Vladimir Kara-Murza, The Washington Post; The Soviet era’s leading dissident is still a provocation for today’s Kremlin
"“Freedom of thought requires the defense of all thinking and honest people,” Sakharov wrote in his first major political essay
in 1968. “[It] 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.” It was at the
end of the 1960s when Sakharov the scientist finally gave way to
Sakharov the dissident as he began to focus almost exclusively on
defending prisoners of conscience, displaced peoples (notably Crimean
Tatars), those seeking to emigrate and others who came under attack from
the repressive state...
Although it has been more than three decades since his passing,
Sakharov’s time has not yet come in Russia. But today’s young people,
who may know little about him, unwittingly continue his work as they
risk arrests and beatings to demonstrate
their solidarity with prisoners of conscience. “Today as always I
believe in the power of reason and the human spirit,” Sakharov wrote in the darkest days of his Gorky exile. His own spirit of optimism and hope is very much needed in today’s Russia."
