Today, we've got more Cold War intrigue for you. On this day in 1980, Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov was arrested for speaking out against his country's invasion of Afghanistan. His work had been essential to the development of the USSR's first hydrogen bomb, which they managed to complete in 1955, just a few years after the United States announced they'd developed their own.
With time, Sakharov soured on the results of his work. He was worried about the effects of radiation on those testing the weapons and somehow got an opinion piece he'd penned to be smuggled to the New York Times. The paper published his piece, which argued for an end to the nuclear escalation between the two Cold War powers and even criticized the authoritarianism of his own government. This was, to say the least, a pretty risky move, but it was part of the work that netted him the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize. Five years after his 1980 arrest, he was permitted by Mikhail Gorbachev to participate in an election for the USSR's national legislature, which he won.
You can read more about Sakharov at Harvard University's Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies.
