Chapter 11 Summary

Andrei Sakharov is one of the Soviet Union's most famous dissidents. Sakharov and his wife Yelena spend six years in exile in Gorky until Gorbachev grants them freedom, and they return to Moscow. Following World War II, Sakharov worked at the Installation, a Soviet version of Los Alamos. He was building the Soviet Union's first thermonuclear bomb. The success of his work brought money, privilege and heroism. However, as he begins to realize the danger of his creation, he questions his work and his government. He gradually becomes a dissident and is eventually imprisoned.

Not everyone who contributes to changes in the Soviet Union is a full-fledged dissident. Gorbachev, and many of this top aids, are what Gorbachev's colleague Georgi Shakhnazarov calls "double thinkers." This is term Shakhnazarov uses to describe the people who doubted Stalinism and the direction of the Party, but...