Soviet nuclear scientist Andrei Sakharov’s break with his government began when the Soviets detonated “Tsar Bomba,” the most powerful nuclear weapon in history, in 1961.

He was then forty years old and had been at the forefront of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program for thirteen years.

It was Sakharov who had developed the model for controlled nuclear fusion which had made the Soviet hydrogen bomb work.

And he had believed in this effort.

“If the Soviet Union could achieve nuclear parity with the US, then a peaceful international equilibrium would be created,” he said.

But, over time, Sakharov’s illusions fell away.

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