Of Arms and Reforms

In February, barely two months after Soviet authorities unexpectedly released him from internal exile, Andrei Sakharov created a worldwide sensation by turning up at an international forum in Moscow. Sakharov, 65, a nuclear physicist often described as the "father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb" and a courageous defender of human rights in his homeland, spent nearly seven years under virtual house arrest with his wife Elena Bonner in the closed city of Gorky. During the February forum, Sakharov delivered three speeches eloquently expressing his concerns about human rights, U.S.-Soviet relations and the nuclear arms race. He made a slightly edited version of those speeches, along with a preface explaining his reason for giving them, exclusively available to TIME.

In the speeches, Sakharov takes up the broad themes that repeatedly have brought him into conflict with the Kremlin since the early 1960s: the connection between preserving peace and protecting human rights, the need for greater openness in the Soviet Union, and the possibility of an eventual convergence of capitalist and socialist societies.

Sakharov voices deep skepticism about Ronald Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative. Yet he does not favor the Soviet negotiating position that makes an arms-agreement "package" dependent on what amounts to U.S. abandonment of sdi. Mikhail Gorbachev's latest proposal of a separate agreement on intermediate-range nuclear forces appears to approach this position.

The conclusion of Sakharov's statement may surprise those who saw Chernobyl as a crippling if not fatal blow to the future of nuclear power. He argues strongly for the further peaceful development of nuclear energy, but suggests that reactors be buried underground to prevent any repetition of last year's Soviet nuclear disaster.

I agreed to participate in the "Forum for a Nuclear-Free World and the Survival of Mankind" on Feb. 14-16 in Moscow, and I spoke at three sessions. My decision attracted great attention. Some approved of it, some condemned it, many characterized it as sensational. But for me the choice was clear.

My views were formed during the years I spent on nuclear weapons; in my struggle against testing of these weapons in the atmosphere, underwater or in space; in my public activities and writing; in the human-rights movement; and in Gorky isolation. My fundamental ideas were reflected in a 1968 essay, "Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom," but since then life has brought many changes that have forced me to modify my position and make it applicable to specific circumstances. I am referring in particular to recent changes in the domestic life and foreign policy of the U.S.S.R.

The main and constant ingredients of my position are the idea that the preservation of peace is indissolubly linked to the openness of society and the observance of human rights, as formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the conviction that only the convergence of the socialist and capitalist systems can assure a fundamental and lasting solution to the problem of peace and the survival of mankind.

I realized that my participation in the forum would be used to some extent for propaganda purposes. But I believed that the positive significance of a public speech, after I had been gagged for so many years, would outweigh any negative effects.