A still from the film “Andrei Sakharov. On the other side of the window «
Scientific enlightenment is intertwined in this unusual movie (do we really understand what exactly were the discoveries of the outstanding physicist, what is the difference between a hydrogen bomb and an atomic one, how is Sakharov's «puff» arranged?), The selfless work of the humanist Sakharov, his human rights activities. And it becomes obvious that the scientific principles of the scientist's work — formulating and setting goals, and then concentrating maximum efforts to solve the assigned tasks — he also used in solving global humanitarian and social problems.
Among the materials: secret filming — testing of thermonuclear weapons, secret observation of Sakharov and Bonner during exile in Gorky, memoirs of his colleagues, declassified archival documents. And also inventively and freely animated by the talented animation director Dmitry Geller, Andrei Dmitrievich's drawings in the margins of scientific manuscripts with calculations and in letters to children and grandchildren.
A dinosaur with glasses looks admiringly at a tall woman who looks like an Egyptian cat, bewitched at her feet. An exhausted dinosaur is tied to a iron bed in the chaos of blackness. Ants are crawling across the white screen. They bring letters and put them into Sakharov's formula: the square root of truth = love.
A frame from the movie. On the other side of the window «
Panorama: an ordinary brick house. On the top floor there is a bust of Lenin; downstairs behind a Georgian ventilated rug Stalin, Andropov, Brezhnev; then the group — Zhdanov, Khrushchev, Ordzhonikidze; even lower — scientists headed by Kurchatov; we descend still — the Stakhanovites, the metro builders. And downstairs, next to the window, Andrey Dmitrievich leaned against the wall in his coat and hat a little to one side: “I'm not on the top floor. I'm next to the top floor — on the other side of the window, ”Sakharov once joked, referring to the power floors.
“On the other side of the window” is not only about parallel existence with those in power, but also about an acute discrepancy with the very settings of the system.
Academician Zeldovich persuaded him to benefit the country in a group of experts under the Council of Ministers, which would help to rebuild technology and science in a progressive spirit, the main thing is not to go to the trial of the dissenting Pimenov, otherwise Sakharov would put himself “on the other side”. And then Andrei Dmitrievich said that he really was “on the other side”.
He was haunted by the thought of exactly how many descendants of his bomb could kill over the millennia. It was vitally important for him that young Liza Alekseeva left the country to stay with her beloved. «How can you great one risk your life for some girl?» — wrote to him «well-wishers». “Totalitarian thinking,” Sakharov briefly described this “concern” in his Memoirs. He won then in 1981.
And when in May 1984 Elena Bonner was locked up in Gorky, having cut off Sakharov's only connection with the outside world, he went on long painful hunger strikes. “I am starving not only for your trip and not so much for your trip as for my window into the world … They want to make me a living corpse. You kept me alive by giving me a connection to the world. »
This is a film about the passionate desire of the inventor of the bomb to contain the war. That even in the absence of choice, the choice remains. Even in inhuman conditions, a person is able to keep a person in himself.
Help
Dmitry Zavilgelsky — master of documentary science, author of the films Dissernet. The Evolution of Altruism ”about a network community that detects plagiarism when writing dissertations,“ Once we were stars ”about astronomers,“ Waiting for waves and particles ”about the search for gravitational waves.
Boris Altshuler is a physicist, human rights activist, member of the Moscow Helsinki Group, author of the book “Sakharov and Power”.