Meeting the Demands of Reason: The Life and Thought of Andrei Sakharov

by Jay Bergman

Overview

The Soviet physicist, dissident, and human rights activist Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975. The first Russian to have been so recognized, Sakharov in his Nobel lecture held that humanity had a "sacred endeavor" to create a life worthy of its potential, that "we must make good the demands of reason," by confronting the dangers threatening the world, both then and now: nuclear annihilation, famine, pollution, and the denial of human rights.Meeting the Demands of Reason provides a comprehensive account of Sakharov's life and intellectual development, focusing on his political thought and the effect his ideas had on Soviet society. Jay Bergman places Sakharov's dissidence squarely within the ethical legacy of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, inculcated by his father and other family members from an early age.In 1948, one year after receiving his doctoral candidate's degree in physics, Sakharov began work on the Soviet hydrogen bomb and later received both the Stalin and the Lenin prizes for his efforts. Although as a nuclear physicist he had firsthand experience of honors and privileges inaccessible to ordinary citizens, Sakharov became critical of certain policies of the Soviet government in the late 1950s. He never renounced his work on nuclear weaponry, but eventually grew concerned about the environmental consequences of testing and feared unrestrained nuclear proliferation.Bergman shows that these issues led Sakharov to see the connection between his work in science and his responsibilities to the political life of his country. In the late 1960s, Sakharov began to condemn the Soviet system as a whole in the name of universal human rights. By the 1970s, he had become, with Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the most recognized Soviet dissident in the West, which afforded him a measure of protection from the authorities. In 1980, however, he was exiled to the closed city of Gorky for protesting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. In 1986, the new Gorbachev regime allowed him to return to Moscow, where he played a central role as both supporter and critic in the years of perestroika.Two years after Sakharov's death, the Soviet Union collapsed, and in the courageous example of his unyielding commitment to human rights, skillfully recounted by Bergman, Sakharov remains an enduring inspiration for all those who would tell truth to power.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801447310
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2009
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Jay Bergman is Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. He is the author of Vera Zasulich: A Biography.

What People are Saying About This

Martin A. Miller

Jay Bergman's new book is a lucid history of the career of the physicist know best as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but it is much more than that. He approaches Sakharov from the perspective of his thinking, which permits the reader to be taken on a fascinating journey from Sakharov's family upbringing through his institutional years, to his preeminent role in the Soviet scientific community under Stalin, and finally his last years as the iconic and inspiring leader of the humane civil rights movement in the USSR. It is a tome of Tolstoyan proportions, meaning that it is both huge and also a very engaging read from the first page.

Kathleen E. Smith

In Meeting the Demands of Reason, Jay Bergman treats Andrei Sakharov not just as a scientist and activist, but as a complex subject whose scientific and political thinking were interrelated. Bergman is a fine writer and has an amazing grasp of Sakharov's scientific, philosophical, and political work. His well-researched biography reminds us that Sakharov was an extraordinary physicist, a thought-provoking political essayist, a devoted defender of human rights, and a concerned citizen of a troubled nation.

Richard Pipes

Meeting the Demands of Reason is a serious, thoroughly researched account of one of Russia's intellectual giants, whose extraordinary courage and wisdom were matched by his modesty.

Paul R. Josephson

In this superb intellectual history, Jay Bergman illuminates the rise of the public citizen in the USSR, from Stalin to Gorbachev, explaining how physicist Andrei Sakharov moved from unquestioningly developing nuclear weapons for the Soviet state to raising questions about universal human rights and even the legitimacy of the USSR. Sakharov, by a combination of introspection, reason, and force of personality, determined to fight the arbitrary and capricious regime. These traits allowed Sakharov to survive when the Party leadership labeled him a traitor and spy in several public campaigns and eventually exiled him to Gorky, and to engage Mikhail Gorbachev—and Soviet society —in debates about perestroika. Bergman explores the evolution of Sakharov's views of arms control, nuclear power, dissidence, and human rights through a careful reading of Sakharov's extensive opus. Meeting the Demands of Reason is an important contribution to Soviet social, political, and cultural history—and to the history of science in its analysis of scientists' claims to have privilege about some kind of universal truth.

Editorial Reviews

In this biography of Andrei Sakharov, Bergman introduces a figure who transcends Russian history. Sakharov's faith in reason, originally limited to the sphere of nuclear weapons, gradually acquired a moral sensibility stirred by the ethical implications of testing these weapons in the atmosphere, a step that led to a far more profound concern with the whole sphere of human rights. Bergman opens Sakharov's mind to the reader and illustrates how Sakharov bonded reason with ethics and applied ideas not only to an astonishing range of technical scientific subjects but also, ultimately, to matters of human freedom and world peace.

Foreign Affairs - Robert Legvold

Bergman argues that the Soviet human rights movement, as exemplified by the life and career of the physicist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei Sakharov,exerted a key role in undermining the political and moral authority of the Soviet regime.... Bergman tells this story well, providing an account that is far more comprehensive and insightful than an earlier biography by Richard Lourie (2002) that relied too heavily on Sakharov's own memoirs. Bergman also does a clear and credible job of explaining Sakharov’s work as a physicist and his outstanding contributions to cosmology, including theoretical studies of baryon asymmetry and proton decay. Sakharov did not emerge out of nowhere. As Bergman relates in some detail, the 'vocational autonomy he enjoyed as a physicist permitted him and his colleagues to discuss virtually anything... with impunity,' including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) at a time when such works were strictly banned.

Joshua Rubensteinn Historical Review

While dwelling on the development of Sakharov's ideas, including their gradual radicalization, Bergman also pays attention to his life as a physicist of great distinction.... Jay Bergman has produced a fitting tribute to a scientist and political activist whose commitment to the defense of individual rights was marked by great constancy of purpose, heroic stubbornness, and true grit.

Times Literary Supplement - Archie Brown

Bergman's special achievement is to have meticulously traced and chronicled Sakharov’s thinking both as a scientist and as a man of conscience, documenting from letters, interviews, official files, and diverse press and journal articles the incremental ideas that led him to brilliant physics and then to sacrificial public activism. In Bergman’s view, Sakharov personified the 'moral wholeness' that was pervasive among the Russian intelligentsia, 'the belief that the moral principles a person espouses must be applied to every aspect of his life.'... In this biography, we make intimate acquaintance with a rare and profound genius.

Issues in Science and Technology - William Lanoue

Whether it was working on the hydrogen bomb, defending human rights, thinking about arms control or trying to write a new Soviet constitution, Sakharov brought a problem-solving mind and an enduring ability to think 'outside the box' to the matter at hand. This is perhaps the central insight of Jay Bergman's magnificent study of Sakharov, a work that must rank as one of the most important biographies written about a Soviet intellectual in recent years.

Slavonic and East European Review - Philip Boobbyer

Bergman argues that the Soviet human rights movement, as exemplified by the life and career of the physicist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei Sakharov,exerted a key role in undermining the political and moral authority of the Soviet regime.... Bergman tells this story well, providing an account that is far more comprehensive and insightful than an earlier biography by Richard Lourie (2002) that relied too heavily on Sakharov's own memoirs. Bergman also does a clear and credible job of explaining Sakharov’s work as a physicist and his outstanding contributions to cosmology, including theoretical studies of baryon asymmetry and proton decay. Sakharov did not emerge out of nowhere. As Bergman relates in some detail, the 'vocational autonomy he enjoyed as a physicist permitted him and his colleagues to discuss virtually anything... with impunity,' including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) at a time when such works were strictly banned.

American Historical Review - Joshua Rubenstein

"Jay Bergman's new book is a lucid history of the career of the physicist know best as the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, but it is much more than that. He approaches Sakharov from the perspective of his thinking, which permits the reader to be taken on a fascinating journey from Sakharov's family upbringing through his institutional years, to his preeminent role in the Soviet scientific community under Stalin, and finally his last years as the iconic and inspiring leader of the humane civil rights movement in the USSR. It is a tome of Tolstoyan proportions, meaning that it is both huge and also a very engaging read from the first page."—Martin A. Miller, History Book Club

"Bergman's special achievement is to have meticulously traced and chronicled Sakharov’s thinking both as a scientist and as a man of conscience, documenting from letters, interviews, official files, and diverse press and journal articles the incremental ideas that led him to brilliant physics and then to sacrificial public activism. In Bergman’s view, Sakharov personified the 'moral wholeness' that was pervasive among the Russian intelligentsia, 'the belief that the moral principles a person espouses must be applied to every aspect of his life.' . . . In this biography, we make intimate acquaintance with a rare and profound genius."—William Lanoue, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter 2010

"In this biography of Andrei Sakharov, Bergman introduces a figure who transcends Russian history. Sakharov's faith in reason, originally limited to the sphere of nuclear weapons, gradually acquired a moral sensibility stirred by the ethical implications of testing these weapons in the atmosphere, a step that led to a far more profound concern with the whole sphere of human rights. Bergman opens Sakharov's mind to the reader and illustrates how Sakharov bonded reason with ethics and applied ideas not only to an astonishing range of technical scientific subjects but also, ultimately, to matters of human freedom and world peace."—Robert Legvold, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2010

"While dwelling on the development of Sakharov's ideas, including their gradual radicalization, Bergman also pays attention to his life as a physicist of great distinction. . . . Jay Bergman has produced a fitting tribute to a scientist and political activist whose commitment to the defense of individual rights was marked by great constancy of purpose, heroic stubbornness, and true grit."—Archie Brown, Times Literary Supplement, 30 April 2010

"Bergman argues that the Soviet human rights movement, as exemplified by the life and career of the physicist and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Andrei Sakharov,exerted a key role in undermining the political and moral authority of the Soviet regime. . . . Bergman tells this story well, providing an account that is far more comprehensive and insightful than an earlier biography by Richard Lourie (2002) that relied too heavily on Sakharov's own memoirs. Bergman also does a clear and credible job of explaining Sakharov’s work as a physicist and his outstanding contributions to cosmology, including theoretical studies of baryon asymmetry and proton decay. Sakharov did not emerge out of nowhere. As Bergman relates in some detail, the 'vocational autonomy he enjoyed as a physicist permitted him and his colleagues to discuss virtually anything . . . with impunity,' including George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) at a time when such works were strictly banned."—Joshua Rubenstein, American Historical Review, April 2010

"Whether it was working on the hydrogen bomb, defending human rights, thinking about arms control or trying to write a new Soviet constitution, Sakharov brought a problem-solving mind and an enduring ability to think 'outside the box' to the matter at hand. This is perhaps the central insight of Jay Bergman's magnificent study of Sakharov, a work that must rank as one of the most important biographies written about a Soviet intellectual in recent years."—Philip Boobbyer, Slavonic and East European Review (July 2011)

"Meeting the Demands of Reason is a serious, thoroughly researched account of one of Russia's intellectual giants, whose extraordinary courage and wisdom were matched by his modesty."—Richard Pipes, Professor of History, Emeritus, Harvard University

"In Meeting the Demands of Reason, Jay Bergman treats Andrei Sakharov not just as a scientist and activist, but as a complex subject whose scientific and political thinking were interrelated. Bergman is a fine writer and has an amazing grasp of Sakharov's scientific, philosophical, and political work. His well-researched biography reminds us that Sakharov was an extraordinary physicist, a thought-provoking political essayist, a devoted defender of human rights, and a concerned citizen of a troubled nation."—Kathleen E. Smith, author of Remembering Stalin's Victims and Mythmaking in the New Russia

"In this superb intellectual history, Jay Bergman illuminates the rise of the public citizen in the USSR, from Stalin to Gorbachev, explaining how physicist Andrei Sakharov moved from unquestioningly developing nuclear weapons for the Soviet state to raising questions about universal human rights and even the legitimacy of the USSR. Sakharov, by a combination of introspection, reason, and force of personality, determined to fight the arbitrary and capricious regime. These traits allowed Sakharov to survive when the Party leadership labeled him a traitor and spy in several public campaigns and eventually exiled him to Gorky, and to engage Mikhail Gorbachev—and Soviet society —in debates about perestroika. Bergman explores the evolution of Sakharov's views of arms control, nuclear power, dissidence, and human rights through a careful reading of Sakharov's extensive opus. Meeting the Demands of Reason is an important contribution to Soviet social, political, and cultural history—and to the history of science in its analysis of scientists' claims to have privilege about some kind of universal truth."—Paul R. Josephson, Colby College

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