Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Yelena Bonner Has Died

If you're a certain age, you probably think of "Andrei Sakharov" when you hear the name Yelena Bonner. Yelena Bonner was a famous Soviet dissident who late in life married the nuclear physicist-turned-dissident Sakharov. I was astounded to read her obituary today HERE in The Economist. She died 10 days ago, apparently, at the age of 88. I had no idea she was still alive.  (Sakharov had died in 1989.)

I thought it was notable that, as an epilogue to her Cold War-era fame as a human rights campaigner and dissident in the Soviet Union, she ultimately had a falling out with each of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin as well.

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