyevich, the country and you are at a crossroads.
01:12:38If you accelerate the process of change, you will be able to count on the support of many
01:12:43brave and energetic people.
01:12:45If you don't, you know yourself whose support you'll have.
01:12:50But they will never forgive you for perestroika.
01:12:56Sakharov's warning would not be heeded.
01:12:59I see you.
01:13:00Take the floor only after I say so.
01:13:14Go ahead.
01:13:16Andrei Dmitryevich, go ahead.
01:13:18These two people collided.
01:13:22Two different personalities who came from different cosmic systems, as it were.
01:13:28One is from the bureaucratic party Komsomol system.
01:13:32The other is from the intelligentsia.
01:13:35The party upbringing made them different people.
01:13:42It upset us more than Sakharov.
01:13:45Sakharov saw it and thought, well, he's crippled.
01:13:48What can you do?
01:13:49He was dropped as a child and turned out lame.
01:13:52He's a good person, smart, honest, but he's been maimed by the party.
01:13:59That's it.
01:14:04That's it.
01:14:05My speech is crucial.
01:14:06I will continue.
01:14:09Now to ethnic problems.
01:14:11We have inherited the legacy of Stalinism.
01:14:14The microphone.
01:14:18Do you respect this Congress or not?
01:14:24I respect this Congress, but I also respect the people listening to me.
01:14:28I respect mankind.
01:14:30My mandate extends beyond the bounds of this Congress.
01:14:34Fine.
01:14:35End now.
01:14:36Please, finish.
01:14:38Take your speech with you.
01:14:41Why do we allow comrade Sakharov to use the platform of this Congress to appeal to the Soviet people?
01:14:47When people saw with their own eyes a man who opposed this kingdom of illusions run by the state,
01:15:01people saw a man who could defend them, even though he personally seemed so defenseless.
01:15:08They saw that this man couldn't be broken, and that the people on top were afraid of him.
01:15:20And that was everyone's dream, not to be afraid.
01:15:27The whole country knew about him, knew that he'd been exiled, and before that we heard about him.
01:15:36Here, if they curse someone a lot, it means he's a good person.
01:15:40I don't trust them, and I do trust him.
01:15:44That's it.
01:15:51The twelve days of the Congress marked the moment when the revolution begun in the Kremlin
01:15:56drifted out of its grasp and into the hands of the people.
01:15:59By July, tens of thousands of miners were on strike in Siberia and the Ukraine.
01:16:06By August, in the three Baltic republics, the demands for independence from Moscow were deafening.
01:16:17But making those demands could still be dangerous.
01:16:23Just months before, while Gorbachev was out of the country, the dark forces in the Politburo, including his own defense minister, had sent troops to break up peaceful demonstrations in Georgia.
01:16:38Soldiers moved against the people, clubbing and slashing with sharpened shovels, spraying poison gas into the crowd.
01:16:53Nineteen people were killed. Dozens more were injured.
01:16:59When he traveled to Georgia to help investigate, Sakharov saw the deaths as a warning.
01:17:08He had experience dealing with these terrible people, with that system the most powerful in the world.
01:17:15He knew how terrible it was, and how hard it would be to change.
01:17:20What incredible efforts were needed, and how much courage would be needed.
01:17:26It had been 21 years since seven lonely dissidents were sent to the prison camps for protesting the invasion of Czechoslovakia.
01:17:45And the machinery that makes dictatorship possible had not yet been eliminated.
01:17:58The perestroika process in this country has slowed down.
01:18:02We can clearly observe a counterattack by a reactionary group that brings together various forces, the Stalinist-type state and government establishment.
01:18:13Unfortunately, the position of the highest levels of leadership in this situation is also undefined, indecisive in nature,
01:18:24and often blocking change along with the rightest forces, or in any case, indulging them.
01:18:30The will of the people must be expressed.
01:18:48We must defend perestroika. If need be, defend it from the one who initiated it.
01:18:54Throughout 1989, Gorbachev clung to the party as his base for reform.
01:19:04Even when it had become clear the party would budge no more.
01:19:09As the second session of the Congress began in December, Sakharov rose once again to argue that the only way out of the deadlock was liberation from communism itself.
01:19:21The only way to secure real change was to rid the party of its constitutional monopoly on power.
01:19:30To discuss the removal from the Constitution of those articles which obstruct the Supreme Soviet's adoption of these laws.
01:19:37I have the impression that you don't know how to implement your proposal, and we won't know how either.
01:19:49I saw him as a naive politician, honest and naive in evaluating the current situation, but surprisingly realistic and far-sighted in his predictions for the future.
01:20:12I think he was right. He was right. He had a duty to live longer.
01:20:22For us, both as a person and a deputy, you were almost a saint.
01:20:38He's a living person, not a saint. I beg of you, please don't say that.
01:20:44He seemed to think that at this crucial moment no one should sleep.
01:20:52He lived a very stressful life. A very stressful life.
01:21:01Once he told me, and perhaps others too, that when he heard about the first nuclear bomb test, he almost fainted.
01:21:11He knew what it was, and how it threatened all mankind.
01:21:16I think this sense of the fragility of the world gave him strength, and kept him busy every minute.
01:21:26He believed that a single minute of his life should be wasted.
01:21:31I think he was simply programmed to devote his entire life to his last breath, to creating something as powerful as that hydrogen bomb.
01:21:50But the opposite. Not for destruction, but for the survival of the world and mankind.
01:22:02I worried about him. You see, a tiny bit of his life was my life too.
01:22:09I said, Andrei Dmitrievich, you should dress more warmly.
01:22:13He said, ah, Sasha, I'm fine.
01:22:17He didn't think about himself. Not about himself or his health.
01:22:32I kept telling him, you should retire.
01:22:39But he didn't agree.
01:22:41He said, there will be a turning point.
01:22:44Another year. Two maximum.
01:22:47Then I'll leave.
01:22:48He would not stop until the birth of a new democratic nation was assured.
01:22:55The Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia shall be a voluntary union of sovereign republics.
01:23:03All people have a right to life, liberty, and happiness.
01:23:07The principles of pluralism and tolerance shall be the foundation of the political, cultural, and ideological life of the society.
01:23:15The Union affirms the principle of refusing to be the first to employ nuclear weapons.
01:23:22The operation of any secret services to protect the social and state order shall be prohibited in the Union.
01:23:29A basic and supreme right of each nation and republic shall be the right to self-determination.
01:23:36A republic shall join the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia on the basis of a union treaty adopted in accordance with...
01:23:43On December 14th, 1989, just a few days after his handwritten constitution was finished, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov died.
01:23:52He had been free from exile for less than three years.
01:24:05He had been a free man for many more.
01:24:10Just at the moment when his proposals, his demands, his ideas could begin to be implemented.
01:24:26At that moment he left us.
01:24:32It would have been Sakharov's constitution.
01:24:43His authority and views were broad and profound and could have given us that constitution.
01:24:49Who can give it to us now?
01:24:51Sakharov was a higher law, and not only for simple, uneducated people.
01:25:04He was also an authority for our leaders.
01:25:07His death was a terrible tragedy.
01:25:10It's a terrible tragedy that he's gone, just terrible.
01:25:13I have the sense that the destiny of the country changed after the death of Andrei Dmitrievich.
01:25:26In difficult moments, I often ask myself, what would Sakharov do right now?
01:25:40Because he had a tremendous moral influence on events and people.
01:25:45We often ask ourselves, what would Sakharov have said or done?
01:25:50We miss him very much.
01:25:52We miss you very much.
01:25:55We miss you very much.
01:25:56The End
01:26:05THE END
01:26:35THE END
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