The Sakharov Case

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov lived under six rulers of the Soviet state. He met with five of them - Beria (read Stalin), Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Andropov and Gorbachev - personally and hoped that one way or another he would be able to influence their decisions. But he had a real impact on the society of his country. He was born under Lenin and died under Gorbachev, a year and a half before the day when the state collapsed, which he helped strengthen in the first half of his life and fought against in the second. This "turn", as he himself called it, is the most interesting thing in Sakharov's history.