Progress, Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom

by Andrei D. Sakharov

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393334589
• ISBN13: 9780393334586
• Release Date: June 1968
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 208 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Cold War rationalist and great conscience

This is a great read in its search for remedies at the height of the Cold War. Originally circulated as an essay for both free thinkers and aparatchiks in the USSR, Sakharov wanted not just to resolve the conflict between the superpowers, but also address the plight of the Third World. First, he states that the US is ahead technologically, but the USSR is following close behind, like a second skier in the track of the trailblazer. From weapons, he argues, we should move to other realms of competition. Second, he argues for a massive transfer of wealth to the poorer countries. While this approach can appear quaintly naive, it is wonderfully humanistic and well intentioned, a truly modern voice from a brutal and closed society. But it was also an intellectual manifesto that, with his other political transgressions, essentially got Sakharov ejected from the most prestigious perch in communist society as a traitor. Once revered as the father of the Soviet H-Bomb and a physicist of genius, he became a dissident and was exiled and beaten from 1980-6. All because of what he began - thinking more largely and politically - with this volume and other acts. For that, it is of historical interest. He is up there with Solzhenitsyn, but he is a more rational and less religious character. This makes for truly fascinating reading, and gets one to think on many levels. Warmly recommmended for both the history buff and the concerned thinker.