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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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122589
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12258900.030
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1990-09-22
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WORLD, Page 24The Making of an ActivistBy Andrei Sakharov
Preoccupied though he was with the Soviet Union's political
upheaval, Andrei Sakharov found time in his last months to polish
his autobiography. The following fragments from Sakharov's Memoirs,
to be published in 1990 by Alfred A. Knopf, tell of his evolution
from an honored physicist into a man reviled, hounded and condemned
to exile as the U.S.S.R.'s foremost human rights activist.
On Dec. 3 or 4, 1966, I found an envelope in my mailbox
containing two sheets of onionskin paper. The first sheet was an
anonymous report on the arrest and confinement in a psychiatric
hospital of Viktor Kuznetsov, an artist who had helped draft a
model constitution for our country, which the authors hoped would
spark discussion about the introduction of democracy.
The second sheet announced a silent demonstration on Dec. 5,
Constitution Day. I decided to attend. In Pushkin Square I found
a few dozen people standing around the statue. At 6 o'clock, half
of those present, myself included, removed our hats and stood in
silence. (The other half, I later realized, were KGB.) After a
minute or so I walked over to the monument and read the inscription
aloud:
I shall be loved,
and the people will long remember
that my lyre was tuned to
goodness
that in this cruel age I celebrated
freedom
and asked for mercy for the fallen.
After that, I left the square with the others.
By the beginning of 1968, I felt a growing compulsion to speak
out. I was influenced by my life experience and a feeling of
personal responsibility, reinforced by the part I'd played in the
development of the hydrogen bomb, the special knowledge I'd gained
about thermonuclear warfare, my bitter struggle to ban nuclear
testing and my familiarity with the Soviet system. My reading and
discussions with a fellow scientist had acquainted me with the
notions of an open society, convergence and world government. I
hoped that these notions might ease the tragic crisis of our age.
In 1968 I took my decisive step by publishing Reflections on
Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. The book
rejected all extremes, the intransigence shared by revolutionaries
and reactionaries alike. It called for compromise and for progress,
moderated by enlightened conservatism and caution. Marx
notwithstanding, evolution is a better "locomotive of history" than
revolution: the "battle" I had in mind was nonviolent.
The government's use of psychiatry for political purposes is
particularly dangerous because it is a direct assault on the
victim's mind. The problem is compounded by the inhuman, illegal
conditions of detention in the special psychiatric hospitals, by
the conformity and hypocrisy of our closed society and by the
absence of an independent press. I am speaking here about any use
of psychiatry for political or ideological purposes, not just those
cases when mentally healthy patients are forcibly confined in
psychiatric hospitals.