ABSTRACT
In the opening years of the Cold War, Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov designed the Soviet Unions first hydrogen bomb. With World War II raging against Nazi Germany, Sakharov worked in the armaments industry, contributing to the victory of the Red Army in 1945. As the Cold War erupted with the United States, however, the Soviet Union feared that the American monopoly of nuclear weapons would prevent it from maintaining military parity. Andrei Sakharov's work in nuclear physics brought great military strength to the Soviet Union. Ironically, however, his activities as a dissident ultimately contributed to its collapse. With the nuclear technology developed by Sakharov and Tamm, the Soviet Union was able in a single decade to achieve military parity with the United States. The development of this costly weapons system contributed to an economic decline, and Sakharov's daring attacks on communism undermined the Soviet regime's political legitimacy.
