Natan Sharansky, The New York Times; The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union
[Kip
Currier: It's enlightening and inspiring to be reminded of the
courageous stance that Soviet Union-residing nuclear physicist, dissident activist, and 1975 Nobel Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov took 50 years ago, via his influential essay, “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence
and Intellectual Freedom”. His ideas and invocations
on the importance of freedom to think, individual responsibility, moral leadership,
and the advancement of human rights for persons living in both open and
closed societies are as timely and indispensable today as they were in
1968.]
"Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted
three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly
in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei
Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those
of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the
freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed
the course of history.
Sakharov’s
essay carried a mild title — “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence
and Intellectual Freedom” — but it was explosive. “Freedom of thought
is the only guarantee against an infection of mankind by mass myths,
which, in the hands of treacherous hypocrites and demagogues, can be
transformed into bloody dictatorships,” he wrote. Suddenly the Soviet
Union’s most decorated physicist became its most prominent dissident...
[Sakharov's] message was unsettling and liberating: You cannot be a good
scientist or a free person while living a double life. Knowing the truth
while collaborating in the regime’s lies only produces bad science and
broken souls."
