Tolstoy's Heir

...A reader's only legitimate complaint about this book is that it does not continue with the further encounters of the two men over the next three years...

...Sakharov's influence as a civic leader and "citizen of the world" may prove to have been even greater than that of Tolstoy...

...Reviewed by Anatole Shub Author, "An Empire Loses Hope" Not since Tolstoy's death in 1910 has any Russian enjoyed the moral authority achieved by Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov...

...This outlook was joined in Sakharov, as in Tamm, with a character of exemplary integrity and inner security...

...As early as his fight against atmospheric nuclear testing (1958-63), he showed what a difference a single individual can make...

...Perhaps most important of all was his independent spirit in matters large and small, in life and in science...

...His last campaign, before he died this past December 14, was a call for a general strike to force the Soviet Communist Party to relinquish its political monopoly...

...Sakharov quotes approvingly a tribute to his scientific mentor, Igor Tamm (a pro-peace Menshevik in 1917, we learn): "In late 19th century Russia there existed something of fundamental importance—a solid, middle-class, professional intelligentsia which possessed firm principles based on spiritual values...

...Americans will read carefully his sensitive evaluation of the dilemmas that confronted and divided J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Teller...

...Neither in these memoirs nor in his life are there any hints of the kind of inner divisions that tormented Tolstoy (motherless at 2, fatherless at 9...

...Heoffered a polarized, militarized world a plausible vision of pathways toward peace through openness, human rights, international cooperation, and the ultimate convergence of abiding liberal and socialist values...

...The origins of Sakharov's serene character and scientific view are gratefully acknowledged in loving recollections of his family (who "embodied the generîc virtues of the Russian intelligentsia"), his early education (mainly at home), and the books he read as a boy (the traditionally international fare of that intelligentsia, along with the Russian classics...

...That was the milieu which produced Igor Tamm, and he shared its virtues, and its shortcomings...

...It is impossible, even knowing the broad outlines of the story, not to be moved by the particulars of their heroism...

...Sakharov's accounts of the dissident milieu in the 1970s, and especially of his differences with Solzhenitsyn, may be of greatest interest to Soviet intellectuals...

...They manifested their commitment in hunger strikes, in appearances at numerous courthouses, in arduous journeys to labor camps, in personal solidarity with dissidents, refuseniks, Crimean Tatars, Karabakh Armenians, Tbilisi demonstrators, Baltic independence movements...

...Sakharov's nonviolent political accomplishments bear comparison with Gandhi's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s, although he could neither count on the protection of Anglo-Saxon law nor, until the last year or so, summon great masses into the streets or to the ballot boxes...

...Sakharov also embodied a bold reassertion—after all the romantic and obscurantist traditions that plagued Russia—of the values of the Enlightenment, of a cosmopolitan scientific outlook, in unforced harmony with age-old ethical principles...

...To be sure, Tolstoy organized famine relief, denounced Tsarist repressions, revolutionary terror and official antiSemitism, defied excommunication from the Russian Orthodox Church, and put forth an admirable canon of nonviolent resistance toevil...

...Sakharov's life refuted him on both counts...

...Sakharov's style is straightforward, without pretense or frills, but on every page he conveys a great deal of interesting information that provokes further reflections in us...

...On the contrary, although Tolstoy and Sakharov in their late 40s each passed through a kind of midlife crisis, Tolstoy was driven to wrestle with God, gradually repudiating his art and then his wife, while Sakharov set out on the risky path of secular activism, at first as a widower and then accompanied by "Lusia," Elena Bonner, for whom his love was fierce and steadfast...

...Deprecating the role of individuals in history, Tolstoy argued in War and Peace that " if we admit that human life can be guided by reason, we destroy the possibility of life...

...And he led millions of his own people to within sight of the promised land of democracy, national dignity and individual rights...

...and War and Peace"— will for many be more memorable than his reports of later contacts with the Berias, Malyshevs, Zavenyagins, Khrushchevs, Suslovs, and Andropovs...

...And yet Sakharov pretended to no special virtues...

...To his admirers at home and abroad he left these rich, fascinating memoirs...

...Sakharov, however, personally exemplified this resistance for two decades, including seven years of virtual house arrest in Gorky...

...Others will be intrigued by Sakharov's illuminating chronicle of his 20 years in the Soviet nuclear weapons program, his opposition to atmospheric tests, his gradual involvement in civic protests (starting against Trofim Lysenko and the rehabilitation of Stalin), and the interaction in 1968 between the Prague Spring and his own "decisive step" in publishing his historic essay, "Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom...

...That milieu produced committed revolutionaries, poets and engineers convinced that the most important thing is to build something, to do something useful...

...His descriptions particularly of his father and maternal grandmother— with whom he recalls discussing "almost every page of Tolstoy's Childhood, Boyhood, Youth...

...He left behind no organized sect of "Sakharovites...

...Virtually everyone, though, is likely to find the second half of the book unforgettable...

...He not only wrote unusually clearheaded, farsighted essays that set the agenda for perestroika and nuclear disarmament, but—to echo Vaclav Havel's tribute to the authors of our Declaration of Independence—he and his remarkable second wife Elena G. Bonner literally "staked their lives" ontheir convictions...

...It is also in the best of Russian traditions...

...Happily, a second volume, Gorky-Moscow, and Beyond, is promised...

...It describes, blow by blow, Sakharov and Bonner's 15-year battle for their personal as well as universal rights in the face of all sorts of official restrictions and nasty provocations (including four separate KGB thefts of large parts of these memoirs in 1978, '81 and '82...

...Rather, he established a standard of discourse, and a body of orienting values, to which practically all the political actors in the Soviet Union seeking a modicum of popular respect must now, at the very least, pay lip service...

...Particularly in the final year of his life, millions of Soviet televiewers could observe at the Congress of People's Deputies the valor, lucidity and purity of his struggle to make the USSR a civilized, democratic society...

...When it came to the struggle for human rights, the aloofness of Pyotr Kapitsa, Andrei Tupolev and others, the idiosyncrasies and prejudices of Solzhenitsyn, the tactical calculations of Roy Medvedev (all recounted here) set Sakharov's own constancy, clarity and courage in sharp relief...

...He was the first person I mentioned in my letter to you, requesting the release of prisoners of conscience...

...It was typical of Sakharov that, when Gorbachev phoned on December 16, 1986, to announce his release from exile, Sakharov at once recalled that "a few days ago, my friend [Anatoly] Marchenko was killed in prison...

...To the Soviet peoples Sakharov bequeathed a libertarian, federalist draft constitution (now echoing in the speeches of Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin alike...

...Modest and soft-spoken, free of personal ambition or prejudice of any kind, advancing through sheer force of intellect and character, Sakharov was compelled for years to rely mainly on foreign media toconvey his message...

...One of Sakharov's last acts was to send a warm letter to Alexander Dubcek rejoicing in his vindication...

...Indeed, one of his most engaging qualities, revealed often in the narrative (with regard even to such grave matters as his initial sorrow at Stalin's death and his underestimation of the Chernobyl disaster), was his ability to change his mind in the light of new evidence, to state plainly, "I was mistaken about this, and explain why...

...When Gorbachev sidestepped Sakharov's appeal to release all political prisoners, Sakharov promptly brought the conversation to a close...

...It is a humane, civilized outlook not very different in essence from those of Albert Einstein, Bertrand Russell, Albert Schweitzer, and other great Europeans to whom he pays his respects along the way...

...Anyone having the slightest interest in Russia will have to read them, ponder them and read them yet again...