I have known Sakharov since the summer of 1964, when he made his short but strong speech at the general meeting of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences against Lysenko's domination of Soviet biology. His speech set the Academy on a collision course with Khrushchev's government and led to threats of severe reprimands. A few months later, Lysenko's fall (which followed that of Khrushchev) proved that Sakharov was right and the government wrong.
Sakharov's statement in 1979 that the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was a tragic mistake was also proved right, but this time it took seven long years and three changes of leadership in the Soviet Union to do so.
Indeed, the release of Sakharov, along with the prisoner exchange of Anatoly Shcharansky and Yuri Orlov and the unconditional release of poet Irina Ratushinskaya, proves that Western campaigns on behalf of individual Soviet political prisoners do make a difference, even ...
