How to misremember Andrei Sakharov

Scott Horton, writing on Harper's Magazine, makes a number of points relating to the 20th anniversary of the death of that great Russian Andrei Sakharov:

"The twentieth anniversary of Andrei Sakharov’s death was not forgotten in Russia. But it’s distressing to note how it was remembered. A television special ran on Russian state television celebrating Sakharov’s life—but the Sakharov it celebrated was the father of the hydrogen bomb and a key contributor to the military technology of the former Soviet Union, not the tireless advocate of “peace, progress, and human rights.” Fedor Lukyanov, a prominent foreign affairs journalist, wrote in the daily Gazeta that Sakharov’s ideas about human rights had been “discredited.”

Continue reading here - also for an insight into Russia today and that never-far-away-from-the-news Vladimir Putin.

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