Free Republic

[Andrey] Sakharov [a Soviet dissident and one of the creators of the Soviet hydrogen bomb] gave a bitter description of this habitual psychological attitude in his Memoires, when he tried to find a military application for the Tsar Bomb: After testing the "big" device I was worried that it didn't have a good carrier (bombers didn't count because they're easy to shoot down), in other words, in the military sense we were working in vain. I decided that an effective carrier could be a big torpedo fired from a submarine. I imagined that a nuclear jet engine that converted water...

There was a time when moral giants walked the earth. One of them, Soviet dissident Elena Bonner -- widow of the great physicist and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov -- left us on Sunday at the age of 88. A model of courage and principle, Bonner was one of my heroes from the days when I was a teenager in the Soviet Union and my parents listened to news of Sakharov and Bonner on banned foreign radio broadcasts. She was also a personal hero I had the privilege to meet: Four years ago, we had a long talk at...

Did anyone else catch this? Just now on C-SPAN, Harry Reid quotes communist Andrei Sakharov in closing statement of Senate debate on socialist health care. Google: Andrei Sakharov OK granted, Sakharov was not a ranting Leninist but why wouldn't Harry quote a founder or an American patriot to make his simplistic, sophomoric point. O wait, Harry IS a ranting Leninist...

Elena Bonner, the widow of great scientist and dissident Andrei Sakharov and an outstanding human rights activist in her own right, is truly one of the heroes of the modern age.   (It was my privilege to interview Bonner nearly two years ago for this article.)  Yesterday, the 86-year-old grande dame of the Russian human rights movement spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum.  Her speech, of which Ms. Bonner sent me an English translation, is worth reproducing in full.  Ms. Bonner is a woman of strong and outspoken opinions; agree or disagree, she is always worth hearing (by Cathy...

THE HEADLINES out of Tehran concern the predictable failure of yet another round of farcical negotiations designed to stop Iran's nuclear weapons program. Meanwhile, a much more dramatic story is unfolding with much less attention. Investigative journalist Akbar Ganji has been on a hunger strike since June 11 to protest his unwarranted imprisonment over the last five years for the crime of criticizing the theocratic thugs who have hijacked his country. Recently, he has been moved from prison to a hospital, where he is said to be at death's door. His condition is so perilous that even his advocate —...

<p>"Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski," Andrei Sakharov exclaimed when he met Jeanne Kirkpatrick in Moscow. "I have so wanted to meet you and thank you in person. Your name is known in all the Gulag."</p> <p>The reason why, wrote National Review's Jay Nordlinger when he related that incident in June 2001, was because she had named names of Soviet prisoners, "giving men and women in the cells a measure of hope."</p>

It is not easy to manage the legacy of a great man, especially when the evil that he had fought, and often defeated, returns with a vengeance after his death. Which is why it was both in sorrow and in anger that I refused recently to endorse the plan to erect a monument to my late husband, Andrei D. Sakharov, in his hometown, Moscow. For I know that Andrei would have turned in his grave if I'd allowed his name and his likeness to become a part of the Potemkin village that the Russian government is trying to erect before...