Andrei Sakharov

Andrei Sakharov, a nuclear physicist, was a prominent academician in the Soviet Academy of Sciences, having led the effort to produce the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. Later as a dissident having been awarded the Nobel Prize in Peace, Sakharov was exiled to the city of Gorky (Nizhnii Novgorod) by Gorbachev and allowed to return to Moscow after seven years. Approaching Sakharov as a fellow physicist, Guy von Dardel sought Sakharov’s advice and assistance in the search for his brother. Sakharov and his wife Yelena Bonner tried to follow up reports of Wallenberg’s alleged incarceration in a small locality to the west of Moscow but were repelled by local Soviet security. Sakharov died in 1989 unable to fulfill Guy von Dardel’s invitation to participate in the first on-site investigation of archival records of the Vladimir Prison.