Page "Andrei Sakharov" Paragraph 15

In May 1968 he completed an essay, " Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom ", where the anti-ballistic missile defense is described as a major threat of world nuclear war.

After this essay was circulated in samizdat and then published outside the Soviet Union ( initially on July 6, 1968, in the Dutch newspaper Het Parool through intermediary of the Dutch academic and writer Karel van het Reve, followed by The New York Times ), Sakharov was banned from all military-related research and returned to FIAN to study fundamental theoretical physics.

In 1970 he, along with Valery Chalidze and Andrei Tverdokhlebov, was one of the founders of the Committee on Human Rights in the USSR and came under increasing pressure from the government.

He married a fellow human rights activist, Yelena Bonner, in 1972.