“Mayak” Academy in N.Novgorod to be named after Andrei Sakharov

“Mayak” Academy in N.Novgorod to be named after Andrei Sakharov

The ceremony is devoted to the World Science Day for Peace and Development

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, November 10. /TASS/. The “Mayak” Academy, Rosatom’s educational center in Nizhny Novgorod, will be named after the Soviet physicist and human rights activist Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov. The ceremony, which will take place on Wednesday, is timed to coincide with the World Science Day for Peace and Development, celebrated annually on November 10.

The new “Mayak” Academy name in honor of Sakharov was personally approved by Vladimir Putin, the President of Russia. The ceremony will be attended by Alexey Likhachev, the CEO of Rosatom State Corporation, Alexander Sergeev, the President of the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS), and Marina Sakharova-Lieberman, the granddaughter of Andrei Sakharov.

Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet theoretical physicist, the academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences and one of the creators of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb. Later he became a public figure, dissident and human rights activist as well as the deputy of the USSR People’s Deputy Congress, known as the author of the draft constitution of the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. He was also a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1975 for the preservation of peace. After condemning the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan, in January 1980 he was stripped of all Soviet awards and prizes and expelled from Moscow to Nizhny Novgorod (called Gorky in those years, the city completely closed to foreign citizens). His wife Elena Bonner voluntarily followed him. The only title that he had not been deprived of was the title of a member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Academician Kapitsa strongly objected this telling to Mr. Alexandrov, the President of the USSR Academy of Sciences back then, in a personal conversation that “In 1933, Hitler expelled Einstein from the Prussian Academy of Sciences…”

At the end of 1986, Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, allowed them to return from exile to Moscow, which was regarded in the world as an important milestone in ending the fight against dissent and dissidents in the USSR.

The “Mayak” Academy is located in the historical complex of the Rukavishnikov Merchants Bank, built in 1913 by architect Fyodor Shekhtel in the Neo-Gothic style. In 2021, the building was partially renovated by Rosatom State Corporation and is currently used as a venue for lectures, master classes, exhibitions, seminars, conferences and other events for residents and guests of Nizhny Novgorod.