Time difference

Author and presenter Vladimir Tolts

Andrei Sakharov: life of ideas

Vladimir Tolts:

10 years ago, on December 14, 1989, Academician Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov died in Moscow. A person whose life, ideas and actions significantly influenced the image of the modern world. According to the old tradition of “ loving the dead ,” this was also recognized in his homeland, where even the former persecutors of the once disgraced thinker and human rights activist now swear by his name.

In the course of the current “posthumous canonization,” a new myth of Sakharov is being created in the mass consciousness: a certain blessed genius who diligently atoned for the sins of creating a hydrogen bomb by recklessly wasting his talent on intercession for “the little ones of this world.” This approach not only distorts the drama of the life of an outstanding scientist, but also reduces to nothing the question of the life and relevance of his ideas.

This issue of Time Differences is dedicated to some of them.

This may sound paradoxical, but Andrei Dmitrievich, who did so much to define and change the face and way of thinking of the twentieth century in the second half of this century, himself, in his human makeup, type of thinking and culture, belongs to that cultural phenomenon of the Russian intelligentsia, which during this century, for various reasons, was destroyed and disappeared.

10 years ago, when he was buried, Sakharov’s friend and comrade-in-arms Sergei Kovalev said about Andrei Dmitrievich: “Now they are talking about new political thinking. He never divided thinking into political and non-political, into new and old. He was simply always truthful, responsible and conscientious.”

It was this “simple”, at first glance, set of human intellectual qualities that was eradicated along with its bearers in the USSR quite successfully. One of the forms of intellectual self-defense was the division of thinking into political and non-political - narrowly professional. (Retiring into the professional sphere was also not a reliable defense against the pressure of party ideologists. The well-known pogrom of genetics, the declaration of cybernetics as a “bourgeois pseudoscience” and the article “Against reactionary Einsteinianism in physics” are just a few examples of this.) But, I repeat, this form of self-defense was not characteristic of Sakharov.

An article recently published in Russia by Andrei Dmitrievich’s widow, Elena Georgievna Bonner, talks about one of the important stages in the development of Sakharov as a politician.

“In July 1967, Sakharov sent a secret letter to the Politburo, dedicated to the problems of his second profession - the development of strategic weapons. He always considered such problems, armed with the arsenal of his first and main profession - theoretical physics. This arsenal includes not only a specific physical and mathematical apparatus, but also a breadth of vision and courage of analysis."

Thanks to the kindness of the Sakharov Archive at Brandeis University (USA), I received for our broadcast a copy of this never-published letter from Sakharov to Politburo member Suslov (he then headed the Foreign Affairs Commission in the Supreme Soviet). Here are excerpts from this document, published for the first time , on the extremely pressing problem of missile defense (BMD) today.

In offensive weapons there is a so-called “saturation effect”. If you can destroy the enemy, then further strengthening will change little. In the field of missile defense there is no “saturation effect”, and the outcome of the competition, on the contrary, is determined by the ratio of technical and economic potentials. Extending competition into this area is not beneficial for us, and even in the absence of a moratorium agreement, we will probably be forced to act unilaterally almost as if such an agreement existed, spending most of our efforts on additionally strengthening the attack system to overcome the American missile defense system and practically almost abandoning attempts to compete in the field of creating our own missile defense system. But this is far from the best option for us, since the United States will retain greater freedom of military-technical policy and the possibility of an important propaganda effect for us will be lost. After all, the USSR and the USA, having concluded an agreement on a moratorium, thereby abandon the policy of mutual threats, the temptation to launch a preventive strike under the guise of a missile defense shield that creates the illusion of security. It is precisely the illusion that effective missile defense against a massive attack by an equal enemy is now impossible!

Today Elena Bonner draws our attention to the fact that in his secret letter of 1967, Sakharov made a clear distinction between strategic missile defense and defense against “ small-scale aggression ” - one or more ballistic missiles launched by a provocateur or adventurer. His conclusion:

“Although effective defense against a massive attack by a strong enemy is impossible, the solution of more modest, but important for saving people’s lives, tasks of defense against a sudden small-scale thermonuclear attack (for example, with provocative purposes) is quite possible and necessary.”

At the end of the 20th century, when many states (among them anti-democratic dictatorships) already have the capabilities of nuclear missile strikes on very distant targets, Sakharov’s arguments about protection from a “small-scale thermonuclear attack” remain relevant. (But this is just a particular example.)

And to the participants of today’s program - representatives of different fields of knowledge, cultures and countries - I would like to ask a much more general question: how significant is the intellectual and spiritual legacy of Andrei Dmitrievich for us at the end of the outgoing century, 10 years after Sakharov’s death? - What is outdated, perhaps, and what continues to remain relevant and acquires new significance? How can we generally evaluate Sakharov’s contribution to the history of the century?

The latter may seem like an idle question to some: after all, I read in one of the scientific publications about Sakharov: “ His name belongs to history. But the time for a comprehensive analysis of Sakharov’s activities is still ahead.”

Of course, a popular radio program cannot claim such a “comprehensive analysis.” But 10 years after the death of Andrei Dmitrievich, a certain stereotype took hold in the mass consciousness, according to which Sakharov was, first of all, a human rights activist (here the poison of the old propaganda comes into play - having created the hydrogen bomb, he supposedly “moved away from scientific activity” ). This stereotype seems to me erroneous: Andrei Dmitrievich’s social activity, in my opinion, is a direct continuation of his scientific activity not only as a theoretical physicist, but also as one of the world’s leading weapons scientists, people who, in the process of creating super-powerful lethal weapons, to one degree or another comprehended the political strategy of its use and tried to share this understanding with the authorities. (Another thing - and Sakharov himself spoke about this perfectly in his memoirs - the Soviet government did not badly need their advice...) The “honor” that Boris Slutsky wrote about (remember? -

"Something physicists are held in high esteem,
Something lyrical in the paddock.
It's not a matter of dry calculation,
It's a matter of global law."
-

This very “honor” (often classified) was in fact the maximum that the Politburo “lyricists in law” were ready to provide to their uninvited political advisers-physicists.

However, let's give the floor to the experts.

The first to answer my questions is Sakharov’s biographer from the Center for Philosophy and History of Science at Boston University, Gennady Gorelik.

Gennady Gorelik:

When a historian of physics looks at Sakharov, for him he is first and foremost a physicist. But even if we ignore my profession and look at Sakharov’s actions that went far beyond the scope of physics, he, in my opinion, still remained a physicist. He was born to be a physicist, not a politician. This was how his life worked out, this was his fate - a word that he loved very much, as you know - that he had to become a politician.

It is customary to sum up life in some kind of formulations carved on granite... If we talk about the scientific result, about what remains of Sakharov in science , then, first of all, it must be said that the physicists who were next to him and who were by no means his blind admirers spoke about him using very strong formulations.

Here, for example, is the “second father” of the hydrogen bomb (as is known, the first Soviet hydrogen bomb arose thanks to two ideas: the “first”, Sakharov’s, and the “second” - Ginzburg’s). So, in the formulation of Academician Ginzburg, “Sakharov was made of the material from which great physicists are made.”

Of course, “being a great physicist” and “being made of the right material” are somewhat different things. It was clear to Ginzburg that Sakharov’s scientific potential had not yet been realized. 20 years of his life were spent on something completely different. Moreover, Sakharov returned to pure science very late, he was over forty, and the history of physics says that truly new, original ideas arise before the age of 40.

And yet, Sakharov was very lucky: in 1966-67 he managed to put forward two truly highly original ideas in pure physics. One of them, the most successful and now fully recognized, is the explanation of the striking asymmetry of matter and antimatter in the Universe. The fact is that in theoretical physics itself, after the discovery of antiparticles, there was no reason to think that such asymmetry could exist. Particles and antiparticles are the same in everything except that when they meet, they destroy each other. Therefore, there was no reason to think that the Universe is made of only one kind of material, matter, and not antimatter. And yet, observations show that there is very little antimatter; special efforts are required to see it. This is a mystery, a mystery of nature. For a long time there were no approaches to it. And so Sakharov proposed his solution to this problem. It concerns the occurrence of such asymmetry in the first microseconds of the birth of the Universe.

Vladimir Tolts:

This is how Sakharov’s hypothesis is explained to me by Tel Aviv University professor Leonid Frankfurt, who formerly worked at the Leningrad Institute of Nuclear Physics.

Leonid Frankfurt:

Using modern particle theory, it is possible to “travel” back in time and determine the properties of the Universe just minutes after the explosion. The theory of an even earlier Universe is now one of the central unresolved questions of modern particle physics and cosmology. Sakharov made important contributions to this field.

Quite a long time ago, the Swedish physicist Alfvén noticed that we ourselves and the matter around us - the Earth, the Sun, stars, galaxies - consist mainly of particles - protons, electrons, neutrons and so on. The admixture of antiparticles - antiprotons, antineutrons, positrons - is insignificant. Question: why? Modern theory does not contain a fundamental difference between particles and antiparticles.

In the mid-60s, Sakharov suggested that the number of protons and neutrons, the baryon charge, is not conserved in the microcosm and that a very weak nonconservation of the baryon charge is responsible for the observed property of the Universe. He also realized that this assumption alone is not enough, that in the microcosm the symmetry with respect to time reversal must be broken. That is, that in the microcosm there should be an “arrow of time” . This problem has been discussed in physics for more than a hundred years, but Sakharov predicted the existence of a new interaction, unobserved then, and even now, that leads to the “arrow of time.”

At first, when Sakharov proposed this hypothesis, it did not attract much attention from physicists. However, a few years later another idea appeared, the idea that all interactions - electromagnetic, weak, strong - are different manifestations of one interaction. When physicists began to look for a mathematical theory of this unity, it turned out that it must include Sakharov's hypothesis. Although there is still no definitive answer to this question, Sakharov’s idea “works” even now. Experiments to search for proton instability and its decays are now being conducted in the largest scientific centers in the world.

Vladimir Tolts:

Probably, every generation of scientists strives to build their own closed picture of the world. Sakharov's colleagues - both those older than him and those younger - were initially struck by Sakharov's hypothesis of the first moments of the Universe (repelled some) by its unusualness.

Science historian Gennady Gorelik talks.

Gennady Gorelik:

It was so unexpected, so strange that even people who fully understood that everything Sakharov said was worth thinking through, perceived this idea very critically. It took several years for these people, such as Academician Zeldovich, who was one of the first to hear this idea, to understand that Sakharov’s intuition had to be believed.

Now Sakharov's explanation is fully accepted. It has not yet been embodied in a complete theory, but there are simply no other approaches to this problem.

Vladimir Tolts:

Another physical idea of ​​Andrei Dmitrievich, dating back to the same year 67, when he wrote the letter we quoted to Suslov and invited the authorities to publish his thoughts about missile defense in Literaturnaya Gazeta (they did not allow this), Dr. Gorelik considers even more “ambitious.”

Gennady Gorelik:

He proposed an explanation of gravitational interaction based on the microscopic properties of vacuum. It looks very strange. He used the formulation that gravity is the elasticity of the void . That Newton's famous universal gravitation is “simply” a manifestation of the microscopic properties of vacuum. I don’t think this will explain anything to someone who doesn’t know what a vacuum is, what virtual particles are, but, nevertheless, this idea fascinated specialists. One of them, the famous American physicist and specialist in quantum gravity, John Archibald Wheeler, was so fascinated by it that he talked about this idea in all his books. Although it was more of an architectural project than a solution to a problem. And in itself it is aimed at solving the key problem of fundamental theoretical physics.

Over the past 30 years, no real theory has emerged from this idea. It’s hard to say what’s going on here, whether it was a very beautiful “barren flower”, or whether the time just hasn’t come yet. In science it happens that a question posed 30 years ago or even 60 years ago has no solution and yet awakens thought and encourages people to think in this direction.

Vladimir Tolts:

Sakharov's biographer, not without reason, believes that the peak of Andrei Dmitrievich's creative activity occurred precisely at this time - in the middle - second half of the 1960s. And it is very important that it was at this time that Andrei Dmitrievich came out with his first work in a completely unusual field, as it seemed to many then, for him - with “Reflections on progress, peaceful coexistence and intellectual freedom.”

So, in the spring of 1968, the “secret” academician Sakharov released his brochure “Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom” into samizdat. This work is unique both by the standards of samizdat and by what is now being revealed from secret Soviet and party archives. There was no other document at that time that equally convincingly and concisely demonstrated the need for decisive and profound changes in the USSR and formulated their program. And it is absolutely no coincidence that “Reflections...” immediately began to be translated abroad into a variety of languages ​​and published (the total circulation reached a fantastic figure - 20 million copies).

In the Soviet Union, they only learned about Sakharov’s “Reflections...” from foreign broadcasts, including Radio Liberty. Many of the enlightened listeners, including Andrei Dmitrievich’s colleagues, found this work naive and even amateurish. But as one memoirist later wrote about this, referring to Schopenhauer, “ talent hits a target that no one can hit, genius hits a target that no one can see.” Now it’s clear: Sakharov managed to both see and get...

And today, more than 30 years after the publication of this Sakharov’s work, when most of its provisions seem to be textbook ones, there is no agreement in Russia regarding many of its conclusions. For example, regarding Sakharov’s statement that solutions to society’s problems will be achieved more easily and quickly if they are discussed openly and democratically. Or about the idea of ​​“ convergence ” (bringing together) the socialist and capitalist systems developed by Sakharov in this work. Both 30 years ago and today, “convergence” was interpreted by everyone in their own way.

Here, for example, is what I recently heard from the lips of Mikhail Sergeevich Gorbachev, who was then preparing to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution in Prague.

Mikhail Gorbachev:

I even decided to write my speech tomorrow in the words of Vasulik, who said: “ In socialism we were looking for a social system that would solve all the issues. It didn’t work out. It turns out that we only need to force it to make capitalism socialist .” And I’ll tell you, this pun, it reflects, in theoretical language it speaks of this very convergence. We don’t just need to make a choice for the future based on a dichotomy - “capitalism” or “socialism”, but we need both.

Vladimir Tolts:

Similar thoughts are expressed by Russian publicist Yuri Grigorievich Burtin. He is convinced that Sakharov's interpretation of the theory of convergence still has a long life ahead.

Yuri Burtin:

There is a widespread opinion that with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the socialist system, the theory of convergence became outdated and lost its subject. However, this only applies to inter-system convergence and does not affect intra-system convergence , which is much more important. I mean the relationship between liberal and socialist tendencies within the same society, primarily capitalist.

Being a constant companion of capitalism and forming, so to speak, the dramatic basis of the entire history of European civilization from the 16th century to the present day, these relationships have been in constant development. Until the end of the last century, and in most countries much later, these trends fought fiercely among themselves. And only in our century, especially after the Second World War, their struggle gradually gave way to peaceful opposition, maintaining the dynamic balance of these principles, their, as Sakharov put it, “mutually bringing together counter deformation.”

The socialist idea has absorbed fundamental liberal values ​​that were previously completely alien to it, and Western liberal-conservatism has just as clearly become social-democratized. And as a result of a rather long evolutionary process, the classical capitalism of the times of Karl Marx grew into something in many respects opposite to it. Into what Andrei Dmitrievich aptly called “capitalism with a human face.” In other words, the old pre-convergent capitalism in developed countries has been replaced by a new, convergent capitalism or, if you like, convergent socialism, which is practically the same thing. And humanity as a whole, looking up to these countries, has entered a qualitatively new era of its history - the era of convergence .

Nowadays in Russia, and even in Ukraine, for example, during each election campaign the same plot is successfully exploited. The voter, both on the left and on the right, is convinced that he must choose between capitalism and socialism. Some seduce him with both, while others, on the contrary, frighten him. But this is a completely false dilemma. For, just as there is no capitalism at all , in the same way, according to Sakharov, there is no socialism at all . And there is either totalitarian socialism of the Stalin-Brezhnev model, or its convergent opposite - that symbiosis of socialism and capitalism, which is usually called democratic socialism, and Sakharov preferred to call pluralistic .

A clear distinction and contrast between these two types of society, which are united by the word socialism only according to some secondary characteristics, is one of the main merits of the scientist in the field of social theory.

Vladimir Tolts:

And here is how French professor Alain Besançon, the author of the work “The Russian Past and the Soviet Present” and other works about Russia, which has been translated into many languages, answers my question about the idea of ​​convergence in Sakharov’s “Reflections...”.

Alain Besancon:

Convergence? - Well, here Sakharov was clearly mistaken...

There was no possibility at all of any convergence between the Soviet and capitalist systems. You know, the idea of ​​convergence was one of the hopes that people used to entertain themselves in that era. Even a person like Raymond Aron in his “Lessons of an Industrial Society,” although he did not talk about convergence and saw in the Soviet system a system, albeit tyrannical, still promoting industrial development, that is, he did not understand that we are talking about a system that does not promote development, but quite the opposite - inhibiting development. I remember when my book “Anatomy of a Ghost” was published, which drew attention to this aspect of the Soviet system, Raymond Aron reacted rather unkindly to it.

So Sakharov was not alone in this delusion; the same thing happened with Raymond Aron.

Vladimir Tolts:

Zbigniew Brzezinski, an American political scientist and sociologist, the author of the theory of the United States entering the “technotronic era”, who was President Carter’s assistant for national security in 1977-81, spoke for our program about the influence of Sakharov’s “Reflections...” on his then perception of the USSR and about the viability of some of Andrei Dmitrievich’s ideas.

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

Sakharov's statement was an important breakthrough in the wall of ideological pressure with which the Soviet system surrounded the intelligentsia. This statement confirmed my belief that the Soviet Union was heading towards a crisis, and that the existing political and ideological system would eventually collapse. And Sakharov’s position, his attitude towards the Soviet system strengthened my conviction that the Soviet Union would collapse. I think that his views on peaceful coexistence and the need for political pluralism are still important today.

Vladimir Tolts:

As you can see, while highly appreciating Sakharov’s contribution to the modern understanding of the social and political problems of the country and the world, politicians, publicists and political scientists today have different attitudes towards Sakharov’s individual constructs in this area.

I will once again give the floor to Alain Besançon:

Alain Besancon:

I don't think that from the point of view of analyzing the Soviet system, Sakharov taught us any important lesson.

Moreover, I believe that people less pure and less decent than Andrei Sakharov, I mean, for example, Alexander Zinoviev, from an intellectual point of view, penetrated deeper into the core of the Soviet system than Sakharov. Why? - Because in these people, in people like Zinoviev, sat that same “homo sovieticus” that was talked about so much in their time. Zinoviev, in order to prove that a new type of person had really been bred in the USSR, and he himself behaved like the notorious “homo sovietikus”, demonstrating the essence of the system through his personal example.

Sakharov was a person who was not affected by this system and was not corrupted. And his vision of the essence of the Soviet system was precisely because Sakharov, living in the USSR, remained outside the system, which could not draw him into its depths.

Vladimir Tolts:

I could not imagine this program without the participation of Elena Georgievna Bonner - a person without whom I generally cannot imagine Andrei Dmitrievich, as I remember him from the first half of the 70s.

Elena Georgievna answers my questions about the relevance of Sakharov’s ideas today by phone.

Elena Bonner:

It seems to me that in today's very tragic world, the principle that he shared and which he tried to reflect in his Constitution is important. - The principle of the right of any people, regardless of their numbers and economic capabilities, to self-determination and the creation of their own statehood. In the Constitution, this principle was very clearly expressed in that Andrei Dmitrievich believed that all administrative entities that existed at the time of 1989 in the Soviet Union: union republics, autonomous republics, autonomous regions, and so on, have the right to equally equal status. And based on this equal status, they form a federal statehood, delegating, to each of these entities, those functions that it considers possible to the highest general state body.

In addition to several mandatory ones - defense, foreign policy, energy and some others, Andrei Dmitrievich believed that all the other entities (there were 50-odd of them in Russia) themselves delegated functions to the highest body, some large, others smaller. If this had happened, then, probably, there would not have been the problems that Russia is facing today, in particular, the problem of the second war that is destroying the Chechen people - I am not afraid to say that this is genocide - is an absolutely unjustified war. And just as it was unjustified the first time, when it was carried out under the slogan of establishing constitutional order, so it is unjustified the second time, when it is carried out under the slogan of the fight against terrorism.

Vladimir Tolts:

But Sakharov was always concerned not only with the problems of one particular country, but also with the world. - Elena Bonner says about this:

Elena Bonner:

On a global scale, what is very important from Sakharov’s ideas is that he shared and fought for - the impossibility of a dual approach to the problems of the West or the East, the problems of the first, second or, as they say, third world. By the way, the double approach also applies to the problem of self-determination. For example, for some reason the world community decided that the problem of East Timor can be solved by the will of the people and a referendum. And since all this is difficult to solve, this decision can be helped even by introducing a military, in this case, an Australian contingent. In other cases, by the way, Kurdish, for some reason this problem is not solved, and this very clearly expresses a dual approach. We are talking about a people of 40 million who do not have their own statehood, because states that were stronger decided so during the First and Second World Wars. (By the way, Andrei Dmitrievich was always very interested in the problem of the Kurds, and in our archive we even have letters from one of the leaders of the Kurdish people in the 70s, and earlier in the 40s and 50s, Mustafa Barzani).

Another idea, which has also generally been preserved and is sometimes heard in the speeches of some public figures in various countries around the world, is the idea of ​​​​creating a Supreme Advisory Council, as Andrei Dmitrievich wrote, but this is an idea still from Einstein and other scientists, which would consist of unconditionally moral people, people who are trusted by the population of both their countries and the planet in general, as an Advisory Council for political figures of various countries.

And an idea, maybe not an idea, but a way of life, thinking of everything, Andrei Dmitrievich always said: “In the end, the moral choice turns out to be the most pragmatic.” It seems to me that in today’s turmoil of political life, our, not only Russian in this case, “our”, I say planetary, cosmopolitan, political leaders of our planet today forget about moral choice.

Vladimir Tolts:

In fact, Alain Besançon also speaks about the same thing, about Sakharov’s moral choice, which determined his fate and the fate of many of his ideas that are still relevant today.

Alain Besancon:

I think that if Orwell were asked to describe the personality of Andrei Sakharov, he would describe him with his favorite word - “disancy”, that is, decency. I think that it was precisely this quality of Sakharov, his “disancy” that played a huge role in the fate of the Soviet world. He was not just a decent person, but also a man of high soul, or rather of high spiritual order. And this quality of Andrei Sakharov helped to see more clearly precisely the “indisansi,” that is, the indecency of the communist world.

Sakharov was a predictable person who could be relied upon. Remember Solzhenitsyn, I would compare this man with a mighty horse, capable of taking high barriers, overcoming ditches, but at the same time capable of falling into a ditch. Sakharov did not gallop, but you could be sure that he would not deviate from his path. Sakharov was a predictable man in precisely this sense of the word. But precisely because of his absolute honesty and decency and, despite all his modesty, it was Andrei Sakharov who turned out to be extremely dangerous for the Soviet regime.

Vladimir Tolts:

Sakharov’s danger to the Soviet regime, which Alain Besançon speaks of, was directly related not only to his natural intelligence, but also to the amazing, absolutely consistent adherence to principles of the thinker regarding the conclusions to which he came. No power, no tactical or everyday considerations could force him to yield in such cases! - This is how he understood his moral responsibility as a scientist and a person. Sakharov’s “moral imperative,” in the words of Sergei Kovalev, who I have already quoted, “is not only the pursuit of an ideal, it is also taking into account the results of your actions.”

Sergei Kovalev's reasoning partly echoes what Elena Bonner said about Sakharov today.

“The moral imperative for Sakharov was in three not entirely coinciding principles of action. Firstly, it was a direction, not a recipe for action in a given situation, but a direction of search. Secondly, the physicist Sakharov perfectly understood that it is not always possible to calculate the results of one’s actions and then another manifestation of this moral imperative begins to operate. As Andrei Dmitrievich said: “If you cannot calculate what will happen, act in principle.” That is, do as you should and come what may. And finally, the physicist Sakharov also perfectly understood that in moral judgments it is not always possible to find the answer to the question - what to do? But you will always find prohibitions, as in theoretical physics - this should not be done under any circumstances."

Like many other things, this Sakharov approach remains relevant today not only for physicists.