Andrei Sakharov's legacy (1921-2021)

Peace, progress, human rights – these three goals are insolubly linked to one another: it is impossible to achieve one of these goals if the other two are ignored.

- Dr Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov

Sakharov is a loadstar for today’s struggles. His uncompromising challenge of tyranny and repression serves as an inspiration in contemporary Europe.

- Dunja Mijatović, Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights

Sakharov's biography

• Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was born in Moscow

• enrolls in the physics department of Moscow State University

• graduates and starts working at Ulyanovsk Ammunition Plant

• marries Klavdia Alexeyevna Vikhireva

• begins working at the P.N. Lebedev Physics Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences

• is part of the group of scientists working on Soviet nuclear weapons. He refuses an invitation to join the Communist party

• receives Soviet awards for the first Soviet hydrogen bomb built on Sakharov's design

• draws attention to radioactive contamination

• adoption of the nuclear test ban treaty, to which Sakharov contributed

• starts taking part in civil society demonstrations

• engages on environmental protection by supporting the campaign to protect lake Baikal from industrial waste

• sets out the concept of the triple freedoms in “Thoughts on Progress, Peaceful Existence and Intellectual Freedom”, freedom to receive and disseminate information, freedom of unbiased and fearless discussion, and freedom from the pressure of authority and prejudice

• death of his wife Klavdiya Alexeyevna Vikhireva

• cofounds the Committee for Human Rights and he is placed under secret surveillance

• marries Elena Bonner, a human rights activist

• establishes Political Prisoner’s Day in the USSR (now: Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions

• is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize

• advocates for the abolition of death penalty in the USSR and everywhere in the world

• condemns the Soviet’s army invasion of Afghanistan

• forced to exile in Gorky (today Nijni Novgorod)

• Elena Bonner is sentenced to five years in exile

• undertakes a hunger strike which helps Elena Bonner get permission to leave the country on health reasons

• is released from exile and returns to Moscow

• takes again position for nuclear disarmament

• cofounds the Moscow Tribunal Political Discussion Club and is honorary co-chairmain of Memorial Society. He continues to advocate democratisation and reforms in the Soviet Union

• is elected to the Congress of People's Deputies (Soviet Parliament) where he continues advocating for the end of the one-party rule. Drafts a “Constitution of the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia" centred on political and social rights (also drafted Chapter II of the Russian Constitution concerning human rights)

• dies in Moscow at the age of 68

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Alarm and hope.
21st century international conference.
May 24-25, Moscow

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  Dunja Mijatović

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