The Passing of Yelena Bonner

Yelena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov and a noted human rights activist, passed away on June 18, 2011, in Boston.

As long as she was alive, it was as if Sakharov himself were still living.

Yelena Bonner was Andrei Sakharov’s representative in our world. And it is a rather difficult thing to represent a deceased husband, particularly one like Sakharov, inventor both of the Soviet hydrogen bomb and the Soviet human rights movement, laureate of the Stalin and Nobel Prizes. Yet Yelena Georgievna nonetheless succeeded.